Why Lactobacillus Is Important to Your Bird’s Health
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Why Lactobacillus Is Important to Your Bird’s Health

By Cheryl Lake

Lactobacillus Acidophilus is a source of a viable live, naturally occurring micro-organism, which is found predominantly in the digestive system of man and all warm-blooded animals.

Stress conditions such as new arrivals, molting, breeding, feeding young, growth, preparation for flight, illness, and injury, along with contaminated feed and water, food soured in the crop, chlorinated water, antifungal, and antibiotic therapy, can all cause a great imbalance of various types of micro-organisms in the crop and intestine tract, leaving birds susceptible to digestive problems.

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Birds and Full Spectrum Lighting. We Got It Wrong.
Two parrot Corella on a background of tropical flowers

Birds and Full Spectrum Lighting. We Got It Wrong.

I was at my first AFA convention last week. It was the 41st annual convention of the American Federation of Agriculture. You’re familiar with the organization – right? Or not so much.

Members of the AFA are the unsung heroes helping solve legal, behavioral and nutritional problems if it has anything to do with an exotic bird or parrot   (more…)

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Holy Crap, My Budgie’s Toe Is Gushing Blood And Nothing Is Stopping It!
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Holy Crap, My Budgie’s Toe Is Gushing Blood And Nothing Is Stopping It!

How to Deal With Nail Bleeding Emergencies and Other Minor Foot Bleeding Accidents

Hi, I’m Nora Caterino.

Some of you may know me from other parrot-related websites from my pasts, but for you of those to whom I am new, I have over 25 years of small and medium parrot experience.

I began as the ‘owner’ of a single tame parakeet and eventually became a parrot parent and web and magazine published expert.

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Parrot-medics Real Life Drama in the Avian ER! Are You Prepared?
Veterinarian examining Alexandrine parakeet in clinic, closeup

Parrot-medics Real Life Drama in the Avian ER! Are You Prepared?

I admit there are times that I struggle to find topics and content that would be interesting to caged bird keepers. Much of the time though, the blog writes itself. A little known but highly reliable source for content on our blog is “customer reviews”

Catherine likes calf’s liver. I won’t eat out of a pan that has cooked calf’s liver. That does not make calf’s liver inherently bad. I’ll tell you right off the bat that if you give a product one star because “your bird didn’t like it” (think calves liver) we treat it like a review on calves liver – love it or hate it , it’s still good for you and because I don’t like the taste of it does not make it a bad source of nutrition and the review won’t get posted.

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Why Does Your Bird Preen and How the Heck Do You Pronounce Uropygial?
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Why Does Your Bird Preen and How the Heck Do You Pronounce Uropygial?

LOL – Sunday I put my female DYH Amazon in the sink. she never preens herself like most birds do! I don’t know why! She is healthy, so??? Anyway, she was looking a little rough around the edges so I gave her a bath in the kitchen sink! She deals with it but it isn’t at the top her list of fun things to do!

The comment above was about the image below posted in parts of the black hole of the internet known as social media. 

that’s Popcorn our cockatiel who uses her tail

to dust the crown molding just below our 10-foot ceilings

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What’s Your Opinion on DIY Birdie Pedicures?
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What’s Your Opinion on DIY Birdie Pedicures?

The Eastern Rosella above has very long nails while sitting on an undersized perch. In the not-too-distant future the nails on the front toes can irritate and/or puncture the rear toes causing sores known as “bumblefoot” possibly leading to a foot infection.
 
From last week’s Birdie Brunch table 19 writes – Hi WCP folks,
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How to Get Your Bird Used to Toweling for Restraint
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How to Get Your Bird Used to Toweling for Restraint

and Why It’s Essential

This is a follow-up to our recent post about learning how to restrain your bird using the zombie death grip.

The grip goes hand-in-hand with toweling a bird when you need to restrain it for maintenance like nail trimming or a first-aid emergency.

Speaking of emergencies. You have to love technology (or not). It’s been a very wet summer so far much of which has come in the form of storms.

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The Skinny on Lafeber Nutriberries and Avi-cakes
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The Skinny on Lafeber Nutriberries and Avi-cakes

As you read this, the conflict between the Hatfields and the McCoys is probably still raging but in keeping up with the times it probably sounds something like “Hey Edgar McCoy, stay off my Facebook page or my family will hashtag you with some really bad stuff” tagged Ralph Hatfield – 18 likes – two shares – or something like that. 

And so the debate rages about how a seed diet is bad for birds. Pellets are the only thing you should feed your birds, saving seeds only as treats is something that I read a lot on the Internet – so must be true. Tell that to the parrots who for generations in the rainforest never once fed off the Mystical Magical Pellets tree.

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