Budgies dehusk almost everything they eat, cracking each seed and dropping the shell straight back into the bowl — which is why a bowl that looks untouched can already be nearly empty, and why a mix built from a small number of seeds a budgie actually favours can go further than a wider, showier blend.

This is Bestpets' complementary feed for budgerigars, built from just three ingredients: yellow millet, canary seed and red millet. It's a simpler composition than most cage bird mixes on this list, described as providing a good source of carbohydrate, oil and protein between the three grains rather than relying on a longer ingredient list.

• Complementary feed for budgerigars
• Three ingredients: yellow millet, canary seed, red millet
• May contain nuts
• Fresh food recommended daily, water changed at least twice a day
• 20KG sack

On "complementary." Bestpets describe this as a complementary food rather than a complete one, so it isn't positioned as the whole of a budgie's diet on its own. No further guidance on what else to feed alongside it is given on the card.

Who it's for: budgerigar owners who want a straightforward, three-grain mix in bulk rather than a wide multi-seed blend with ingredients their bird will pick around anyway.