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Help Your Bird Beat The Heat

Keep your animals cool.

This heat wave has been brutal, on both human and animal alike. What a way to kick off the 2008 summer!
I know that, at least in my neck of the woods, we’ve been sweating it out for a couple weeks now. I am
so thankful for my air conditioning. Hot weather always causes me to come up with alternatives to keeping
my pets cool. What are some alternative options to good, reliable, air conditioning, that I could use in
case (goodness forbid) it went out?

For your indoor birds, you have a couple options.

- Ice cubes in the water. Quick easy way to give your bird access to something cool

- Feed some frozen veggies. You can run a bag of organic frozen veggies under hot water for a minute or less to slightly unthaw, and then place in your birds cage. A great treat, easy to make, and will help beat the heat.

- Save your empty 2 liter bottles of pop. Fill with water and store in the freezer. If you need heat relief in a pinch, take the bottles and put them in front of a fan. Fan will blow cold air off the bottle and help cool
the area down.

- Spray your bird with cool water. Tried and true, a quick fix for a hot day.

For birds that are located outside in aviaries or cages:

- make sure the birds have protection from the direct sun. Fixing a tarp over the cage/aviary will help
ward off direct rays.

- make sure the birds have plenty of access to water

- If your bird is in an outdoor cage, try and keep the cage off of concrete. Concrete reflects heat back and
can really contribute to the heat factor in an immediate area.

- Ice in the water, as mentioned above.

- Use common sense.

Never attempt to apply sun block to your bird. If you are worried about how your bird takes the heat, don’t
push the limits. Birds can adapt to heat better then they can handle the cold, but heat can still kill. If your
heat wave is extreme and you are without a way of cooling your house down, consider taking your birds on a trip to a friends house, perhaps a local pet store, or someplace that you and your pets can safely escape the hot temperatures.

Bird Cages, Bird Toys & Perches

One of the first things I evaluate with a problem bird is their cage. Where it is located, size, shape, and how it is set up. Many behavior problems can be attributed to having your parrot in improper surroundings. Their cage should be a safe haven for them with plenty of things to keep them busy.

Type of Cage

A good cage should be easy to keep clean, and it should not be round. The bar spacing should be appropriate for the type of bird that is housed in it. Whether or not you have a play top or a dome top is up to you. One of the best gifts you can give yourself and your parrot is a top of the line cage. When you skimp on a cage you just end up replacing it again and again. Do your research and get a cage that will last the lifetime of your parrot.

Placement

The cage should be placed in an area where you are sure your parrot will be able to view his surroundings safely without feeling threatened. You do not want to place a parrot directly in front of a window or in the center of a room. Our first response is to assume that they would enjoy the outside view or being right in the middle of a room so they can see everything. The truth is that this type of placement may be fine while your parrot is young. But once your parrot becomes sexually mature and aware that it is a prey animal, this type of placement will cause extreme stress upon him. Knowing this, a parrot should be placed against a solid wall, if this is not possible then the back half of the cage should be covered at all times. This will give him the sense of security that is needed.

Parrots do not live out in the open in the wild. They build nests inside of trees or in dense forest areas. So they may live and raise young safely. Therefore we should try to mock this type of environment by placing the cage in a more indiscreet area or our homes. One where they can take pleasure in their surroundings and not feel threatened. You will need also to consider your parrots sleep requirements. Does the placement of the cage allow for the proper amounts of undisturbed quite darkness? If not do you have a sleeping cage in another room? Sleep deprivation is a problem with many parrots I see. So if your parrot is not receiving at least ten to twelve hours of rest each night you will need to re evaluate his cage placement.

Do’s and dont’s for cage placement

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Don’t place directly in front of a window
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Don’t place in center of a room
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Don’t place right on the edge of a doorway
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Don’t place next to the TV that is watched late into the niter.
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Don’t place in the kitchen because of toxic fumes
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Don’t place in an unfinished basement
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Don’t place in a utility room
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Don’t place in the garage
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Don’t place them in your bedroom

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Do place them in a corner of the family room with a sleeping cage in another room
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Do place them in a frequently used office or sitting room
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Do have a bird room if you have multiple birds
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Do place in an alcove or visible dining room
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Do place them against a wall
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Do place them so they have a view of the entire room without putting them as a focal point.
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You want your parrot to be able to observe his environment so he learns to trust his surroundings.

Perches

There should be three different size perches in the cage. These perches should also different textures with at least one of the perches being a rope or Booda perch. The rope perch should be the one that is placed at the highest point for sleeping. Place this perch in a U shape in an upper back corner of the cage. This is especially important if you have a feather picker. It gives a sense of safety to the parrot, plus if they turn to pick, the rope is right there and they will opt to shred that.

The other two perches should be wood or one wood one of a different texture of choice. I would also like to add that there does not have to be perches in front of every food dish. We tend to make life just a little too easy for these busy birds. Make them work a little.

Cage Set up

Three different perches with the main wood one going horizontally across the middle. The rope perch should be in a U shape in an upper back corner. The third should be place just inside of the door so that when the door is opened the perch is brought out of the cage. By doing this you do not have to reach into the cage for step up commands that may be refused. When you want your parrot to come out you have him come down to this perch first, open the door once he is on it and request the step up. This is a must if your bird has aggression issues.

Toys

Now it is time to add the toys. You should have at least three working toys in the cage at all times. Working toys are toys that make them work for their treats or favored foods. The other toys should be things that are easily shredded such as soft wood, paper, and leather, preferably all of the above. Good toys have many different shapes and textures for the bird to explore and destroy. Your parrot should have a minimum of ten toys in his cage at all time. You should not be able to see the parrot easily when he is in his cage. This is his home and he should feel camouflaged as he would if he was in the wild.

Place one of the working toys in front of the U shape perch, with the other working toy towards the front of the opposite corner. Place one of the other toys directly on the side of the U perch so that perch is surrounded by hanging toys. This allows your parrot a hiding place to feel secure. Now take paper towels, shredders, newspaper, leather, or brown paper bags and fold them up and weave into the cage bars making a little square section on the side and to the back of the U perch. Again this gives a sense of security to the parrot. Plus if you have a feather picker it gives them another option to chew instead of their feathers.

Parrot Perches

Parrots when roosting in the wild are heard but rarely seen. They hide in the treetops away from the eyes of predators. When people walk up to your bird’s cage, you want to hear ? ?where’s the bird?? A parrot in captivity does not know that their natural predators cannot get to them in your home, so we need to provide them with the ability to hide or camouflage themselves within their home.

Parrots on display with few items to hide behind will develop behavior problems such as feather destruction, biting, and screaming as a result of feeling insecure.

Weave paper products and shredding toys in the cage bars and around the upper back corner where the rope perch extends

Three perches of diverse size thickness and texture (at the minimum) are required to stimulate and exercise your bird’s feet. The main perch should be a hardwood dowel or Manzanita running horizontally, in the middle of the cage. Perch two, a rope or Booda ?U- shaped? perch for sleeping should be placed in the upper third of the cage near a privacy corner. Beyond offering a sense of security, the rope provides a shredding alternative to feather pickers.

Introduce a third texture for perch three. Sandy, concrete, Plexy-glass; diversity is important here. Unless birds are in flight, they are on their feet. Humans will shift posture while standing to seek comfort. Bird’s feet must consistently be challenged for foot health. Nature doesn’t make life easy for prey birds, you needn’t either. Making the birds work for food keeps them challenged. Perches don’t have to be placed by food dishes. More perches provide more ?challenging? opportunities

Often over looked but essential is the cage door perch. A bird ?coming to you? on a perched fastened to the inside of the cage door, encourages the bird to come to the door perch before opening the door. With the bird on the door perch, open the door ? say, ?Step ? Up? while extending a firm hand. This allows you to retrieve your feathered companion from their cage without entering their territory.

Bringing branches from the backyard may seem practical and economical, but harmful parasites and other menaces may unknowingly be brought in as well. Woods such as Apricot, Cherry, Peach, Prune, Plum or Nectarine belong to the Prunes species, and contain cyanogenia glycosides, which releases cyanide if ingested.

Apple, Arbutus, Ash, Aspen, Beech, Cottonwood, Crabapple, Dogwood, Elm, Fir, Hawthorn, Larch, Magnolia, Mulberry, Pear, Pine Poplar, Redwood Sequoia and Willow are safe but must be introduced with caution. Branches should be boiled to kill any parasites before installing in a cage

Suggested perches, for various birds (perch diameter sizing.)

Suggested perch diameter sizing. It’s OK to go a little smaller or larger. Basically don’t get perch a bird too large that a bird’s foot can’t grab comfortably and may cause a bird to fall. Conversely too small a diameter may allow a birds foot to wrap all the way around and cause pain or injury to it’s own foot.

• Smaller birds like Finches or Canaries: 3/8 to 1/2 inch
• Small birds like Budgies: 1/2 to 5/8 inch
• Small Conures and Cockatiels: 3/4 inch
• Larger Conures and smaller Amazons: 3/4 to 1 inch
• African Greys and most Amazons and some smaller Macaws: 1 inch
  to 1 1/2 inches
• Large birds like Cockatoo or medium Macaws: 2 to 2 1/2 inches
• Large Macaws like Hyacinths: 2 1/2 inches or more

Hardwoods - Most cages come with at least one hardwood dowel perch. An additional hardwood should be introduced such as Dragonwood or Manzanita Perches. These woods offer not only durability but usually have uneven surfaces with knurls and knots. The varying diameter of these branches cause the birds feet to constantly adjust, thus providing needed exercise.

Rope can be in the form of a perch you attach to you cage like booda perchs. It can also be just rope. You can attach rope with w simple knot (never tie knots in chain please) It’s soft on a birds feet and also gives them something to tear up with their beaks

Concrete, Sand, Terra-Cotta can help nails and beak trimmed you feathered friends nails and beak trimmed. Your bird will scrape it’s beak much like rubbing a knife blade against a sharpening stone. The feet should be able to not completely wrap around the perch so nails are dragged over the rough surface keep them from getting sharp. Some perches are actually made of concrete but we prefer Sandy perches for their abrasive surface and manzanita core. The natural wood core gives the perch a more nature feel. They won’t necessarily let you skip nail trimming but can keep points blunt

PVC is found in everything from the dash of your car to vinyl windows and no wonder. It’s resistant to scratches, temperature change and will take just about any abuse. a perfect material for parrots! It’s also pretty easy to clean because of the non-porous surface. The drawback to the smooth surface of PVC is that a bird may literally slip off. It’s not uncommon to get a new PVC accessory and see this occur which can be cured by simply rubbing emery or small grit sand paper along the length of the perch. If your looking for a PVC product to perch you bird on check our or line of Ortho Bird