Umbrella Cockatoo

Breakfast time!  There are four macaws, four cockatoos, three parakeets, two cockatiels, one congo african grey, a swainson’s toucan and a quaker waiting patiently for their breakfast every morning.  On the menu today is fruit pasta blend, fresh broccoli, beets, sweet potato, and kale.

Breakfast time is always one of my favorite parts of the day.  I really enjoy the preparation of foods and I love seeing the birds watching everything I do in anticipation of their first meal.  I often let one of the birds be my “helper” for the morning. This day it was Linus, and he “helped” himself to the corn that was actually on the dinner menu.  I learned the hard way to only allow one bird to “help” at a time and to never let my quaker, Libby, the resident bowl flipper, “help” from anywhere but my shoulder.

Blue and Gold Macaws

As much fun as I have in the morning, the kitchen can be a dangerous place.  Hot stovetops, boiling water and sharp knives are often present and create all kinds of potential for accidents.  It’s a good idea not to allow your birds into the kitchen when you have the stove on or have open pots of water boiling. Always be aware of birds toes when you are chopping and don’t leave your sharp knife available as a toy.  My “helper” is often unwilling to sit patiently by while I am chopping and filling bowls, so I have to be very vigilant and careful.

Blue throated macaw

I always try to serve a variety of foods and I cut them up differently everyday to keep it interesting for them.  I try to serve an orange vegetable and dark leafy greens everyday because they are so high in nutrients. I also try to feed favorite foods later in the day.  This way, I am more likely to get them to eat, or at least try, the foods that are in their bowl in the morning when they are the most hungry.  It’s a good strategy for ensuring a nutritional balance.

A couple of my birds are very finicky eaters and sometimes I have to be clever to get new foods into them.  Here are a few tips for getting your picky eaters to try new foods:

• Make food fun! Placing food around the cage, woven or wedged into the cage bars, strung onto skewers, or tossed in whole is a good way to get them playing with their food, which is often the first step to eating it.  Try buying a stalk of Brussel sprouts, a head of cauliflower, or a green pepper and letting them have a ball.
• Make foraging toys out of foods. Try putting nuts into a halved head of cabbage or beneath the leaves of an artichoke (with the pointy parts snipped off).
• If they don’t like it raw, try steaming it and serving it warm. This worked well with Linus, my umbrella, cockatoo.  It was what started the ball rolling and he will now eat his veggies raw as well.

Camelot Macaw

These are ways to let your bird find out that something unidentifiable might be a food.  Unlike a dog, a hungry bird will stay hungry before it will eat something it doesn’t like or recognize.  Eating fresh foods is the most natural thing in the world for your parrot and it should be considered the most important part of her diet.  If you have some picky eaters like I do, give them a fighting chance for a healthy life.  Use your imagination, have fun, and show your parrot the variety that’s available to them.

Military Macaw

Meet “Cash”. He is a 5 year old military macaw who was clipped before properly learning to fledge (fly at a young age). When we got him 4.5 years ago, he came to us at just 6 months old and we immediately let his wings grow out in the hopes to teach him to fly properly.

Letting wings grow out on a bird can take a long time, and usually takes almost an entire molt so that the feathers fall out naturally and re-grow back in. This can be anywhere from 6 months to a year long, and usually that time frame goes down the smaller the bird.

Cash stayed with a friend of ours who was interested in getting a military macaw herself. I offered to let her bird sit Cash for free instead – to see what a military macaw is really like. After 5 months, Cash came back to me from Missi’s house and Missi got over wanting a military macaw… hehe… however, he also came back clipped from Missi. She had clipped 5 primary feathers on each wing to make it so that Cash couldn’t get to her smaller birds faster than she could.

Military Macaw

Although we joke that Cash “flies like a rock” because he can’t get any lift under his wings from lack of feathers being there, with a little help from some outside wind, Cash CAN fly!

Most people take their clipped birds outside because they THINK they can’t fly because they’re clipped. They may not be able to get very far inside the house, but outside with outside elements, they can go as far as the wind will take them.

It’s MUCH more dangerous to take a clipped bird outside (free of a harness or any restraint) than a fully flighted bird. The reason being, a clipped bird can’t maneuver as well and has an immediate handicap against predators in your area. A fully flighted bird can at least get away and have a better chance at using predator avoidance skills because it’s feathers are fully intact.

Most pet parrots have a problem going outside because they aren’t desensitized to outside things like noises, wind, people, cars, and everything else you encounter outside that could spook a bird unused to it. Once spooked, that pet bird will immediately ascend higher… and higher… and HIGHER. And because it never learned how to descend (the hardest skill to learn) and it knows nothing about flying in wind, it ends up far, far away from the owner which it probably never intended. It just didn’t know how to COME BACK TO YOU. It was never taught!

Check out this video of Zoey, a blue throated macaw, taking her very first exploratory flight and notice how high she goes!

Because Zoey was taught how to descend and all the other necessary skills for a good and solid recall, she was able to figure out the wind (it’s windier the higher you go up) and come back down to Jeanne, her owner. Think about the disadvantage an untrained, clipped bird is at in this situation.

If you want to take your bird outside untethered, you CAN, by joining the Freestyle Flyer’s Club and getting one on one personal coaching from professional bird trainer Dave Womach. To find out more about this elite club and how you can learn to train your own bird for freeflight, simply email info@birdtricks.com to find out more.

Now I do want to point out that Cash was trained at this location among others when he was fully flighted. Here is a picture of him flying at this exact location months ago with us:

Military Macaw

You can see more of his freeflight photos here.

Rose Breasted Cockatoo

I was looking through you tube videos and came across the title Funny Biting Parrot.  I thought to myself: what can possibly be funny about a biting parrot? and I watched the video.  I did find it funny.

When you watch the video, there are a few clues that tell you this is not aggression, but a game between parrot and owner.  First, the owner is encouraging the bird  and  is clearly unafraid of a serious bite.  Secondly, there is no aggressive body language in the bird – just the lunge to connect with the owner with no intention of inflicting harm.  And thirdly, no one in their right mind puts a truly aggressive bird in a well traveled area of the house leaving only a foot of clearance.  Is it a good idea to encourage a game like this?  Maybe not, but different parrots will find different ways to play.

When I come home from work, one of the first thing I do is collect and clean bowls from the cages.  It never fails that when I am bent over reaching my arm into the cockatiels cage to get their bowl in the back of the cage, my quaker comes charging across the top of their cage, straight at my face.  When she arrives within a fraction of an inch, she throws her wings out, gives a loud call, turns, and runs away laughing.  Anyone witnessing this from behind would expect to see me missing an eye when I turned around.  This is hilarious good fun to her, and me.

Blue and Gold Macaws

A friend of mine tells me her scarlet macaw routinely engages her boyfriend a mock “attack” when he comes to visit.  He is barely inside the door when Georgia runs to him and pecks furiously, but harmlessly, at his calf.  Then she runs away, screeching, down the hallway. This is Georgia’s way of initiating play with him.  For the next 30 minutes or so, they are chasing each other all over the house.  Then he realizes he has yet to say hello to his girlfriend.

Linus, my umbrella cockatoo, is wonderful when it comes to independent play.  He can, and does, entertain himself for hours on end in his cage.  There are times I open his door and he prefers to remain inside with a favorite toy.  I would not like to be reincarnated as one of his parrot toys.  He can be brutal with them.  He yanks, bites, and batters his toys with everything he’s got.  Sometimes he just stands there and yells at them.  But yet he loves them, sleeps next to them, and sometimes just quietly watches them.  It his own style of play.  A co-worker, after observing a particularly loud and rowdy play session asked me:  “You don’t ever let him out, right??”  I laughed, but could fully understand why she would fear for my safety.  He did look like the embodiment of evil that day.

Blue throated macaws

When you think about the way young parrots play, or any animal for that matter, there is a lot of rough housing going on.  Rolling, biting, growling – all in the name of good fun.  Mutual trust between the two players allows it to be unthreatening.  If one player goes too far, the other quickly lets him know and boundaries are established.  Bonds between humans and animals are maintained the same way.  Many people have accumulated such trust with their parrots that they can do nearly anything with them.  One friend can hold her cockatoo’s feet in one hand and swing her around in huge circles.  This is a favorite game.  Another friend will sneak up on her parrots and yell: “BOO!”.  Of course, they fly off in every direction in an uproar, but then they return to the same spot to do it all over again.

It is bonding and trust that make it understood that these are not acts of aggression, whether the instigator is human or parrot.

Congo African Grey Parrot

I was listening to the Ask The Bird Experts weekly webcast the other night.  Liz Wilson was speaking about how little we actually know about parrots.  After so much research has been done about parrots in the wild, there are very few questions that can be answered with absolute certainty.

I have complained in past posts about the fact that there isn’t a formulated diet that can duplicate a parrot’s natural one.  This is because we really don’t know what they eat.  A field researcher can spend months observing the foraging habits of a certain species and come up with diddly for his efforts.  He can see which foods are selected, but when a parrot’s beak is done with it, the remains are hard to inspect.  We don’t know what layers on the food are being sought after, which are being eaten, or how much is actually ingested.  For instance,  in fruits and veggies, the layer nearest the outer rind or skin is usually the highest in nutrients.  But we don’t know if that is what the parrot went after, we can only guess because that makes sense.  After a parrot decimates and scatters it’s food, it is nearly impossible to analyze what or how much has been eaten.  The bird, of course, is long gone…to somewhere.

Sun Conures

That is another dead end.  We really don’t know where many of the species live or roost.  Liz  made a really good point in that in South America, the macaws have been observed at the clay licks for years.  We know that they go there – for about 15 minutes a day.  After that they vanish into the canopies and are lost to us.  I remember doing my research in cockatoos years ago.  I was shocked at how little information about their wild habitats was available then, and there is not much more known now.

Avian medicine forges on.  There have been some huge advances over the years.  One of the most exciting is research in PDD (Proventricular Dialation Disease).  A couple of years ago, a veterinarian at Texas A&M isolated a brain enzyme in parrots with PDD, making it possible to detect the disease with a simple blood test instead of a very invasive crop biopsy.  To my knowledge, though, this test is not yet available, but it is a very hopeful sign of things to come.

Galah

As parrots rise in popularity all over the world, now the third most popular household “pet”, the need for information increases. Half of me hopes that this elusive wild parrot will find a way to remain hidden from humans, the other half wants to know more to benefit the parrots in my living room.

Mazuri Toucan Pellets

What are pellets?

Pellets are a formulated diet for our parrots, much like the kibbles our dogs and cats are given, but specific to the needs of parrots.  They contain grains, seeds, vegetables, fruits and proteins with added vitamins and minerals.  The ingredients are mixed, and then baked.  Some are made into shapes, dyes and sugar added.  Some of them contain only organic ingredients and human grade grains. None of them are complete.  We can send a man to the moon, but we can’t duplicate a parrot’s natural diet.

Which pellets do I feed my parrot?

Different species have different requirements.  A macaw needs a diet higher in fat and lower in protein, a cockatoo requires the exact opposite, though many pelleted diets will feature both a macaw and a cockatoo on its packaging indicating that it is the right food for either.  There are no species specific formulated diets on the market today, but an organic pellet is always preferable.  If your parrot has any history of liver problems, stay away from the colored pellets.

Are pellets alone enough?

Pellets should be offered in conjunction with fresh fruit and vegetables, cooked grains and pasta, tubers and legumes.  Sprouts might be the healthiest thing we can offer to our birds.  A seed or grain expends its fat reserves in the process of sprouting and the end result is a living plant that offers more nutrients than just about anything else we can feed them.

I offer seed to my cockatiels as a large part of their diet, and my bigger birds are offered seeded treats, like Nutriberries.  Pellets should be used as an addition to an already great diet, in the case of some of my picky eaters, I rely on the pellets to balance out their diet when they flatly refuse to eat the good stuff I give them.

White Budgies

My parrot won’t eat pellets.

You aren’t alone.  Many people who have brought home parrots that were on seeded diets have found it very difficult to convert them to a fresh foods and pellet diet.  Upgrading them to a better quality pellet might present the same problem.  Hiding the pellets in foraging toys has been helpful in introducing the idea of them to skeptical parrots.  When a pellet is where a treat usually is, it might be sampled.

Another thing to consider is: does your parrot recognize it as food?  You might want to mix it in with the other foods that you offer to get that point across, or play games where you pretend to eat one in front of him and make a big deal about how yummy it is.  You can play the “you can’t have this, it’s mine” game.  A parrot wants anything that belongs to you.

Do I have to offer pellets?

There are a number of parrot owners I know that don’t use pellets at all.  The idea that nature doesn’t provide a pellet tree is a compelling argument.  If your parrots diet is so good and so complete that they don’t need the dietary backing of a pelleted food, then you are doing a wonderful job.  Not having a dish of pellets in all of my cages makes me nervous, personally. But, your house, your rules.

Camelot Macaws

I did a survey with a bunch of parrot owners asking them what brands they use and why.  Here are some of the responses:

*Syd (greenwing macaw) will only eat the Kaytee exact rainbow pellets, Cassie (goffins cockatoo) also. Stella (umbrella cockatoo) eats the Zupreem fruit blend. I am working on switching them all to the Zupreem natural to get away from the colors. The amazons eat the Kaytee original. Little ones wont eat pellets. Each bird, depending on size is offered from a dozen to 2 dozen pellets daily along with their veggies, seeds, and things.

*I mix one 5 lb bag of Roudybush to 50 lbs of a natural seed with no dyes. I like Roudybush because of the ingredients and nutritional value, not to mention it also contains no dyes. It tastes good too apparently…I’ve never had an issue getting a bird to try it. I’ve been researching cockatiel diets for almost two years now…and 10% pellets to 90% seed mixture with daily fresh veggies, twice weekly sprouts, and once weekly egg with cheerios or rice krispies seems to be as close to a perfect diet as you can produce in captivity for them.
I understand most people here have big parrots…but this is what I feel is the best for my little guys.

Kaytee Toucan Pellets

*I buy Zupreme Fruit and Natural and mix them. Chicken (moluccan cockatoo) refuses to eat the purple ones, Daisy (greenwing macaw) will alternate between the fruit and natural. One time she’ll eat all fruit, the next time she’ll eat all natural. I never know. My guys aren’t fans of fresh food so they get pellets so I’m sure they eat.

*I keep some pelleted food around and feed some once in a while more as a prevent emergency starvation thing here in Hurricane Country. Hagens natral or Zupreem natural, I am not a proponent of pelleted foods. Feed a fresh seed and sprout mix with chopped veggies and fruit with either some Walnuts, Almonds Pistachios or Pine nuts every day here. Scrambled eggs once or twice a week and a warm mash mix at night just as a bonding thing and to make it easier to medicate if needed. I know spoiled-well maybe a little.

Colored Parrot Pellets

Finally, I want to add that I have actually eaten a pellet.  I was motivated to do this by the smell of the Zupreem fruit blend.  They smell like Fruity Pebbles and I had to know what they tasted like.  I chose an orange one.  For my life I don’t know what they do to make them smell like that because the taste of it doesn’t correspond.  It wasn’t horrible.  It seemed fresh, but tasted bland and not at all sweet.  I wish I had another brand on hand to compare it to at that time because I don’t know if whatever struck me to do that then will ever strike me again.

Here at BirdTricks.com we recommend an organic parrot pellet called Feed Your Flock.

It is obviously important not to let your parrot’s nails get overgrown. If they are too long, the have a higher likelihood of getting broken and are sharper which would cause anyone holding the bird discomfort. Some people freefly their parrots or have them in particularly natural environments so they don’t cut the nails but I would say they are the exception to the rule.

Given that your parrot lives in a cage at home, it is understandable that it is not exposed to the natural claw cutting things it would encounter in the wild. Naturally the nails keep growing to compensate for the rate at which they are used. At home they are not used, so they become overgrown. Since we live in unnatural environments and use tools/helping devices for different things we have to cut our own nails and our companion parrot’s.

There are basically three ways to keep a parrot’s nails trimmed:

1) Cut them with a nail clipper

2) File them with a nail file

3) Provide filing perches

I use all three of these and highly recommend that you use all of these methods. I would like to describe the benefits of each of these.

The advantage to cutting the nails is that it is relatively quick and leaves a clean cut. The end of the nails is very blunt and it takes a longer time for the nails to grow back from this stage. The downside is that it is a dangerous/stressful process. If cut incorrectly, the bird can bleed to death so it is important that you have a vet or bird expert do this.

To prolong the benefit of the cut nails, I file my bird’s nails every few weeks. By doing this, I can stretch visits to the vet or bird store from once every two to once every three months. I would have to file the parrot’s nails every other day if I wanted to avoid having to get them cut altogether but it is difficult to find the time to do that. So instead, I just blunt out the tips every so often. By holding my bird for nail filing every so often, it makes her more used to the process and better behaved at the store when she gets trimmed.

The disadvantage to nail filing is that it is a lot of work for a little benefit. One filing session takes as long as one nail cutting session because each toenail has to be individually worked on. But unlike the cut, the amount of nail scaled back is barely noticeable. The other problem with filing is that even if the nails are kept short, they end up getting sharper and sharper. A cut every now and then helps to keep the nails blunt and not cut your hands when your bird is on them.

Finally, I provide my parrot with natural branches with bark and filing perches to keep the nails trimmed. Unfortunately, this does not seem to help that much. It does help me prolong the duration between visits to four months because filing and perches take about a month off out of every four but it is not enough by itself. Also the filing perches seem to make my bird’s nails sharper while keeping them shorter. This forces me to have to file them by hand every so often to dull the points. However, because filing only takes a little bit off at a time, it doesn’t take long for the nails to get sharp again.

Even if I cut the nails myself, I still find benefit in taking the parrot by the bird store every quarter. At the bird store I bought Kili from, the women that runs it is quite expert in birds. It is reassuring to me to have an outside expert take a look at my bird for a quick assessment. Vet checks are very expensive and in my experiences, general veterinarians aren’t very proficient with birds. An exclusively bird veterinarian is very hard to come by. But by bringing the parrot by the store every so often, I can have an unbiased glance over health inspection, nail trimming, and beak trim all in one.

So what I recommend is to have your bird’s nails cut but to use filing perches and manually file them in order to prolong the duration between required cuts. Following these steps will help ensure your own comfort and bird’s safety.