This Wed. we redid our pictures for the website updating the models and increasing the product availability. Yeah! Unfortunately, Twiggy Trunks just haven't taken off like the feeders have. The Twiggy Trunks are a big hit at this house, after taking the pictures of the Twiggy Trunk stuffed with Sweet Gum sprigs, we divided them up for the birds in this house and stuck them in their Twiggy Trunks, 20 min later there were just splintered remnants of Sweet Gum sprigs left. Chewing sprigs is BIG fun in this house.
Just a reminder to the bird owners out there, bird-safe limbs are abundant, cheap and loads of entertainment. The Twiggy Trunk acts as a mountable vase extending the life of the plants you place in there, our birds love the little make-shift jungle spending their energies destroying what we place in their cages until nothing is left.
In the cockatoo's cage we have several Twiggy Trunks placed throughout the cage and put browse in each when we leave for any extended period of time, without fail they are chewed and shredded by the time we get home- and the beauty of it all is, that to replace the browse all we have to do is walk out into the back yard with a pair of shears and viola instant twiggy jungle.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Inexpensive Foraging Ideas
There are numerous ways to implement captive foraging without spending a lot of money. The draw back for many parrot owners is the time commitment required to create an inexpensive captive foraging environment. However, the rewards of providing your companion parrot with this type of experience has exponential gains for your bird.
First, let me recommend purchasing the video Captive Foraging: The Next Best Thing to Being Free by Dr. Scott Echols, leading avian veterinarian. This video can be purchased at http://www.avianpublications.com/items/behavior/itemDVD10.htm and offers many great ideas.
Second, stop feeding your bird in a bowl. Birds in the wild do not find and consume their diets in one quick sitting. Foraging Ahead offers effective, reusable foraging feeders that require little additional time and reap great rewards for your parrots, these feeders can be purchased at www.foragingahead.com.
Other methods of creating a captive foraging environment can be as simple as wrapping their pellets and seeds in bird-safe paper products and distributing them in several bowls placed around the cage or buying a kitty litter pan from a local pet shop and filling it with some safe foraging materials (corn cob pan litter, sterilized pine straw, shredded newspaper, etc) and mixing their dry foods in with the foraging materials. Additionally, cutting branches from bird-safe trees and shrubs (http://www.plannedparrothood.com/plants.html) and sticking small chunks of fruits and veggies on some of the sprigs will also provide hours of fun foraging for your bird.
Captive-foraging is crucial to captive parrot's well-being. By taking just several extra minutes and spending a few extra dollars you can greatly increase the wellbeing and livelihood of your companion parrot.
First, let me recommend purchasing the video Captive Foraging: The Next Best Thing to Being Free by Dr. Scott Echols, leading avian veterinarian. This video can be purchased at http://www.avianpublications.com/items/behavior/itemDVD10.htm and offers many great ideas.
Second, stop feeding your bird in a bowl. Birds in the wild do not find and consume their diets in one quick sitting. Foraging Ahead offers effective, reusable foraging feeders that require little additional time and reap great rewards for your parrots, these feeders can be purchased at www.foragingahead.com.
Other methods of creating a captive foraging environment can be as simple as wrapping their pellets and seeds in bird-safe paper products and distributing them in several bowls placed around the cage or buying a kitty litter pan from a local pet shop and filling it with some safe foraging materials (corn cob pan litter, sterilized pine straw, shredded newspaper, etc) and mixing their dry foods in with the foraging materials. Additionally, cutting branches from bird-safe trees and shrubs (http://www.plannedparrothood.com/plants.html) and sticking small chunks of fruits and veggies on some of the sprigs will also provide hours of fun foraging for your bird.
Captive-foraging is crucial to captive parrot's well-being. By taking just several extra minutes and spending a few extra dollars you can greatly increase the wellbeing and livelihood of your companion parrot.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Bamboo the Wonder Weed
Foraging Ahead is trying to create a consumable foraging feeder-toy that will encourage the birds to chew the feeder up in order to get to the food items inside VS manipulating the food items like our PVC feeder-toy. Recently, after many hours of working with the grass I decided to hop on the good 'ole internet and learn a little bit more about it.
It is difficult to cut bamboo. A wood scrolling blade for a jigsaw creates too much friction burning the bamboo before it cuts through the moist fresh stalk. Cutting the partitions at the naturally occurring nodes with a large miter saw works for creating an effective bottom but we could not come up with an efficient way of cutting holes into the stalk to spark the bird's curiosity by giving it a bird's eye view.
Hoping to find pointers on working with bamboo in an artistic sense without using toxic chemicals, I came across a Giant Panda Crisis.
Surprisingly, this grass that has a reputation of taking over a garden is also a major cause of the declining Giant Panda population in China. "Most of the pandas' favorite arrow bamboo in a 217,000 square-mile region of Sichuan province is going through a once-in-60-year cycle of flowering and dying before regenerating," said Yang Xuyu, deputy head of the province's Wild Animal Preservation Station. So, the Pandas are relocating. China saw a huge Panda die-off in the mountainous regions of Sichuan.
Nature is incredible. Now when I am making the 2hr drive back from our Bamboo supplier I think of the hungry Pandas. Giant Pandas only eat bamboo, bamboo only regenerates every 60 years. That species has been boxed in an evolutionary corner.
For this reason, kudos to the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). I saw the Giant Pandas at Zoo Atlanta.
Birds still have my heart and always will, but I am grateful for the opportunity to have seen a Giant Panda safely from just feet away. *The USA does not own any Panda. The People's Republic of China leases them out for $1,000,000 a year* As I gazed at the baby I wondered if China would use her to be reintroduced into the wild.
As far as the bamboo drama goes, the solution has been found. We now have holes in the bamboo. Shortly we should have this product listed on our website, but our birds have some usability testing to do. No one has a free-ride in this household.
It is difficult to cut bamboo. A wood scrolling blade for a jigsaw creates too much friction burning the bamboo before it cuts through the moist fresh stalk. Cutting the partitions at the naturally occurring nodes with a large miter saw works for creating an effective bottom but we could not come up with an efficient way of cutting holes into the stalk to spark the bird's curiosity by giving it a bird's eye view.
Hoping to find pointers on working with bamboo in an artistic sense without using toxic chemicals, I came across a Giant Panda Crisis.
Surprisingly, this grass that has a reputation of taking over a garden is also a major cause of the declining Giant Panda population in China. "Most of the pandas' favorite arrow bamboo in a 217,000 square-mile region of Sichuan province is going through a once-in-60-year cycle of flowering and dying before regenerating," said Yang Xuyu, deputy head of the province's Wild Animal Preservation Station. So, the Pandas are relocating. China saw a huge Panda die-off in the mountainous regions of Sichuan.
Nature is incredible. Now when I am making the 2hr drive back from our Bamboo supplier I think of the hungry Pandas. Giant Pandas only eat bamboo, bamboo only regenerates every 60 years. That species has been boxed in an evolutionary corner.
For this reason, kudos to the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). I saw the Giant Pandas at Zoo Atlanta.
Birds still have my heart and always will, but I am grateful for the opportunity to have seen a Giant Panda safely from just feet away. *The USA does not own any Panda. The People's Republic of China leases them out for $1,000,000 a year* As I gazed at the baby I wondered if China would use her to be reintroduced into the wild.
As far as the bamboo drama goes, the solution has been found. We now have holes in the bamboo. Shortly we should have this product listed on our website, but our birds have some usability testing to do. No one has a free-ride in this household.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Biologically Inclined
I am currently pet sitting for my business partner. She has 4 birds, I have 1. So total I am caring for a Congo African Grey, a Yellow Fronted Amazon parrot, a Senegal Parrot, a Black Capped Caique, and a Goffin's Cockatoo (my personal companion). I am watching them for 10 days, this is day 8 and like clockwork these guys are up greeting the sun every morning. It is almost as though they decide the night before who is going to start the screaming. When one bird stops to rest its vocal chords another chimes in without missing a beat to ensure that the day is rightfully greeted.
When I lived with one bird, she adapted to me. She would wait to begin her twittering until I was up and drinking my cup of coffee. Now, they are the majority. I will have to adapt to them. More power to the myriad of people out there who have opened their homes to literally dozens of parrots- as a fellow parrot lover, it surely takes a special person with loads of dedication and a certain amount of tenacity.
Hey as the saying goes-"Birds of a feather..."
When I lived with one bird, she adapted to me. She would wait to begin her twittering until I was up and drinking my cup of coffee. Now, they are the majority. I will have to adapt to them. More power to the myriad of people out there who have opened their homes to literally dozens of parrots- as a fellow parrot lover, it surely takes a special person with loads of dedication and a certain amount of tenacity.
Hey as the saying goes-"Birds of a feather..."
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Always Foraging Ahead
I have started this blog to share my passion for birds, more specifically captive birds, with others.
This is my first official blog, suggestion of my Uncle. So I will just thank him, thank you Tom and leave it at that for now. More blogs to come in the future.
This is my first official blog, suggestion of my Uncle. So I will just thank him, thank you Tom and leave it at that for now. More blogs to come in the future.
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