Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
Foraging for a nutriberry: Galah “Bandit”

Foraging seems like a wild and time consuming idea for a lot of people, but it’s not and it is WORTH IT for your bird to build confidence. I can’t even explain how important it is for your bird not to be sitting around all day bored out of its mind. Boredom causes a huge percent of the behavior problems out there in birds today such as plucking, aggression and biting, etc…

So let’s talk about foraging for beginners, how to do it and what you need to get started today with your bird, I promise it’s EASY!

Photo by www.beadjam.com

Easy Foraging Tip #1: Non-treated pieces of wood, wooden beads, etc. (non-toxic)

Simply start your bird’s first day of foraging by placing these pieces of wood or wooden beads (or both) inside your bird’s food dish along with its pellets. The first day add a few, the next day add some more and then more and more until your bird has to go from eating around the wooden pieces to picking out the pieces in order to get to what he wants to eat.

Some birds will start playing with the pieces, or begin destroying them into small pieces which is great. That’s what you want. Make your bird work harder and harder as he has more and more beads and pieces to pull out of the dish to get to the pellets he wants to eat. Some birds may avoid them and eat around them and that’s okay too.

Photo by www.richwallerart.com

Easy Foraging Tip #2: Plain white paper.

You can either fold the paper like shown above or crumble little pieces up like this:

Have them be the same size as the wooden beads and add them into the dish as well. This will get your bird picking something up and tossing it out or shredding the paper that’s in the way of his food. You can put all different sized pieces in there and even wrap some pellets up in some of the pieces for him to see and discover.

Easy Foraging Tip #3: More white paper.

This time you’re using sheets of white paper. Take the sheet and lay it over your bird’s food dish half way or 1/4 of the way so your bird can still mostly see the food inside. By either mother nature or your bird, your bird will move the paper off of it. Do this for a few days until you can cover the bowl completely and your bird moves the paper off of its bowl to eat.

You should still have all the wooden beads and pieces of small paper inside the dish.

Easy Foraging Tip #4: Using more white paper… and a rubber band…

Place the white paper over the food bowl and this time poke a hole in the center of the paper and wrap it around the food dish so it holds a bit tightly but don’t secure it with anything.

Once your bird is examining it curiously and moving it off the food dish, then secure the paper down with a rubber band and the hole poked in the middle to try to get your bird to start from the hole and break open the rest of the paper to get to its food inside.

Easy Foraging Tip #5: Now do a little less with what ya got.

Now do the same thing with no poked hole. Just secure the paper around the food dish and don’t poke a hole, leave that part up to your bird.

Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
Foraging: Galah “Bandit”

These tips will get you started on very basic and super simple ways to get your bird to start knowing about what foraging is all about in easy steps for both of you. Once your bird has this mastered, secure down more layers of paper to make it thicker and harder for your bird to break through.

If you’re more of a video type of person, I made this pretty awesomely unorganized video demonstrating it all for you:

Have fun and get creative, the possibilities with foraging are endless!

Toco toucan Rocko is SUCH a great eater. Lately I’ve been branching out and trying new things and I’m finding it helps so much to keep a list of what my birds can eat, what is good for them and what’s better used in moderation right in my kitchen so that those items do or don’t make it on a grocery list and into their mouths later.

For Christmas our friend sent us a box full of pears, and they were PERFECTLY ripe! I stabbed a couple through a skewer for the first time ever for Rocko and he LOVED the new game of “eating the pear”. I started by holding it for him, then once he got the hang of it after I peeled some of the skin off to expose the juicy fruit, I was able to attach it right by his food dish at the perfect height for him to dig into it.

He had a blast and it let me know that I could pit the pears next time and hang them on the skewer for him again in the future. Skewers have always worked perfectly well for my toucans in the past and I love that Rocko appreciates them too.

Another thing you can do with toucans is use twine or thread of some sort and string the fruit along that, almost like Christmas-light style and weave it or hang it upon their aviaries/cages for them to eat. Since toucans can’t chew or destroy things like parrots, they are much easier to provide foraging opportunities for that won’t be of one time use!

(Always omit seeds and pits when using the skewer, this was just a test with Rocko and wasn’t left in his cage all day but if you plan on leaving it cut the fruit and take the cores out so it’s safe for your birds. Even toucans shouldn’t have seeds.)

An active bird is a healthy bird. Plain and simple.

I love trying out new recipes and for the recipes I’ve been working on for my birds, I serve it on a plate to see if they like it or not. It’s like having my own personal taste testers. If they eat it, I’ve succeeded and if they don’t well then I won’t be serving that again or I’ll be looking for ways to change it just enough to get them to eat it. So far I’ve come up with 29 successful recipes my birds love and once I know they like them, I start finding ways to make them into foraging toys.

Because feeding your bird out of a dish is one of the (second) worst things you can do (the first being clipping your bird’s wings).

That’s right. Feeding your bird out of a dish is too easy, it leaves him to be bored the rest of the day and you want your bird to be healthy and active.

This means in his cage AND out.

That’s why foraging opportunities are so important. You can make your own if you’re really broke and can’t afford any (or if you’re a genius-ly creative person too!)

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Petshops sell calcium/cuttlebone perches and toys you can easily hang in your bird’s cage. They aren’t too expensive.
• Wrap your bird’s pellets (with your bird watching you) in pieces of paper and put them throughout your bird’s cage. Have some of them be empty!
• Use a skewer to hang your bird’s favorite fruits and veggies and let it pick from it.
• Fill toys with bits of treats and pellets.

Parrots are noisy animals, that’s just fact. And although you can’t eliminate every bit of noise your bird is going to make, you CAN greatly decline how often your bird is noisy and for what reasons or lengths of time.

I was noticing that every time Dave and I went out of town for a trip whether it was for one day or 10 days, when we came back our birds were SO loud, especially in the mornings. This was not something that was common before on our two year tour, nor before that when we were often home here in Florida or on trips periodically whether with our birds or otherwise.

I started to wonder if it was because of how they were housed when we went out of town… we house everyone separately in their own cage to avoid a random fight that a bird sitter wouldn’t be able to handle on their own. It’s just safer this way. I thought maybe they wanted to be together, but the screaming continued. In the mornings they were waking up around 6:30am and screaming their heads off!

Dave and I talked it over, and as the nicer days came around (yes, even in January) I decided I wanted to be taking them flying. I thought they could use getting rid of the excess energy that might be part of their screaming lately. I started bringing them in the house to fly and be in a wider space with one another, AND I started trick training more. BOTH of these helped the screaming but still the mornings were rough.

That’s when I realized their feeding charts were way off. They were getting too much food, not enough exercise and receiving breakfast at the same time Patty would give her birds their breakfast (before she’d leave for work which sometimes can be real early). There had become an expectation to receive their breakfast bright and early and to always be full. This meant with no charting of the weight or working on recall that we couldn’t just take them out freeflying on a whim like we would normally have done on tour.

So that was it – it was back to our routine which is exactly the opposite, it’s not a routine much at all! But it’s one feeding a day and that happens around 4pm (but sometimes, 3pm, sometimes with a free flight or training session – they never know what to expect this way throughout the day). This keeps them from screaming for breakfast in the morning because they know it’s not coming until later, and it makes them MORE active in their aviaries by foraging into the grass, looking in toys and interacting with one another. Also, when we would bring them out or in to work with them on something, they were excited about it and looking forward to flying, trick training or just hanging out. They were calmer, happier and at ease again. Which was refreshing, in fact, I took Comet and Tusa out in the backyard with us and worked with them on flying across the pool a few times. Later in the day we went freeflying at a new location by our house and had a blast.

The camelot macaws along with Jinx flocked together around the yard and Bandit the rose breasted cockatoo seemed to have a ball as well.

With their new schedule, or more so back to their OLD schedule, there’s no expectation so the screaming stops and I feed them around the time the sun is going down so that when they would normally scream naturally to say goodbye to the day, it’s too late and is getting so dark that they go to their spot to sleep and that’s it.

With this type of feeding I’m giving fairly large meals at night of fresh foods and pellets in foraging toys. Sometimes I put the fresh foods in foraging toys if I choose to serve them earlier so that it takes longer, or if the days become lighter longer this way they take longer to eat and by the same time it gets dark they are still ready to sleep. Depending on the time of day and what I’m feeding depends on HOW I feed them (foraging toys, etc)

So if you’re looking for ways to make your noisy bird quiet try a different routine (your bird might object at first) with daily interactions of small treats throughout the day when you plan on handling your bird, and experiment with foraging toys so that it takes your bird a while to eat his meal (that way you have longer amounts of time of peace and quiet) you can also put in empty foraging toys too, to make your bird work even harder. The more active your bird, the healthier he is. Just think of how active he would be in the wild! I know when I’m stuffed full I just wanna lay on the couch and chill out. So if you’re like that all day you’re gonna have one serious perch potato on your hands!

Shown: Black tea (left) filling a stainless steel bowl (right)

Rocko, our toco toucan, got his iron level results back from the vet and they were 3x what they were supposed to be. So, we have him on strictly distilled water and I made a giant container full of black tea. It’s caffeine free and made with distilled water as well, for Rocko. I’ve hard of many toucan owners having a hard time getting their birds to drink the tea and in those cases I have a few recommendations…

• Put the black tea in your toucan’s pellets.

This is something toucan owners do when they’re babies and they are making their pellets soft. But this also helps keep your bird hydrated and so we have done it ever since. Even though Rocko is still a baby, we plan to wet down his pellets forever to make it easier on his digestive and to keep him hydrated as much as possible, it also makes it better to mix the pellets with fruits and things and get vitamins and minerals that we have to add to his food to “stick” to the pellets (which he already likes) making it more likely he will eat everything we give.

Simply take your bowl of pellets and fill it with the black tea and let them absorb the tea.

• Dilute it.

Simply dilute the tea if your bird isn’t drinking it OR if you are worried about discoloration of the white feathers from bathing in it (toucans love to bathe!) you can dilute it down, something is better than nothing and if it’s the only way to get your bird to drink it then so be it.

People still seem to think discipline works with birds. IT DOESN’T! Yet I’ve been teaching a person how to touch train and when they don’t get a reaction they want or when the bird looks to bite them, they – without even THINKING – immediately react to hitting the bird on the head with the target stick… WHAT?!?!

Or shouting a firm, “NO! That’s not allowed!”

I can tell you right now if I told my husband that stuff, he’d do it anyway JUST to prove a point that he CAN and I can’t tell him what to do.

Umm… sound like 100% of parrots? Do you really think your bird is going to react like a dog and feel bad for hurting you?

Sometimes, no matter how much I told someone “Stop yelling at your bird, distract it with something else.” they just wouldn’t listen and nothing is more frustrating to me than having someone ask for my help and then not take it and then COMPLAIN that whatever they are doing isn’t working. Ummm…? Maybe you should stop what you’re doing since it’s not working and listen. Kind of like the reaction you want from your bird, huh?

Many people don’t hang out with their birds because they’re destructive. I get that. I spent a lot of money on my furniture, I don’t want it ruined. But I still keep my birds out on it with me, and I keep a PILE stock full of TOYS for them, things I use to distract them with when they’re up to no good. It works like a charm! I keep a variety, things they haven’t seen before, colors and textures and everything you could think of, I also use myself. You can always click and reward your bird for just being cool and collected, not doing anything but being a sweet bird. Nothing wrong with that, everything right with that.

It seems to me people (ie: humans) have much more tolerance with kids (grandchildren and the like) than they do their birds. Well, your birds are pretty much like children.

If you look at it like that you might treat them differently, you might PREPARE to have them out and about by having things for them to do instead of yelling at them for trying to find something to do on their own that only gets them hit or yelled at or put back in their cage.

I hope I don’t sound too much like I’m ranting…

Above is my toy box I keep around the TV. We only watch TV in our den and we love to do so with our birds a bit so they can hang out and have no expectations of us or themselves to do anything. I keep lots of balls and a variety of weird things (I shop in the cat toy section for these because they’re different and only serve this single purpose) the birds are supervised with them and spend the whole time playing with them while I can calmly watch TV or chill out and talk with Dave. It’s nice, it’s peaceful and it includes them.

It’s not disciplining, it’s distracting.