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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Goffin Cockatoo

I really don’t like the word “desensitizing”, it sounds so…insensitive. It is an appropriate term, however, and sometimes necessary. If you’ve read some of my recent posts, you know that Theo, my goffins cockatoo,  is often overwhelmed by new things, sometimes by old things, and that I have been concerned about how she would handle the changes in Florida.  In no particular order, these are some of the bigger concerns I had and how she actually responded to them:

1) the chaos of packing up the house – didn’t ...

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Fights, falls and flight injuries can bring about beak injuries that can come in the form of fractures, punctures, breakage or crushing.  The part of the beak nearest the head contains a blood supply that may require cauterization.  Nerve endings in a damaged beak can cause eating to be painful.  Since a parrot uses its beak in everything it does this must be considered a very serious injury and requires the immediate attention of your avian veterinarian. BUT… The good news is that beaks are repairable.  The use of acrylics and dental bonding reform and replace broken, cracked ...

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Most species of parrot are monomorphic meaning that sex can’t be determined by visual means.  Usually DNA testing is necessary to accurately tell if Polly is truly a she.  There are a few species, however, such as the beautiful eclectus, who are notably color dimorphic.  The female is red and blue, while the male is a vibrant green. But, this is not the norm in the parrot world.

The cockatiel is another species that can be visually sexed.  Using a standard cockatiel as the example is this comparison, the male standard shown here (Tinky, my first born) you will notice the ...

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Galah, Goffin Cockatoo, Quaker Parrot

The move went fairly…smoothly.  There was a last minute change in the date we were to leave which created a bit of chaos for us all, and by us all I mean me.  The six days I thought I had left to finish my packing was shortened to two.  I managed to get most of it done, but I rushed through so much of it that I don’t remember which box contains what.

When they first arrived at my place with the ...

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