Month: December 2019

When to euthanize

When to euthanize

I wrote a previous post expressing my feelings about euthanasia. Even if you believe in it, it’s a vague decision. You can’t run a test on a bird and determine that the time has come.

Someone retold to me the criteria used by Brian Speer DVM of the Medical Center for birds. It still has subjectivity, but it’s still very useful and simple.

You start by thinking about the 5 things your bird enjoys most, or enjoyed if they are already in bad shape. If the bird can do at least a part of 3 out of five of the list, then the assumption is that they are still getting enjoyment out of life. Anything below that is time for euthanasia.

A friend of mine shared the 5 things for one of her birds dying of cancer:

  1. Flying
  2. Bossing other birds around
  3. Eating
  4. Preening
  5. Hanging out with her mate and being affectionate

She’s still alive and doing all 5, but they are all diminishing.… READ THE REST

How cold is too cold?

How cold is too cold?

There is a complete lack of research on the cold tolerance of parrots, so I have to rely on the thoughts of vets and aviculturists. I’m trying to choose people that are respected in the bird community.

The predominant opinion is that parrots should be kept in a strict climate-controlled range. However, this opinion comes from hundreds of individual people and just saying something is true doesn’t make it true.

I found one of the more amusing opinion pieces on this.

For birds living in our homes, temperatures typically fluctuate very little from one season to the next as we humans like to maintain a relatively constant indoor temperature of 65-72 °F year round.

If your bird gets chilled, warm it on a heating pad, massage its feet to aid circulation and/or put small birds under your clothing to warm them with your body heat.

Avian Enrichment: Temperature

Humans don’t even have feathers and we could withstand that in shorts and a T-shirt.… READ THE REST