It seems to be the tendency of parrot owners to overfeed their birds.  Obesity is a serious issue with many companion parrots.  Wild parrots often have to fly many miles to reach a food source each day.  Ours get room service, often followed by a nap.  As wonderful as that life might sound, the combination of too much food and too little activity in unhealthy for our birds.

How much should I feed my bird?

This is a complicated question because there is no single right answer.  Different sized birds of different species consume different amounts.  When you factor in the individual bird’s likes and dislikes, there are a lot of variables.  I think the best way to gauge how much you should feed your bird is watching how much he is eating and discarding.  If he is maintaining a good weight for his size and is in good general health you are on the right track.  This can be difficult if you house more that one bird per cage.  It’s hard to be certain who’s eating what.

Some people like to measure their bird’s food.  This method might work for them, but it doesn’t for me.  Linus, my picky umbrella cockatoo, likes his food cut differently every day.  It’s one way I am able to keep him interested in fresh foods.  Some days I prepare his foods finely chopped, other days, I serve it in chunks.  Since minced foods pack more tightly into a measuring cup, he would receive much more food on those days than the days that I chop coarsely.

Some people, especially those who have their birds on food management for training purposes, prefer to weigh the amount of food offered.  This is a far more accurate measure because food weighs the same no matter how it’s prepared.  Another method used is weighing the bird before and after feeding to know exactly what has been eaten.  As long as the bird is thriving, they can be satisfied with the diet.

Personally, I eyeball it.  I don’t weigh or measure.  I base the portion I offer on what the bird actually eats vs his overall weight and good health.  This works for me.

When should I feed my bird?

Wild birds go out in search of their first meal at daybreak.  They spend the late morning and early afternoon hours preening, playing, napping and bathing.  In the late afternoon, they feed again and then return to the roost for the night.  If we want to mimic nature, which we do, this is your answer.

Unfortunately, human schedules don’t usually coincide with nature.  While my birds usually get their breakfast around the same time every day, they get their second meal when I get home from work.  Because I work different hours each day, that meal comes at different times.  My birds are very flexible with this.  Two meals, when it best fits into your routine, is fine.

What foods to feed when:

Along with fresh, clean water and pellets, which are given freely to Linus because of his iffy eating  habits and in lesser amounts to my birds with healthier appetites, usually in foraging toys, a typical day’s menu might look something like this:

• Morning meal:  broccoli, carrots, sprouts and papaya or perhaps legumes, butternut squash and apple
• Evening meal:  warm brown rice or cooked quinoa with chopped kale or collard, mustard or turnip greens mixed in
• Snack:  bananas or grapes, nuts, millet or nutriberries.  Some of my birds like warm sweet potato as a snack which makes me very happy!

Some people prefer to serve mash diets which include small portions of all the major foods groups combined.  Some people serve only one of a different fruit and veggies every day.  Others offer a chop diet containing smaller amounts of a huge variety of fresh foods and grains. ALL of these diets are great and keep a parrot healthy and happy.

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The cutest things on the planet may very well be (and not necessarily in this order): a baby cracking up laughing, kittens doing just about anything, and birds playing.  Some of the very best memories I have of my birds are of them playing, especially when it involves me.  There’s something so precious about watching the determination of a 100 gram bird tug on something twice its size, and the lengths they will go to to accomplish an nearly impossible task.  I am always on the lookout for things that will peak the curiosity of a nosy bird to inspire play.

Here are some things you can make quickly and inexpensively that can change and grow with your imagination, all of which work best with your involvement:

1.  Birdie tunnel (budgies/finches):
You can make this simple toy from a cardboard paper towel roll and two shoeboxes.  Remove the lids from the shoeboxes and place them open side up.  Cut a hole in one short side of each box just large enough for an end of the paper towel roll to fit through.  Connect all the pieces together with the paper towel roll in the center.  It will look like a dumbbell when you’re through.
I have a friend with 3 little budgies that spent hours with this toy.  Eventually she raised the height of the tube to the top of the box and created ramps and steps and climbing ropes for her budgies to reach it.  They went to great lengths to get to that tunnel,  they’d race through and start again from the other side.

2.  Birdie Maze:
Thesecan be both fun and interesting for your bird.  If you have smaller birds, budgies to conures, the  walls to the maze are easily constructed from Legos.  At first make the maze more of a winding tunnel and coax him through it with treats.  As he gets better at finding his way, make dead ends and false passageways that cause him to have to evaluate his moves.  If your bird is a cheater, and flies to the top of the wall to find his way, you can cover the top with a towel if he feels comfortable with that.
For the larger bird, you will need taller, more sturdy walls.  You’d have to have A LOT of Legos.  My daughter’s umbrella cockatoo, Abu, actually taught me this game while I was packing for a move.  She created her own maze from the cartons that were slowly overtaking the living room.  She had a ball.  I told a friend about Abu’s game.  This guy had the largest record collection I had ever seen and he used the milk crates he stored his albums in to create a maze for his amazon.  Last I had heard from him, he had still not returned his record collection to it’s original spot.  This game might not work well for some macaws because their tail is always dawdling two feet behind them.
3.  Play Mat:
What bird doesn’t have the time of his life trying to remove the buttons from your clothing?  Or trying to disassemble your jewelry?  The play mat offers all of those opportunities and more…
Take an old blanket and sew beads, buttons, bows and bells to it.  Or you could be a rebel, and use things that don’t start with a “B”.  You could use a towel and sew on plastic rings, keys, leather strips with beads, wooden cutouts and pretty much anything else you can think of that your bird would enjoy.  The fun for the birds seems to be in tugging on the items, just like the buttons on your shirt.  When you are done playing it folds right up for storage.  If  it becomes soiled, you can put it in a lingerie bag and machine wash it, depending on the durability of the items you have sewn on.
I had made one of these for the cockatiels years ago and this post inspired me to make another. I did make one for Linus, my umbrella cockatoo, a short time after he arrived to live with me.  His efforts were spent trying to fold it back up or dragging it around behind him by one of the plastic rings. I wasn’t yet aware of what a tyrant Linus was with toys, always trying to bend them to his will and make them do things they weren’t designed to do.  He had a good time, though, and that’s the point.

4.  “Greyzilla”:
I read about this guy somewhere who made a little city out of appropriately sized Legos for his African grey and made up this game called Greyzilla.  It was the grey’s role to come along to destroy and terrorize the city and all it’s tiny, little people.  It was the human’s job to portray the little Lego people running from Greyzilla and begging for their lives.  As Greyzilla crashed his way through town, he showed little mercy for the Lego-ites.  If I remember correctly, though, this compassionate monster tried to reassemble the city when he was through, although probably not to Legoville building code standards.  I can only imagine how much fun they must have had.

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I had two days off in a row this week!!  I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you work in retail, believe me, it’s rare.  It feels like spring break.  I intended to tackle some projects that needed tackling.  I actually tackled two.  And they were, of course, bird projects.

New cage covers were desperately needed for Linus, my umbrella cockatoo, and the cockatiels, so I moved this to the top of the to-do list.  I went to the quilting section at the fabric store and bought about 2 miles of dark broadcloth.  Linus has a really big cage.  He also has a really big beak and had shredded his cover beyond usefulness.  He has a favorite side to his cage for sleeping, and there was so little fabric remaining on that side that he recently decided to move to the other side for a good night’s sleep.  I know this because his back-end has been positioned over his water bowl all night for about a week now.  I don’t think I need to say more.  I constructed the cover and attached it to the cage using grommets and quick links.

The cockatiels.  My sweet little darlings.  The only thing worse that waking up to the horrors in Linus’s water dish is waking up to the cockatiel’s belting out a tune at 6:30am when I worked late and got to bed at 1 the night before.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love hearing their joyous little voices.  Just not then.  I made them a darker cover to encourage them to sleep a little later.

I was so excited when I went to bed last night, new cage covers in place, knowing I could sleep until I woke up rested.  Well, that was the plan, until I woke up to my alarm clock buzzing at 6:45.  Apparently, I had set it the night before out of habit.  The good news is that I did not hear a peep from the cockatiels at 6:30…if that can be construed as good news.  Oh, and by the way, I came down stairs to find that Linus had torn a hole in his new cover, right at his eye level, and every movement I made was being monitored by a blue eye ring surrounded by black cloth.  Creepy.

Today’s project was toy making for the cockatoos.  Linus was pouting this morning as if to say:  “Mom, I have nothing to do with my beak.”  I was thinking how he found something to do with it earlier that involved his new cage cover, but kept quiet.  I went to the lumber store for a pile of 2X4s and cut enough 1″ pieces to fill a 10 gallon bin.  I drilled holes into each piece so they could be strung onto chains.  I made HUGE toys for both Linus and Theo, my goffins cockatoo, who didn’t even notice the wooden behemoth in her cage.

Linus was thrilled, though, and spent most of the day transporting bitten off chunks of wood to his stainless steel pail for further processing.  I noticed about an hour ago that he has managed to give himself a black eye, something he does several times a year in the course of going to battle with his toys.  Sometimes they hit back.  He has already gone through about 7″ of wood, or the equivalent of 15 boxes of toothpicks (if I were counting, or thinking about going into that business).  I guess we both had a productive day.  Next project on the list:  Easter baskets for the cockatoos, and Easter…boxes for the little guys.

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