she chose harrison’s pellets one of the more expensive foods on the market
Harrison's may seem rather expensive, but it's not necessarily true. It could potentially be cheaper than seed!
Lets say we have this info....
Pellets - 5 lbs $28 ($5.6 per lb)
Seeds - 5 lbs $15 ($3 per lb)
Lets say you have a cockatiel that weighs 100 grams. The cockatiel is likely to eat about 10% of their weight in pellets per day *OR* 15% of their weight in seeds. This would be 10 grams of pellets or 15 grams of seeds.
5 lbs is 2268 grams
The pellets could potentially last you for ~269 days. That may come out to roughly 10 cents per meal?
The seeds could potentially last you for ~151 days. This would be *nearly* 10 cents per meal.
That is, if my calculations are correct? But in this example, a $28 bag of pellets would end up being about the same cost of a $15 bag of seed. This of course doesn't account for food wastage! (what the bird doesn't eat, what the bird drops, what the bird flings, etc)
Add in your fresh foods.... and the daily cost of *DRY* food goes down!
Sure, you might be able to find cheaper seeds... or even cheaper pellets! But... the point is, although pellets appear to be more expensive, they aren't necessarily! And if a person buys in bulk, the cost could go down even further! (If you have one bird or a small flock, buying in bulk shouldn't be necessary)
I notice my Christopher, will watch me eat food too, and when I eat, and look happy, make happy noises, and eat more, he becomes very interested, but the problem then is mommy has different food them I do. He wants to eat my food that I have in my plate, and not the very same food he has in his dish. Do I need to eat out of his dish, or after eating the food in my bowl, give him that food, putting it into his dish?
You might need to figure out various ways to present food to him to make it more appealing. This could be as simple as creating a chop and adding in sprouted seeds or just dry seeds and/or nuts to get him interested in eating from the dish to chopping up the food in various ways or sizes or offering it like a toy or sticking it through the bars. You gotta be creative!