Monitoring Feeding and Drinking
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Monitoring your birds feeding and drinking habits can provide useful pointers to their general health. If your birds are always eager to feed, you should have no problems, but if any of your birds suddenly goes off its food, this could very well be the first sign that something is wrong.
If your bird tends to be rather timid when it comes to feeding, which can happen when you change its diet or food dish, an effective technique is to scatter a little of the food around the dish. Continue to do this until the bird is familiar with the new food or dish. It is also important to stop bold and audacious birds inhibiting any timid birds from feeding. The most constructive way to handle this problem is to provide several water and food dishes around the aviary and so create more choice and availability for the less intrepid occupants. Since smaller birds particularly can rapidly suffer from dehydration, make sure that they have easy access to a constant supply of clean water.
Seedeaters are very wasteful, often scattering their food all over the place. It is fortunate, therefore, that this type of food does not tend to spoil. The birds for which feeding hygiene is essential are soft bills, which eat a variety of different foods, and parrots feeding on pulses. With these birds, the food they eat deteriorates very quickly over a short period and so it is important to collect all the waste food from the floor each time you feed them. Otherwise, your birds may be eating food that is two or three days old, and this is obviously very dangerous. It is often a good idea to put their feeding dish inside a larger dish so that any good escaping falls into the second dish, making it easier to clean up.
Any dish containing food must be under cover, as rain will ruin the food. And, of course, do not place food or water dishes underneath perches, where droppings can easily contaminate them.