The Bird Nerds Rescue/Sanctuary

10 Steps to a Better Relationship With Your Parrot

By Liz Wilson,CVT

1. Ensure your companion bird is healthy by doing annual check-ups and routine diagnostics with your experienced avian veterinarian. Since birds hide the obvious signs of illness, allowing basic annual testing is critical to the early detection of medical problems.
2. Ensure your companion bird is consuming a good diet. This is critical to the proper functioning of its immune system and increases its potential for a healthy life, as well as eliminating nutrition-based problem behaviors, such as some cases of feather destruction.
3. Ensure your companion bird lives in a sufficiently large cage, allowing it lots of room for exuberant wing-flapping exercise and energetic play; allow it daily out-of-cage time on play stations other than just the cage to minimize territorial behaviors. Encouraging healthy exercise can decrease problem behaviors like excessive screaming, since a tired parrot is a quiet parrot.
4. Establish controls with your parrot by lovingly teaching it to respond to the simple commands of Up and Down, and setting clear and consistent limits on its behavior. By teaching manners and setting boundaries, parrots can become better companions.
5. Give your parrot quality interaction daily, no matter how busy your life gets... even if for just 10-15 minutes of one-on-one time. Psittacines are biologically wild animals, and won't retain their "tameness" without daily contact with people.
6. Make your companion bird a member of the family, since it is a flock animal and extremely social. Single birds should not be housed in rooms by themselves.
7. Socialize your parrot to family and trusted friends, thereby teaching it to adapt to the society in which it lives. It should be comfortable interacting with and being handled by other people. Do not allow it to become over-bonded to one person.
8. Assure your companion bird gets adequate rest, with 10-12 hours of dark, uninterrupted sleep time nightly. Sleep deprivation often leads to problem behaviors like biting, excessive screaming and feather destruction.
9. Establish trust with your companion bird by teaching it that it is safe with you. Consistency is critical to establishing trust, as your parrot learns what to expect from you and what you expect from it.
10. Accept your parrot for what it is, not what you want it to be. No matter how well trained it is, a healthy parrot may still be noisy, messy and destructive... because it's a parrot!

How to Tell if Your Bird is Sick

By Don J. Harris,DVM

Birds in the wild instinctively hide illness in an attempt to avoid predators who prey on sick or injured birds. Pet birds are also just as effective in hiding illness as their wild counterparts, and it is up to bird owners to recognize subtle behavioral and physical signs that may indicate their birds  are sick.

Behavioral signs may include:

• Sleeping later in the morning than usual
• Sleeping more during the day
• Irritability
• Unusually compliant or passive
• Sitting on the bottom of the cage
• Picking at food and/or not eating at usual times
• Eating less overall
• Vocalizing less
• A change in the voice or hoarseness
• Different breathing pattern
• Making unusual sounds when breathing

Physical signs may include:

• Coughing or sneezing
• Discharge from nostrils (nares)
• Matted eyes
• Eyes are dull and closing excessively
• Matted feathers on the face and head
• Diarrhea
• Black stools
• A change in the white part of the droppings to another color such as red, yellow or green
• Weight loss-can you feel or see the breastbone?
• Unusual swellings, especially around the eyes
• Irregular discoloration of the feathers
• Feathers are "fluffed up"
• Random or generalized loss of feathers
• Scaling or crusting of skin
• Increased temperature of feet or beak

Any of the signs listed above, or any other unusual signs, may indicate your bird is sick. You should take immediate action by making an appointment with your avian veterinarian. Waiting even one day to resolve the problem can jeopardize the long-term outcome of your bird's health.