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PARROT CARE INFORMATION FOR NEW OWNERS
We have compiled some basic information for new bird owners. This should start you off on the right track with your new bird. Never stop learning and always continue to research! If you have questions please contact us. We are here for our customers and for our babies. We will happily answer any question.
DIET
We feed a variety of different foods and tend to change it up occasionally. We suggest feeding a high quality mix that includes veggies and fruits, and a decent pellet. We also strongly recommend if you can offer additional dehydrated or freeze-dried veggies, fruits, and sprouts as well as a raw whole food diet. You can always combine dry items to make the mix that you want!
These are dry foods we may be currently feeding or highly recommend:
SMALL BIRDS
● Island Treat Mixes
● Goldenfeast Australian Blend
● Goldenfeast Conure Blend
● Hari Tropimix
● Hari Tropican
● Higgins Sunburst
● Higgins Vitaseed
● Zupreem Fruit Blend
● Wild Harvest Daily Blend Parakeet
LARGE BIRDS
● Island Treat Mixes
● Goldenfeast Madagascar Blend and other varieties
● HARI Tropimix
● HARI Tropican
Freeze Dried/Dehydrated: Petsmart carries mixes down the reptile aisle under the Thrive brand. They are perfectly fine for birds as well. Some include insects such as mealworms, which are okay in moderation. Dollar tree carries freeze dried fruits down the snack aisle at a very affordable cost.Texas Natural Freeze Dried Products carries many options. Christine’s Chop Shop carries many options. You can buy human grade from many sources, Karen’s Naturals is just one. We also recommend buying a dehydrator and learning to do so yourself!
Treats: Millet Spray, Nuts in shell and shelled, birdie bread and muffins, Avicakes, Nutriberries, and others!
A Raw Whole Food Diet : A raw whole food diet, often referred to as fresh or chop, provides nutritional diversity and is substantial at meeting the dietary needs of companion parrots. We urge prospective customers to consider it if they haven’t already. We recommend checking out the Facebook group Avian Raw Whole Food Nutrition that was started by Dr. Jason Crean.
Many people are scared to branch out into the world of fresh foods, especially if their birds don’t seem too keen on it, or they believe it will be extremely expensive for pet owners with only one or a few birds. You don’t have to immediately dive in head deep! You can try offering things such as leafy greens, corn, sweet potatoes, bananas, apples, and grapes at first! These are things that most birds will be willing to try. As for expense and waste... When you make batches of chop you can freeze individual portions into ice cube trays and then store them in ziplocs for up to three months. In our experience our birds love freshly chopped food more than frozen, so we make our chop weekly... but we have many birds so we easily use what we buy. Dry items added into chop can help absorb moisture when thawing from frozen.We strongly suggest learning how to soak and sprout as well. It is extremely healthy for birds. You can get sprouting mixes with detailed instructions from China Prairie. You can soak whole raw nuts like almonds, walnuts and pecans to give them a nutritional boost!
BEHAVIOR
When a baby goes to it’s new home it experiences many new things and new people. It can be very overwhelming and scary at first, even for a hand raised bird. Please give your baby time to adjust and don’t take it personally if they do not want to be handled immediately. It is important to use a force free approach and understand and research at least a little bit about behavior.
Do not try to force your bird to step up. Do not intentionally chase it around a room. Do not chase it around the inside of its cage with your hand.
Using force, punishment, and aversives can easily ruin a budding relationship with your new bird. Many are unaware they are using them, because they may not think it is actually force or punishment. This is why it is important to learn.
Force, punishment, and aversives work, often quickly, and that is the problem. They are very rewarding methods for the person using them and that’s what encourages people to continue using the methods. The point I’m trying to make is that you are not building a relationship on trust, you are building a relationship on fear. An example of positive punishment is using spray bottles to deter behavior. Over time birds can become desensitized to things like a spray bottle and they no longer are an aversive, so the behavior you are trying to prevent can easily increase in frequency. Force free approaches teach the behavior you want to see versus punishing for the behavior that you don’t want.
Using force can lead to bites. Biting should never be touted as a part of parrot ownership. It is not a requirement that you get bitten. While accidental bites can happen they are rare and the majority of bites happen because people fail to understand what their parrot is communicating to them. Most birds give a lot of cues and body language communicating before a bite. If someone is being bitten excessively and severely, it means they are ignoring their bird completely. Birds can learn overtime that they are not being listened to and become much quicker to bite and don’t give as many signals.
It is important to move away from constructs and labels with behavior. Your bird does not hate you, your bird is not mad at you, your bird is not jealous. If you stop and take the time to describe behavior in observable terms it is easier to understand and potentially change it. We can’t know what a bird is thinking or feeling. Anthropomorphising behavior and using labels and constructs builds a brick wall. There are many behavioral myths. Height Dominance is one. Birds often choose height because of escape/avoidance when force is applied. Birds just also like to perch high as a natural behavior and may refuse to step down from heights because where they are is more positively reinforcing than what you are offering.
Some terms to research are:
Operant conditioning and classical conditioning
ABCs of Behavior (Antecedent, Consequence, Behavior)
The four quadrants of operant conditioning
Positive Reinforcement
For more behavioral knowledge you can follow the work of these people. Many have YouTube channels, livestream on Facebook, write articles, have published articles, run podcasts, and more.
Barbara Heidenrich of Good Bird Inc.
Lara Joseph of the Animal Behavior Center
Dr. Susan Friedman, Ph.D. of Behavior Works
Hillary Hanke of Avian Behavior International
If you ever feel you are to the point where you need serious professional help contact an IAABC Certified Parrot Behavior Consultant. There are many people who aren’t accredited that charge for services. Be wary of this. Some do have working knowledge and experience, but the majority of small time people doing so don’t. Please don’t be fooled into giving these people your money. Spend it wisely with someone that can give you the advice you need to see results.
www.iaabc.org
ENRICHMENT
It is important to provide stimulating and engaging enrichment for the individual bird you have. There are many great toy companies out there. We will list a few that specialize in selling bird toys. It is also fairly easy to save money by providing DIY enrichment in the form of making your own toys and providing foraging boxes. If you own power tools, for larger birds you can buy untreated boards at Lowe’s or Home Depot to cut and drill. Stainless steel chains and quick links can be bought from Amazon that will last a lifetime. Foraging boxes can easily be made with cardboard boxes, stuffed with shredded paper and bits of wood to chew, and treats to keep them occupied!
Bonka Bird Toys
8 Beaks
Noah’s Ark And Novelty
The Leather Elves
Wacky Wings Bird Toys
Royal Avian Specialties
There are many great small businesses on Etsy as well! It is important to understand that no toy is 100% safe. Always monitor how your birds interact with toys and supervise if needed. Take them away when they become damaged to the point of becoming dangerous.
HUSBANDRY
It is important to provide proper husbandry for your bird to ensure they receive adequate care and live a long happy, healthy life.
Clean, potable water is a must daily. Be sure to change their water whenever you see it is soiled. Provide new food daily as well. We do not recommend free feeding large portions. Only offer what will be consumed within a day’s time so that it does not become contaminated. If feeding fresh/cooked foods, feed small portions that they will consume within a few hours. Don’t leave food in cages to spoil. Over feeding can result in excessive weight gain in birds. When offered large portions birds tend to pick out what they want versus trying a little bit of everything.
Make sure to offer a variety of different perches of different diameters. Real wood perches are the best that you can offer to your birds. Dowels, concrete, and pvc are okay but should only be used in conjunction with real wooden perches. We love to cut our own! Crepe Myrtle is a favorite here.
Cages should be an adequate size for the species being kept and for the amount of birds being kept. This varies by who you are talking to. Our mindset is buy the biggest you can possibly afford and make sure that the bird can move freely within the cage. We understand that not everyone can afford huge walk-in aviaries. That’s okay! You should also take into consideration how long your bird may be caged daily and how much out of the cage time it will receive. These are factors in deciding cage size. If you would like recommendations on caging, especially affordable caging, please feel free to reach out.
Cages should be cleaned weekly at least. You can definitely clean more frequently if you feel it’s necessary. We use just dawn dish soap, water and elbow grease. Wetting stuck on poop, letting it sit for a little bit, and coming back often does the trick. A spray bottle of water can help with this. We use newspapers to line cages. We caution against using puppy pads because many have things added to them to get dogs to pee on them. If you want to use something similar opt for adult underpads. They’re a lot cheaper too. We also caution against corn cob bedding because of crop impaction and aspergillosis. If you can, a power washer is a great investment for cleaning cages. Electric power washers are quite affordable.
HEALTH & DANGERS
Many things that can be found in a normal household can be dangerous for pet birds. Birds have delicate respiratory systems. When you decide to bring a bird into your life you may have to make choices to remove things from your home and change the way you do things.
Here are some things to consider:
Teflon/Non-stick/PTFE/PFOA coated pans release toxic fumes that can kill birds when heated to a minimum temperature of 396 degrees Fahrenheit. Many think the pans have to be burnt. This is not true. Many appliances often contain these things as well.
Using the self cleaning feature on ovens can kill birds. The ovens reach extremely hot temperatures and essentially turn the stuck on food particles to ash. This releases a lot of gases and fumes as well.
Aerosols like air fresheners, sprays and many cleaning products can be dangerous when used directly around birds. If you are cleaning and using products, move your bird out of the room. Even natural cleaners in spray and aerosol form are dangerous. They can coat the lungs and cause respiratory distress and failure. A safer way of cleaning is using diluted products in buckets with water or spraying into a rag first instead of on whatever you’re cleaning. We still use bleach, pinesol, windex, and some other cleaners but we do so carefully and cautiously.
Candles, wax warmers, plugins are dangerous directly around birds. If you have a large house where a bird is away from these things you could still potentially use them. We like to use essential oil diffusers with natural peppermint, cinnamon, and orange oil.
The kitchen is not a safe place for birds to be when cooking. Cooking foods releases fumes and smoke. Hot pans and pots of boiling water and liquids can be extremely dangerous.
Ceiling fans are a hazard. Open doors and windows are hazards. Glasses of drink, sinks of water, fish tanks and open toilets are hazards. It’s important to get into a routine about these things. Especially if there is more than one human in the household too.
Other animals in the household can be dangerous, including other birds. Be mindful of this. Dogs and cats do not play well with birds and should never be left unsupervised. Birds of vastly varying sizes should never be left alone unsupervised.
Wires and cords can be hazards.
Tomato leaves, vines and stems are toxic. Avocados are toxic.
Fruit pits are toxic if many are consumed.
Many houseplants are toxic. Please do your research on houseplants if you keep any near birds.
Chocolate should not be fed. Milk chocolate would probably not cause issues in moderation, but it’s just not worth the risk. Dark chocolate is much more risky. It’s not healthy for them either. Dairy is not healthy for them because of the lactose that birds can’t digest. Yogurt and hard cheese don’t contain lactose so are okay in moderation, but there are honestly better things to feed. Many other dietary items are also touted as toxic but are fine in moderation like garlic, celery, tomatoes, and peanuts. Please do in-depth research before taking something as fact.
Birds often hide illness very well and can get sick just like us. If something is off it is important to make a visit with a Board Certified Avian Veterinarian as soon as possible. Regular check ups are a good idea as well.
You can find a Board Certified Avian Veterinarian by looking at this website:
https://abvp.com/animal-owners/find-an-abvp-specialist/