The Bird's Blog

Sunday, January 20, 2013

The importance of sleep in captive birds

One of the questions I ask first, when doing a bird behavior consult, is how many hours of uninterrupted sleep does your parrot receive?  Many people do not know or understand how important sleep is to our captive birds.

If people are experiencing issues with their bird, in terms of screaming, biting, feather mutilation, it can be related to the hours of day and night the bird is experiencing.  Birds should receive a minimum of 10 hours of sleep a night, and my usual recommendation is 12 hours.

Also, another important factor is that the sleep be uninterrupted.  If you put your bird to bed at 8pm every night, but your bird's cage is in your living room, and you are up until 1am every night watching TV, your bird is not getting uninterrupted sleep from 8pm - 1am.  Most birds are up at sunrise, unless they are covered or in a very dark part of the house in the morning.  So think of it this way, at best your bird was asleep soundly at 1am after you went to bed, and then up around 8am when the sun came in the living room window's.  That is only 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep!

There are many reasons why birds need so much sleep.  One of major reasons is that most of our captive birds originate in countries much closer to the equator where day and night are each about 12 hours.  Although this doesn't hold true to all species, and even near the equator there is some variation, I believe the closer our birds waking and sleeping hours match their wild habits, the better.

There are a number of ways to help make sure your bird gets 10-12 hours of sleep.  If you have your bird in a room that is used by people until late at night, it may be a good idea to buy your bird a sleeping cage that you can put in a quieter part of the house.  At 8pm, you can take your bird to this cage and put them to bed.  The sleeping cage can be much smaller than your bird's normal daytime cage, since it is used only for sleeping, and also doesn't need many toys, maybe just one or two, and some dry food and water.  When you get up in the morning, you return them to their larger daytime cage.

If your bird is in a reasonably quiet part of your house already, but you are not quite sure they are getting enough sleep, covering your birds with a dark sheet, may help your bird sleep more soundly through the night.

In my house, I have several of my own birds, in addition to frequent boarding birds, so I have a room set aside for the birds to spend most of the day in.  In this situation, I have lights on timers that are set to stay on for exactly 12 hours.  My birds lights come on around 8:30am and turn off around 8:30pm.  They are probably awake before 8:30am because some light shines through the curtains on the window, but they are at a bare minimum sleeping 10 hours if not more.  With a separate room, I don't need to cover my birds, and pay attention to what I am doing after they are in bed for the night.

There is also the option of waking your birds up later in the morning and staying up a little later with them at night.  There is no reason why you can't train your bird to sleep from 10pm -10am or even later. Just make sure to keep the house dark with blackout curtains in the area where your bird sleeps.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Foraging: Fun and Easy!


The Bird Guru presents:
Foraging: Fun and Easy!
Saturday, September 29, 2012
1-3pm
At Dogs Learning Center
577 Main St., Unit 130
Hudson, MA 01749

Foraging is defined as the act of foraging for food.  This is something that is lacking in our captive birds daily lives. In the wild, they may spend 6-7 hours per day searching for food.  In captivity, some birds spend less than 1 hour searching for and eating food.    

When we do not provide suitable foraging and enrichment opportunities for our birds, problem behaviors, such as excessive screaming, feather picking, aggression, obesity, boredom, frustration and repetitive behavior patterns can develop.  Studies have shown that birds provided with new foraging and enrichment (toy/perch rotation) at least weekly are less likely to develop “mis-behaviors”.  Studies have also shown a significant decrease in repetitive behaviors and feather picking when enrichment and foraging opportunities are provided.  

This workshop is for owners who are interested in learning how to provide more foraging opportunities for their birds.  It is important for all birds to practice foraging in their daily lives to keep them mentally and physically stimulated.  Owners of any types of birds are welcome!  We will discuss how to teach birds to forage, as well as different methods of foraging for different bird species and personalities.  Following the talk, we will be making foraging toys out of a variety of materials that are easily found in our daily lives.  We will make foraging fun and easy for all owners to add to their bird’s daily routine. 

Cost is $75/per person in advance and includes materials for toy making
Registration via email:
birdguru@gmail.com or phone: 508-667-7684
Registration must be received no later than 9/22/12
No birds please, this is a people only workshop. Thank you!

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Dangers in our bird cages

 I was visiting with some birds yesterday, when I noticed a couple of things that make me greatly concerned.  I attached photos so you all can see.  Rope perches in this state are extremely dangerous to birds.  Toes (especially ones with long nails) can easily get caught in the frayed rope, resulting in cuts, bruising, fractures or amputation, not to mention the emotional trauma that comes along with such injuries.  Not only can toes get caught, but wings and heads or necks can also get caught in frayed rope, potentially resulting in fractures or even death.  If your bird does this to its rope perches, please only use them when you can supervise the bird.  Other options include constantly clipping back all the frayed pieces, or not giving rope products to your bird at all.  Please be careful, all birds toys can become dangerous under certain conditions, it is up to you to know your bird's behavior and make sure that you remove things if they become dangerous. 

I have trimmed many bird toys in my own cages, and will also remove or modify toys that arrive with any of my boarding clients that seem unsafe to me.  I always explain why certain things concern me to my clients, so that they learn how to keep their birds safe. 

Another thing I spied was this metal water bowl with rust spots in it.  At this point, I would consider this bowl unsafe to use.  It is easy enough to go out and get a new bowl, and if this where to happen to any of my bowls, that is how I would deal with it.  I'm not sure how toxic rusty water is, but I would also be worried about the imperfections in the bowl potentially being places that harbor bacteria. 

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Peaches and Rowdy on their boings






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Friday, February 29, 2008

Recent Bird Room Photos

Obviously the little cage, my lutino (yellow) parakeet, Dharma, is in is for temporary measures only. We were dealing with some inter-parakeet issues, lol.

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Thursday, February 08, 2007

Rowdy pics recently



Thursday, September 14, 2006

Peaches video from yesterday

Here is Peaches enjoying one of her "condos", aka travel cage, but she likes to play in them :)