Hyacinth Macaw

In the wild, parrots, with the help and guidance of their parents and other flock members, learn their way around the plant life in their native lands.  The day may begin with a visit to their local clay lick to help them ward off the toxins produced by the plants they forage on.  They manage to provide themselves with a healthy and well balanced diet without human intervention.

In a captive setting, I always make sure to vary fruits, vegetables and the other foods I serve to my parrots ...

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Congo African Grey Parrot

Have you ever noticed how dry your hands get in the winter?  Or how the  texture of your hair changes?  Sometimes your throat and nasal passages can become dry and sore. This is due to the low humidity in the air, often during the winter months when our heaters are in use.

Underneath all of those beautiful feathers, a parrot has skin that needs care just as ours does.  When skin becomes dry, it gets itchy – when we’re itchy, we scratch.  Skin conditions are sometimes the underlying ...

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Military Macaw

Of all of the things you thoughtfully do for your parrot, your first consideration must be for its diet.  I can’t stress this enough.  Without well balanced nutrition, a parrot’s general health will gradually decline, vitamin deficiencies will leave it susceptible to illness and disease and its life span will be decreased.  An unhealthy parrot is temperamental and may not want to be a part of family activities. If your parrot doesn’t feel well and energized, no amount of love, enrichment or interaction will do him much good.  A ...

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In keeping in touch with the avian community, I find more and more people who are coping with the heartbreak of their parrot’s feather plucking, barbering or mutilation.  The biggest problem with feather destructive behaviors is that we don’t know why it happens.  There are NO experts in this area, because, frankly, no one understands why they do this. There are people with a great deal of experience with pluckers who can recommend changes to make that they have seen good results with.  But ...

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Blue Fronted Amazon Parrot

This is a topic I have covered in past posts, but an email I received today convinced me that this is a subject that can’t be discussed enough.

In this email, a young woman that I knew in Austin, told me that her much loved sun conure, Mango, had died unexpectedly.  She included her phone number, so I called her to offer my condolences.  In the course of the conversation, I found that Mango had indeed been showing signs of illness, but her owner didn’t know how ...

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Blue throated macaw

Motion sickness is caused by disorientation.  When you are still and seated in a vehicle, but you can see and hear the world whizzing by, a confused signal is sent to your brain.  The inner ear knows that you’re moving, yet you are motionless.  The result is sweating, nausea, and vomiting.  Though it seems like a trick of the mind, it is very real and quite unpleasant.  Parrots, like people, can be affected during travel.

There really aren’t any rules regarding motion sickness.  Some are affected by it, others aren’t.  ...

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