Powdered food / beak byproducts

[Addicted to Tequila]

I feed my guys Zupreem Harvest Blend. They seem to really like it. These are the first birds I have ever had that are honestly getting most of their nutrition from pellets instead of seed - and lots of fresh foods daily as well of course.

I let them have free access to all-you-can-eat on their pellets. I have watched them eat, they bite the pellets which crumble. They finish off that mouthful and grab a new pellet. Rinse and repeat. I am left at the end of the day with a heaping lot of powder in the food dish. This seems to waste an awful lot of food. Their weight is looking pretty good, so I know they are getting sustenance from what they do consume.

Is this amount of powder left-overs normal? Is it because they are young and they will get better at eating pellets? Am I using the wrong size food (I went with the smaller size because the parrot&conure size looked daunting for my GCC) and that causes it? Or is this normal? Is Harrisons brand softer and less likely to cause this? Can I take the left-over powder and make a warm morning mash from it for them?

[Okanairda]

My conure is a year old now and has been leaving me powder leftovers ever since I got him as a baby. It's normal. :) Some people feed the leftovers to wild birds in their back yard, some people re-use it in birdie bread, and yup, you could make mash out of it for them too.

[Monica]

I find that my conures have less crumble if they get the cockatiel size Zupreem Natural pellets. I'm trying to get a bag of Budgie size for the tiels, budgies, and bourke to see how they take to that instead of the tiel size. The budgies pretty much eat everything, but the tiels are wasters, too!

A GC could do fine on the budgie/tiel sized pellets, to be honest... or even smaller!