Browse of Various Kinds

Today was a good day for my birds... or maybe that should be a good day for me being able to enrich my birds?

For some reason I have lived in the same condo complex for nearly 5 years and never registered that just over the fence by the flood pond is a lot of bamboo... and when I mean a lot I mean 20ft by 20ft of it. It's never sprayed on either side, and conveniently lower branches hang over the fence within grabbing distance. Today, when walking my Dachshund Mina, I finally noticed it!
I pulled several branches/tops down and snapped them off, returning to the house with a good handful. Now all my birds have fresh bamboo browse to destroy in their cages. Tomorrow I think I shall gather some to add to their playscape.
Bamboo is awesome stuff where birds are concerned. The thicker parts can be cut up to make foraging toys, wedged between cage bars to form perches, or can be placed between bars to be shredded. The frondier end pieces can be woven through the cage bars to provide shredding goodness for all sized birds.

After my good fortune (and guilt at not noticing it earlier) with the bamboo I set about making a batch of chop and freeze. This is a time saving mix of veggies, dried fruits, nuts, herbs, grains and legumes which is hacked, mixed and then frozen. A couple of hours of making it one day, leaves you with weeks if not months worth of quick foods for when schedules are tight. I like to break mine up with bird bread, fruits, fresh veggies and a little of whatever I am eating if bird healthy.
This most recent batch consisted of: Mustard greens, red kale, dandelion greens, yellow bell pepper, courgettes, carrots, quinoa, a bean mix, millet, dried amarillo chili peppers, dried goji berries, dried apricot, dried pineapple, dried mango, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, chamomile, red leaf raspberry, hibiscus, spearmint, flax seeds, OptOmega oil and Palm Oil. All organic of course.
The thing I really love about doing it in this way is that it can be made of whatever organic produce you can get at the time; No mustard greens? Use some collard greens instead. Can't find fresh chili peppers? Use dried instead. This way not only can you support seasonal produce, but you can also provide your bird with something new every batch. Indeed, every meal they get of it will be different in it's balance of ingredients.
You can increase the enrichment factor by not making all the ingredients of uniform size. Carrots for example can be put in whole, sticks, chunks and circles. Each requiring a slightly different approach from the bird to eat.
My top reason for doing this chop? My birds on the kitchen counter "helping"! In the case of my CAG Marnie it is stealing large amounts of goodies and then getting mad when I make her give most of it back to put in the mix. Lucha the amazon will instead gently take small pieces of chopped up foods and eat it off to one side. A highly enriching past time for both!

When doing this chop mix I always put some of the ingredients to one side for separate enrichment uses. Today a couple of mustard green leaves and carrots were kept back and hung on a stainless steel skewer.

Hand Fed Offers No Guarantees

I have been hearing a lot lately of people saying "I don't want an older bird because it might have been wild caught, I want a hand fed one so it will be friendly"
Sitting here watching Marnie ( 8yr hand fed CAG), Puff (10 yr hand fed CAG) and Lucha (30+ yr wild caught Lilac Crowned Amazon) on the playscape, it strikes me that this is a hugely over simplified view.
Hand fed does not guarantee a friendly bird, no more than being wild caught means a mean one.
I have three excellent examples right in front of me; Puff, Marnie and Lucha.
The easiest and without doubt "friendliest" bird is Marnie, who was hand fed, was treated well all her life and is friendly with others (as long as I am not there).
Now if one followed the quote in the opening sentence then the next "friendliest" bird is Puff... WRONG! The next one would be Lucha, who was wild caught, brought into the USA and had not had the best of lives... however with patience and positive reinforcement is a very sweet bird, who actively seeks attention and whose idea of heaven is a beak rub. Now I'll admit he will bite if you ignore his extended warnings and touch him below the shoulders, but on the whole that's not a major thing.
The least "friendly" bird is Puff, who was hand fed and then had a series of mistakes and bad attempts at "training" which saw him turn from an inquisitive little grey ball of fluff into a mistrusting, bite first find out what the human wants later guy. This is not his fault, and he is making slow progress now he's in a calm, enriching environment where he is allowed to make choices in his interactions with humans. The other day the stood on his door perch waggling his leg and saying "step up?" while I was getting the others out onto the playscape. Needless to say I wanted to ruffle his head feathers and kiss his beak (just as Marnie loves)... but I contained myself knowing that with Puff such an action would result in removal of one or more features of my face.

Now I know some folks are now saying "Ahh but these were rescues, a hand fed baby is something completely different"... well not so! My friend Emily's female Eclectus Cah'ya was a hand fed baby and was far from a sweet hand tamed baby... and she was raised by a first class breeder.

So what is the whole point of this post?
People should judge each bird on it's own personality, behavior etc... not by whether it was wild caught, hand fed, old, young, rescue, specific species, brand new baby or for any other generalised catch all.
By being open and allowing each bird to stand on it's own merit and get to know you, you will greatly increase the chance of finding the best companion bird for you... and maybe where you would least expect it

Variety is the Spice of Life

I just spent the past couple of days doing a deep clean of the cages and a major rearranging of perches and toys.
This is one of my favorite things to do as it allows me to be creative with enriching my birds.
Each of my birds have very specific likes and dislikes. Some of it is health related, some based on natural wild behavior and other just the personal preference of the bird.

Marnie is an African Grey and loves to go down to the bottom of the cage to chicken scratch just like the wild CAGs. Because of this I like to give her extra layers of newspaper, so she can shred it up scratching, and get through to the tray.
She also does not really care for chewing on wood; She prefers to take care of her beak on her perches. Therefore I do not give her much in the way of wooden toys.
Her favorite toys a bright acrylic ones, which she loves to beat the snot out of.

Lucha on the other hand LOVES to shred up wood. I normally give him at least two or three different wooden toys, of different colours and woods, in various spots around his cage. Lucha could not care less about acrylic toys, unless they are for foraging.

Puff loves to shred! Nothing seems to make him happier than hanging out on the bottom of his cage and turning cardboard into confetti. I save all my cardboard from groceries and shipping and toss it in his cage.

On top of their usual toys, I also include lots of foraging toys of different types. I have a number of them which are made of tough plastic or acrylic. All the birds love getting their pellets out of these, and I rotate them between cages to change up the methods they have to use to get to their foods.
I also like to make foraging toys out of destructible materials like coffee filters.

Over the years I have put together a large selection of various perches. I have multiple thicknesses, lengths and kinds of weed, along with perches made of acrylic, rope, boings, flat perches and concrete. When doing a change up I like to not only change the type of perches, but also the locations.

The combination of changing up toys and perches gives my birds the opportunity to use their brains to adapt to their new cage environment.

Training with Positive Reinforcement is Positive Reinforcement to Me!

I really love working with my animals using positive reinforcement.
Although working out how to reinforce my leopard geckos in such a way that they associate the behavior with the food is a challenge, it's still a lot of fun. I'm working on training my fat boy leo Samir to walk onto a scale at the moment. So far I've been concentrating on desensitizing him to the scale in his tank, but eventually I plan to feed his mealworms only on the scales surface, so he associates going on the tank with yummy, wiggly mealies.


Today I was working again with my African Grey Marnie. I have been slowly working on recall with her as she has finally grown in some primaries on the damaged wing. She normally picks up behaviors quickly, but for her this behavior has been a challenge. She normally only flies because she's spooking at something, so the concept of flying because she wants too is foreign to her. Still we have slowly been working on her stepping out onto my palm and gradually increasing the distance my palm is from the training perch. Now she is leaning forward and catching her beak on my thumb and helping herself over to the hand with a little flap of the wings.
Marnie works best with a lot of excited verbal encouragement when she is hesitating, so my neighbours quite often hear me through the screen on my patio saying "Hi Baby! Marnie Baby! Ready!! Come Here!!!!!" in a high pitched squeaky voice.


Lucha was already put up for the night when I was working with Marnie (he's an old man who likes to go to sleep with the sun), Puff ended up alone on the playscape. It was interesting to see him with his eyes glued on Marnie and I.
When he first came he was fascinated by Marnie interacting with me, and I credit this version of the Model/Rival method with teaching him to trust me and to step up.
He's been a little disinterested for a while, and has been a little sticky in training. For example he has been holding out for an almond in the shell before he would step up from the playscape.
Tonight however I put Marnie up for the night after our training session and heard repeated "step up?" coming from the playscape. Without getting any treat, I walked over to the playscape. Puff rushed over to where I was standing and presented his foot, stepped up and went back to his cage with zero clicking or eye pinning!

All in all today has been hugely rewarding for me, and yet another reason why I will continue to work with my animals using positive reinforcement.

Patience With Parrots Is A Virtue

Puff is my foster African Grey from Wings of Love Bird Haven.
He has been with me for around 4 months now and has made a lot of improvements.
He now plays with toys, forages and loves being out on the play gym with Marnie and Lucha.
Now his interaction with humans has been slow to build on. His fear based aggression has been so successful in the past, he automatically reverts to in in any kind of nervous situation.
But with patience and using Marnie as a model he has now gotten to the stage where he steps up every time without biting. Along the way we had some bumps in the training road, such as when I had surgery and became the evil head bandage monster and when I was away with work for a month... but now even when I am away for a week on a puppy mill bust he steps up.

Part of his training success has been allowing him to have the cage as his safe place. I don't go into his cage to move toys or clean while he is in it and I don't ask him to step up from inside it. Instead I have a perch on the door which he targets to, then I open the door and ask for the step up.
Most days when I get the birds out on the play gym he comes out last, so when I approach his cage with a visible pine nut (Puff kryptonite) he normally rushes to his door perch.
This morning was something different. When I approached the cage he was on one of the higher perches... I showed him the pine nut and asked him to go to the door perch... he headed down to it and then continued past and beat on one of his toys. "Okay" I thought "I'll come back in a bit).
Four more times when I approached the cage he went from being quiet and calm to full puffed up feathers, pinned eyes, double clicking (a warning noise he makes) and attacking whatever toy was closest. Each time I approached I had the pine nut visible and asked him if he wanted to come out and play... each time he gave me the above reaction I put the pine nut away and walked past him.
Finally 5 hours later I walked up and he ran straight to his door perch, stepped up and took his pine nut reinforcement without any drama.

Now I could have shoved my hand in the cage and asked for the step up, or made him step up on the hand perch, but instead I decided to use my patience and the reward was obvious. Rather than reinforce or react negatively to his behavior, I let him work it out of his system. This meant that instead he got a positive experience and a desired behavior reinforced... even if it was a few hours later than planned.

Videos!

Well, I'm back after being gone for nearly 6 weeks, first on the Kaufman Puppy Mill deployment with UAN, and then with my regular work I was in Granbury helping to manage wildfire response across Texas.
I missed my animals hugely and was sought of worried about how Puff was going to react to me being gone so long.
But... while I was away I learned a bit more about the video function of my camera.... so here are a couple of videos of Marnie doing some of her behaviors.

Turn, wave and shake


Go to her door perch

Puppy Mill Deployment

I just spent the past week deployed with the United Animal Nations during the seizure and emergency shelter of 543 dogs and cats from a puppy mill.
Although I am not ready to really put my thoughts down on paper, I wanted to share these videos in the hope that it will spread awareness as to the HORROR of these "businesses".
Please folks, if you know of a suspected puppy mill report it to your local SPCA/Humane Society, law enforcement and to the HSUS Puppy Mill Task Force.
In less than two weeks this puppy mill was discovered, investigated, raided, animals seized and a court held a disposition hearing, awarding the animals to the HSUS. Now over 500 animals can know true love and kindness and many puppies born since the raid will never have to know the hell their parents and older siblings endured.

THEY CAN BE STOPPED IF ONLY PEOPLE STAND UP AND MAKE THEIR VOICES HEARD