What To Do With Your Parrot While On Vacation
If you’re a typical person, you have to leave your home now and then, maybe for longer than a day. If you’re a typical parrot person, you worry about leaving your parrot overnight. Going away shouldn’t fill you with dread. Most parrots can take this change of routine in stride and not have a permanent melt down if you plan carefully.
When it comes to traveling, you have three options, some of which have layers of sub-options. Option 1: Leave the bird and have someone come to your home. Sub-options: The person is a professional, or the person is just someone that you know and trust. Sub-sub options: The person comes in once or twice a day, or the person stays at your home. Option 2: You board the bird. Sub-option: He stays with a professional—a vet, pet store or kennel, or he stays with someone that’s not in the bird boarding business. Option 3: You take the bird with you.
Let’s focus on him staying home. Later we’ll cover going to “camp” or coming with you.
Leaving your bird in his own environment and having a caretaker come over is probably the best idea if you plan to be gone for just a few days. You can do it for longer if you need to, but you increase the chance that your bird will get stressed and be a bit “off” when you get home. Unless he’s used to staying at different places, the familiarity of his environment is going to be more comforting. Often when it’s quiet, a parrot will just do a lot of napping. You can put the television, radio and lights on timers to help break up the monotony. The caretaker can change toys around each day to help keep things interesting. If you work away from home, your bird is already used to being alone at least part of the time, so this isn’t that much of a stretch for him to put up with.
If you’ve got a really needy bird, or you can’t stand the thought of him being lonely, consider having someone come in to do more than just fill the food and water bowls. Have the person hang out a while and get the bird out if they can. Maybe they can take their own mini-vacation and stay all night. This option is usually easiest if you’ve got family or close friends whom you don’t mind being up-close and personal with your home and all your stuff. The bird will appreciate someone around that’s not you if he knows this person, so have a “getting to know you” session or two before you leave if he’s not met them before.
We don’t know anyone crazy enough to want to stay at our place while we’re gone and we have waaaaay too many animals to even think about boarding them. We have good neighbors, but our pet situation is intense enough that our option is a no-brainer: We use a professional pet sitter who comes to our house once a day. This pet sitting service has been in business for years. They’re bonded and insured and take what they do very seriously. The service has always been reliable, and the animals do just fine.
Because we are a multi-pet home, including multiple parrots, we don’t have to worry so much about our pets getting too lonely if someone’s coming in just once a day. They may do a lot more sleeping than usual, but I’ve never had any “oh-thank-god-you’re-back-I-was-going-crazy-I-hate-you-for-leaving-me-get-away-no-please-come-back-don’t-you-dare-ever-leave-again” issues upon returning home. Food and water containers are always full, the cages are clean, and our mail is brought in as well. The staff knows the animals, and the animals know them. Hiring a professional can give you peace of mind, but it may not be cheap. On the other hand, tossing a few bucks to the teenager next door may leave you too anxious. Think of this as hiring a baby sitter and use the same care in interviewing and choosing this person. People who take their role as a pet sitter seriously are worth looking for, whether they’re professional or not.
Written By Kim Bear
Parrot Behavior Specialist
Chet’s Thoughts:
Heck, when we left our Cockatoo with the inlaws while we took a vacation, we gave them a copy of my own parrot training cousre, and when we got back they’d trained the bird a few new tricks. It made the babysitting more fun for them, and the bird got some mental stimulation in there too.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Hey, i waas surfing the web and i saw your blohg, pretty cool. May i link u from mysite?
September 27th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
What a great idea to leave the babysitter the videos! I had not even considered that until now. What a fun way for the sitter to interact with your bird and enjoy some of the fun we have with our birds.
I think Kim forgot to touch on those of us who can’t stand to leave our babies at home. My “professional” opinion is that if you do decide to take your bird with you, you better have a good way of moving them around. I, myself do not like to put a bird in one of those plastic dog or cat crates as I feel I am incarcerating the bird. I would rather put them in a well built, durable travel cage that allows your bird the ability to see its surroundings while on the road. This option gives your bird a sense of familiarity to its surrounding making it that much easier for your bird to adjust. It also helps your bird not feel shut in and locked away from you. (think interaction time)
I own a bird supply store and have found a great travel cage specifically for the travelling bird. Avian Adventures has produced the incredibly popular “Poquito - Avian Hotel” just for these times that you are away from home, yet want to take the bird with you. It has a removable playstand and perch for your bird to enjoy. Don’t be fooled though, this travel cage is extremely well built and is therefor very robust and a bit heavy when it comes to carrying it around. You can take a look at this travel cage at http://www.bird-supplies.net/poquito.htm.
If you are like me, your bird is part of the family so any time I go away on vacation, the bird comes too (unless not allowed by law and travel restrictions).
October 10th, 2007 at 7:23 am
PSP…
Nice blog you have! Unlimitted PSP downloads, games, movies, music and more. Access to the largest network on the planet at http://www.tutosearch.com/1/pspwizard.html...