How come they're not eating it?

[HareTrinity]

Went to the trouble of making a salad of rather finely cut up carrot and apple along with a few pieces of egg, which was mainly for my birds, but some of the apple and carrot also went to my gerbils, chinchilla and rabbit...

Came back in the evening, and found... Some very happy looking gerbils sleeping, the food in the rabbit and chinchilla cages already eaten, and the birds' troughs of food... Untouched?!? And a room that smells of egg, now...

Why didn't my birds seem interested? Is it just because they're not used to it (I've given them shredded carrots now and then, but not large amounts of non-grass like this)?

How can I get them to eat it? Preferably before I have to take it out (which, considering the egg and apple, is likely to be soon)...

[Monica]

You shouldn't leave food in for more than 2 hours at a time... Try feeding this FIRST thing in the morning every morning for a few weeks and they may recognize it as food. If they don't recognize it as food they aren't likely to be interested. Even more so if they aren't curious about how it was presented. Try hanging some of it up, putting it on a fruit/veggie treat holder, any way you can think of to present it to them in hopes that they might try it. Sooner or later they usually do, especially if they have someone to learn from. Some birds learn from their human counterparts while others might learn from another bird if they are not already use to eating it...

[HareTrinity]

Thanks...

One of my finches was eating some of it this morning, anyway (she seemed pretty eager to gobble it all down before I got up, but I'll take it out when I get back)...

I'm starting to wonder if I should have cut it into smaller pieces for my smaller finches... How small should the pieces be?

Wonder how I should go about mashing raw carrots... Do you think mashed potato and/or mashed cooked carrots would be okay?

Much as I'm aware that carrots lose a lot of their vitamins when cooked, I could give them the water separately as a treat, couldn't I?

Hm... Can finches and/or budgies use water bottles? Maybe I should put some of this on a separate thread...

[Monica]

You can try steaming some veggies as this will soften them up and they normally dont lose any nutritional value this way where-as boiling them it goes into the water.... I don't remember though for how long to steam them... As far as soft leafy greens the finches should be able to eat that easily though as far as other foods go, might be harder depending on how soft it is... maybe cutting some open in half???

I don't know about finches, though budgies can use water bottles if they understand what it is. Otherwise if they don't have any other source of water besides a water dish then they will become dehydrated. I'm sure though that finches could learn to use a bottle in time!