What to Know About Bird Care

So you finally broke down and bough at bird. Birds can be wonderful and loving pets, but they do take a great deal of work and training. If you start with good habits from the first day you bring them home, getting them acclimated and getting them to see your family as a flock should be a seamless process.

When you first bring the little guys home, get their cage ready. The cage should be plenty big for your feathered friend. The rule of thumb is to get the biggest cage you can afford. Even parakeets need plenty of room to jump around. They have a great deal of energy and they need the space to burn it off. You also want to avoid round cages, and cages made out of zinc.

You will want to put the cage in a high traffic area in the house. Most pet birds have a flock mentality and tend to be social animals. They will want to have plenty of interaction through out the day. If you work all day, and/or are away from home quite a bit, it might be smart to get two birds. This way they can keep each other company. You do not want your birds to get lonely. This will lead to annoying and potentially dangerous side effects. Keep your bird socialized! Bored birds are unhappy birds. Unhappy birds scream and pluck their feathers, among other things!

When you set up the cage, no matter what the pet store told you do not use the sand paper perch covers. Do not use any kind of supplement that is put in their water. Keep the cuttlebone. Do not use litter. That stuff just breeds disease. Use paper, paper towels, newspaper, or something along those lines. You will need to change the papers every other day and do big cage clean out once a week.

When you ring them home, leave them in the cage for a few days. Let them get used to their new home and surroundings. After they have time to adjust, you can look into trying to start the training process. Most birds come home with their wings clipped. It is a good idea to keep doing this. It is safer for the bird, and it helps with the training process.

This brings me to food. Okay, listen very carefully to what I am about to say: Under no uncertain circumstances should you feed your bird an all seed diet. All seed diets cut their life expectancy and causes fatty tumors. It is like the equivalent of giving your kids junk food every day. You will need to put them on a pellet diet. Pellet comes in various flavors and from different brands. My boys prefer the Zupreem "Fruity Pebbles" flavor, but I have to get the parakeet grade because one of my cockatiels will not eat the banana shaped ones in the cockatiel grade. You will need to learn what their favorite ones are. You will also want to be sure they get their human food too. Carrots, pasta...basically if we can eat it they can. Chocolate, alcohol, and avocado needs to be avoided for most birds, but read up to see what foods are off limits for your pet birds. Seed blends and millet sprays are fine every once in a while as a treat.

These are the basics to start your bird care. Please see my other articles on bird care (are you read for this and on bird neglect) and I will hopefully follow up this series with more on training and socialiazation.