The Benefits of Captive Foraging

BACKGROUND OF PROBLEM

Many zoologists believe that animals in captivity require significant levels of environmental enrichment, or any improvement in the biological functioning resulting from modifications to their environment. Partly due to the smaller numbers of bird owners when compared to cat and dog owners, birds are underrepresented in the pet industry. Another major difference between enriching dogs/cats and birds is the fact that birds are not domestic animals. A domestic animal is defined as: a population of animals that have their behavior, life cycle, or physiology systemically altered as a result of being under human control for many generations. Birds haven’t been kept in captivity long enough to be domesticated. Due to their long life spans, many captive parrots are just 2nd and 3rd generation from their wild-caught counterparts.
A common shortcoming of attempts at environmental enrichment for parrots involves the provision of toys, music, TV or other stimuli having little functional relevance to the animal. Furthermore, survival in the wild depends on successful execution of goal directed behavior. Because parrots are not domestic animals and retain 100% of their biological inclinations, successful completion of goal-directed behavior is found rewarding to the wild parrot in captivity. In the wild, foraging constitutes a major portion of the behavioral time budget. In contrast, the captive environment generally restricts captive parrots to minimal foraging time.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Captive foraging is a fairly new concept in the pet industry. While the zoological world has been incorporating captive foraging in animal husbandry since the 1980s, the pet trade was slow to catch on. Recently thanks to veterinarians such as Dr. Scott Echols, a leading avian veterinarian, there has been a big push towards captive foraging in companion parrot husbandry. In 2006 Dr. Echols came out with a DVD titled Captive Foraging: The Next Best Thing to Being Free which is now carried by most reputable avian veterinarians and recommended by most avian behaviorists. At the last Association of Avian Veterinarians (AAV) convention held in Providence, RI, captive foraging was the main topic of companion parrot care.

Most captive parrots live in a controlled caged environment. Though this caged environment provides adequate protection from dangers within the home environment, it simultaneously prevents many natural biological behaviors such as; flocking, flight and foraging. By preventing these natural biological behaviors many birds fill the void with destructive stereotypical behaviors. Common stereotypical behaviors include screaming, plucking, biting and self-mutilation. Upon developing any of these behaviors many owners loose interest in their pets and give them up to one of the many rescue groups.

Of the above mentioned natural biological behaviors, foraging is the easiest to recreate in a captive home environment. Our product, the Foraging Feeder-Toy, is a quick and effective method of providing captive foraging. Any safe food item or toy can be placed inside of the Foraging Feeder-Toy without the danger of mold or inability to extract the item. The PVC tube can be disassembled easily to be washed by hand or in a dishwasher. The product can be mounted in the cage in a multitude of ways by using the stainless-steal bolt, washers and wing nut. The PVC version is virtually indestructible for most parrot species making it reusable and inexpensive. Great care is taken in the manufacturing of the product and each one is carefully inspected to ensure there are no sharp edges that could potentially injure a bird. We only use the highest quality materials and ensure that all metal is stainless steal and safe for a companion parrot.

BIRD TALK MAGAZINE!

Yeah! After starting our small business in Oct. 2007 we are now featured in the July issue of Bird Talk Magazine page 12 and 25! What an exciting experience this has all been. Thank you to all of the people who have supported us both emotionally and financially. Captive foraging is taking over the bird world and Foraging Ahead is blazing its trail.

What a great day.

We're going to be in Bird Talk- woo hoo!

"We're going to be in Bird Talk- woo hoo" is the African Grey's new favorite saying, just to give you an idea of how excited we are about this event.

Foraging Ahead, LLC will be featured in the 'New 4 You' section of the July issue of Bird Talk magazine. Also we are having our website updated and converted to html. Exciting times for Foraging Ahead.

Sorry for the long delay in blogging, I was finishing an AA degree and working on the nuts and bolts of Foraging Ahead. We have several new 'green' products hitting the market soon. One of our newer products is the foraging tray. This product can be recreated in the home with a little time and effort. The idea is that certain species of birds; cockatiels, african greys, superb parrots, western ground parrot, finches, doves etc prefer to forage on the ground as they would in the wild. By providing a captive foraging environment that allows the bird a clean safe area to ground forage increases the time your bird spends engaged in natural biological behaviors. Any type of shallow pan/dish will work. Fill it with a bird-safe substrate and then add some treats and toys and watch the show.

On our site we sell and pre-packaged deal with a dishwasher safe tray www.foragingahead.com.

Thanks for reading, 'we're going to be in Bird Talk- woo hoo!"

The Joys of Bird-Safe Browse

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.

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.

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.

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..."