Wondering if You Can Guide Me on Care of my Umbrella Cockatoo.
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Wondering if You Can Guide Me on Care of my Umbrella Cockatoo.

Wondering if you can guide me with the care of my umbrella. Her vet is away on sick leave for a few months. I am her third owner.

I live in a two-room 35 ft camper trailer with six dogs and the bird. She likes to be around them – in her cage – and when they get treats she expects ( and gets) her own. They are her flock.

She has been a feather shredder since long before she came to me, about three years ago. She is also very indifferent to food. Her owner before me cared for her well and tried her hardest to get her to fresh fruit and veg. Her primary diet is Zupreem fruit blend, though her specific preference are the pink pieces. But she isn’t even very interested in eating.

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Does the Size of Food Matter to My Bird?
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Does the Size of Food Matter to My Bird?

Short answer – yes you can feed all size birds the same foods BUT – you have to understand how they eat. Our cockatiel would eat everything from a plate including picking from a steak bigger than her.

 

Peaches our Senegal likes to hold food in her zygodactyl foot thus she requires manageable chunks of “parrot size” food with larger pieces and larger pellets. We feed her Higgins Safflower Gold. A healthy blend of seeds, nuts, fruits, and pellets. All Higgins products include Intune Pellets sized accordingly to the species of parrot.

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My Bird Won’t Play With Toys or Eat New Foods Are Two Problems That Solve Each Other
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My Bird Won’t Play With Toys or Eat New Foods Are Two Problems That Solve Each Other

A clear theme that emerges after reading endless threads on Facebook bird groups is “my bird won’t play with toys” – “my bird doesn’t play with toys” “my bird only wants to chew the keys off my notebook computer”

From Wikipedia we learn Ho·lis·tic – hōˈlistik – adjective – characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

Another way of putting it is “we are not connecting the dots” Bird food is connected to bird toys which are connected to bird cages and bird stands and everything has to work together.

There is a large overlap of caged bird keepers who claim the birds will eat nothing new nor with a play with toys – which is the problem and the solution – we need to combine the toys with the food – for starters.

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Canaries – Nature’s IPods – Why They Sing
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Canaries – Nature’s IPods – Why They Sing

Before iPods there were boomboxes. Before boomboxes, there were stereo radios. Precursors to phonographs were Victrolas.

But the way to get tunes in your home long before there was electricity was the natural sound of bird songs.

For years people would place a Canary or other singing finches in a small cage on either side of the room and whoever did that first can take credit for inventing stereo sound.

Canaries are small songbirds coming from the Finch family and were initially found in places like the Azores and believe it or not the Canary Islands.

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How Can I Get My Parakeets to Eat Something Other Than Seed?
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How Can I Get My Parakeets to Eat Something Other Than Seed?

Birds that have been only given one food for all their lives are harder to convert to a better diet but it can be done with time and patience.

A wide flat dish with chopped veggies, mashed carrots, squash, and a big hunk of green romaine lettuce placed on the center of the bottom of their cage every day for a month should get them rolling. Sprinkle the plate with some sed, and take out their main dish for a few hours after placing the fresh food dish in the cage.

Here is just one option using bird bread to get them to eat pellets.

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Bacon (the budgie) In Our House – A Blue Bird of Paradise Finds Us
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Bacon (the budgie) In Our House – A Blue Bird of Paradise Finds Us

Editor’s note: We have quietly rehomed a number of large birds found by the Chicago Police and Fire Departments over the years. We found Popcorn, (a citizen calling to say a white bird was stuck in the bushes). We post pictures to Facebook and local neighborhood groups.

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