Blue throated macaw

PDD is a disease that causes a failure in the parrot’s digestive system. While it is also called “Macaw Wasting Syndrome”, it is absolutely not exclusive to the macaw.  In fact, it has been seen in many species of our companion birds and their wild counterparts.

So that you can better understand the impact of this disease, first let me describe the parrot’s digestive system:  The bird breaks down food with its beak and passes it down to the crop.  The crop slowly delivers food to a two ...

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Umbrella Cockatoo

Breakfast time!  There are four macaws, four cockatoos, three parakeets, two cockatiels, one congo african grey, a swainson’s toucan and a quaker waiting patiently for their breakfast every morning.  On the menu today is fruit pasta blend, fresh broccoli, beets, sweet potato, and kale.

Breakfast time is always one of my favorite parts of the day.  I really enjoy the preparation of foods and I love seeing the birds watching everything I do in anticipation of their first meal.  I often let one of the birds be my “helper” ...

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Rose Breasted Cockatoo

I was looking through you tube videos and came across the title Funny Biting Parrot.  I thought to myself: what can possibly be funny about a biting parrot? and I watched the video.  I did find it funny.

When you watch the video, there are a few clues that tell you this is not aggression, but a game between parrot and owner.  First, the owner is encouraging the bird  and  is clearly unafraid of a serious bite.  Secondly, there is no aggressive body language in the bird – just ...

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Congo African Grey Parrot

I was listening to the Ask The Bird Experts weekly webcast the other night.  Liz Wilson was speaking about how little we actually know about parrots.  After so much research has been done about parrots in the wild, there are very few questions that can be answered with absolute certainty.

I have complained in past posts about the fact that there isn’t a formulated diet that can duplicate a parrot’s natural one. This is because we really don’t know what they eat.  A field researcher can spend ...

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Budgies

Multiple Bird Syndrome (MBS).  If this were an actual term, wikipedia would define it as:  A deep psychological yearning to get just one more, and just one more  after that.  This condition is generally brought on by overexposure to cute pictures and stories about your friends multiple birds.  The only known cure is the threat of divorce by your spouse or intervention by the Dept of Health.

MBS is a term used by many on the bird talk boards.  I suffer terribly from it.  Whenever anyone posts a picture of their ...

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