Is it normal to not chew seeds/grains?

[Jessira]

The last few days my cockatiel has been doing something kinda weird. He gets soacked buckwheat with his veggies every morning, and for some reason the last few days he's been eating the buckwheat without chewing it? It's not in the shell, it's hulled. Normally though he chews it and grinds it up

Is this normal to do sometimes? He's started his first molt I don't know if this is a behavior for that? Or maybe diet preferences change when they are molting?

I don't know if he does it with other seeds or not because I can't really see if he does or not, but the soaked buckwheat is big enough that I can see he's just picking them up and swallowing them. He also normally really likes veggies, but he's barely touching them right now. I have all his favorites in there this week. Broccoli, zucchini, cilantro. He loves this stuff, but he's barely touching it. Then going nuts when I give him his dry grain/seed mix with pellets in the evening.

 

[Jessira]

For clarification he IS eating some of the veggies. It's just that I have to be a nagging helicopter mom to get him to do it. Like just now he ate some of his veggies, but it took me reaching in and putting him by this bowl multiple times and just staring him down till he gave in and ate his food while giving me a look like "FIIIIIIIIIIIINE... I'll eat the damn vegetables...." I had to stand there for like 10 minutes watching him eat and if I even looked away he stopped eating.

So it's very much like a toddler when they don't want to eat something and only do it when they know you are looking.

Which again, odd, cause these are some of his favorite veggies.

I also thought of another detail that just occurred to me. I did recently switch to making his chop with a mini food processor instead of chopping by hand. He seemed to like more finely chopped stuff so I figured a food processor would be the better route so stuff was more consistent and smaller for him.

 

[zERo/]

Well, soaked buckwheat can be pretty soft, especially if you soak it for awhile.
I would worry about that unless he started doing it with dry seeds.

As for the veggies, maybe he’s just getting used to them being presented differently.
My tiels will sometimes try to ignore their chop if I don’t add something to make it more appealing.
Most of the time, sprinkling a little chia seed is enough to get them to devour it!
You could also mix a little ground or whole flaxseed in there 1-2 times a week.