Is feather plucking worse than decades ago?

Is feather plucking worse than decades ago?

NOTE: This article is a departure from my usual writing in that it is predominantly my opinion and lacks a lot of scientific evidence to back it up.

Feather plucking is something I’ve always been curious about. There isn’t much research into it and no magic bullets. But if you search the internet for it, you’ll find dozens of proposed remedies, none of which have any scientific backing.

With one exception. Here’s one study that finds a modest decrease in plucking by using environmental enrichment.

In the present study, environmental enrichment increased behavioral diversity of birds, although they continued showing feather plucking behavior. […] sometimes environmental enrichment techniques cannot completely but just reduce the display of abnormal behaviors, as such behaviors can be persistent […]

Effects of environmental enrichment in a captive pair of Golden Parakeet (Guaruba guarouba, Psittacidae) with abnormal behaviors—Ornithology Research—Sep 2015

Today

If you’ve ever worked in a shelter or with a bird rescue in recent years, the incidence of feather plucking appears to be quite high, especially with cockatoos, macaws, and african grey parrots.…

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Do we know our parrots are happy?

Do we know our parrots are happy?

I suspect most people would say their parrots are happy and cite some evidence:

  • They sing or talk
  • They play with toys or do tricks
  • They willingly interact with us and let us scratch their heads

But sometimes we mistakenly think other human beings are happy when they really aren’t. So, can we really be sure our parrots are happy?

If you love reading scientific papers like me, there’s a fascinating paper in Current Biology called “Do Birds Have the Capacity for Fun?”

Like the article, let’s start with this viral video of a raven sledding down a roof in Russia.

It’s very hard as a human to watch this and not be 100% sure this raven is having fun and is therefore, very happy. But for the sake of argument, let’s make up some other explanations for what they are doing:

  • Practicing for a sport
  • Building up strength and agility
  • Doing something their friends dared them to do
  • Working on overcoming a fear of heights

All of those sound more like human things than raven things.…

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Learn bird training from the experts

Learn bird training from the experts

Hands-on training

A couple years ago, I was fortunate to have the time and the means to visit Avian Behavior International (ABI), one of the premier bird training facilities in the world.

Hillary Hankey, the founder of ABI, working with a macaw.

It’s run by Hillary Hankey, her staff, and guest experts from other training facilities and sometimes zoos. Hillary is “a falconer, professional animal trainer, and behavior consultant.”

Her facility is in a beautiful, remote location near Escondito, CA. Pre-COVID, they offered a week long training class as well as an advanced class. Both involved classroom time learning modern bird training techniques and hands-on time trying out techniques on her extremely diverse flock of birds.

It’s also an opportunity to train non-parrot species as well as some heavily supervised interaction with birds of prey. They also have other animals such as donkeys and goats that are useful to learn training techniques.…

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Grape stems as enrichment

Grape stems as enrichment

After a protracted move to Portland (Oregon), I’m back to writing about parrots.

Unlike most of my articles, this one is entirely anecdotal, supported only by my own experience and a handful of people who I’ve told about this.

We have three cockatiels who are not big fruit eaters. So when we put out grapes one day and they dashed towards them, we were surprised.

Turned out they wanted the stems and could care less about the grapes. They LOVE grape stems. They love to shred them to bits until they are just a bunch of fibers.

They might not care about the fruit.

Given I used to have chickens that loved grape leaves, fruit, and stems, I should’ve tried them with parrots.

I brought it up to our local bird rescue and no one had ever tried giving them to their birds. I heard back from a number of people that said their birds also loved them.…

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Seeds as enrichment

Seeds as enrichment

To anyone that has read my articles on diet, I have no love for the bird food manufacturers selling processed food to our birds.

As a background, I feed my birds a diet that is at least half seed, with added chop (dried fruits and vegetables), nuts, legumes, sprouted seeds, and fresh fruit and vegetables.

I’ve long argued that seed is enriching for birds to eat. They enjoy the challenge of opening and manipulating them. But there’s no research to prove that I’m right about my beliefs.

However, I did find one small reference to this on the website of Lafeber, one of the largest bird food manufacturers. In an article written by one of their vets, she says:

Seed-based diets promote normal behaviors such as beak and tongue manipulation of the various foods, sensation of textures for brain stimulation and foraging behaviors.

Nutritional Strategies for the Companion Parrot—LafeberVet—Susan Orosz, DVM—Dec 10, 2008—

Now, this isn’t an endorsement of heavy-seed diets, but a recognition that seed should have a place.…

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The toy hook to rule them all

The toy hook to rule them all

It’s important to provide your bird with plenty to do to occupy their brains and beaks. Toys of different types are popular to place inside a cage, but you can also attach them on the outside of a cage or anywhere your bird likes to hang out.

It also helps immensely to rotate items around and introduce new ones frequently. But hanging toys can be a pain for many reasons. It’s awkward to reach inside a cage, especially if it is large, or there are already a lot of toys. Also, it’s often very cumbersome to attach the toy, even with two hands.

Here are some typical hooks used to attach toys, with common ones in the top row.

These hooks have one thing in common: they are infuriating. Among the problems:

  • They often take two hands to manipulate, which means two hands jammed in a cage or one inside and one outside
  • The opening is too narrow for either the toy or the cage bars
  • When unscrewing them, it’s hard to remember which way to turn them
  • It takes a long time to screw/unscrew them and often it’s hard to figure out which way to turn it to screw/unscrew
  • For an aviary, it’s especially difficult because you only have access to one side of the wire at a time (without an assistant)

I give a special hatred award to the one in the top right, which is not only impossible to use with two hands, it’s also spring loaded for no good reason, adding to the complexity.…

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What does my bird eat in the wild?

What does my bird eat in the wild?

I previously wrote an article called Learn about your bird in the wild where I stress the importance of not just thinking of your bird as a pet. Think about how they would live in their natural habitat as you make decisions about how to care for them.

Fortunately for everyone, an excellent research paper has been written that covers many birds that people keep in captivity such as cockatiels, amazons, cockatoos, macaws, budgies, rosellas, grass parrots, and lorikeets. Unfortunately, it’s not a comprehensive list, not including popular breeds like conures.

Most fascinating is the diet differences between the same types of birds. For example, different macaws have very different diets.

Nutrition of birds in the order Psittaciformes: A review

Some examples:

Chances are your pet bird or a close relative eat things in the wild that might surprise you or that you’ve never fed to your bird. If you bird eats insects, try some mealworms or crickets or whatever you can find.…

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Can’t we get along with breeders?

Can’t we get along with breeders?

People that breed birds are disliked and even despised by many bird groups, especially bird rescue organizations. They have a valid point, given that there are many unwanted birds out there, just like there are for dogs and cats.

Some people and groups won’t even speak to them. Despite the obvious downside of making it harder to find homes for unwanted birds, breeders can offer some value to the bird community and I feel it’s a throwing out the baby with the bathwater situation.

Species knowledge

Breeders often have deep species knowledge and know how to create environments where birds will breed. For bird adopters, they often have valuable information about diet and behavior that is lacking.

Spreading love of birds

I don’t believe a rescue bird is always the best option for adding a bird to your life. I strongly feel that we need to encourage bird keeping as a way of encouraging love and caring for birds as they die out all over the planet.…

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Artificial colors in bird food

Artificial colors in bird food

This is one of those articles I feel like I shouldn’t have to write. No creature should eat artificial colors, period. Having said that, there’s a ton of research into the hazards of artificial colors to back up my feeling.

The most unequivocal I could find is this one.

This review finds that all of the nine currently US-approved dyes raise health concerns of varying degrees. Red 3 causes cancer in animals, and there is evidence that several other dyes also are carcinogenic. Three dyes (Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6) have been found to be contaminated with benzidine or other carcinogens. At least four dyes (Blue 1, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6) cause hypersensitivity reactions. Numerous microbiological and rodent studies of Yellow 5 were positive for genotoxicity. […] The inadequacy of much of the testing and the evidence for carcinogenicity, genotoxicity, and hypersensitivity, coupled with the fact that dyes do not improve the safety or nutritional quality of foods, indicates that all of the currently used dyes should be removed from the food supply and replaced, if at all, by safer colorings.

…

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Deterring predators and pests

Deterring predators and pests

NOTE: This article only applies to those with outdoor aviaries.

The internet is full of safe ideas to deter predators (e.g. raccoons) and pests (e.g. parasites) and they all have two things in common.

  • They are indeed safe for the most part
  • They don’t work for the most part

Unlike most articles on this site, there isn’t any hard science backing up much of what I say here. It is mostly based on an acceptable amount of anecdotal evidence, sometimes from me. 🙂 Regardless, before you buy your pepper spray or coyote urine, give this a read.

Note I wrote an article called How do I know who to trust that might help understand why I’m writing a non-scientific article and still considering it to be trustworthy to me.

I’m not reviewing remedies that don’t have enough evidence or that I have experience with so this is not a comprehensive guide.…

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