That Bird Blog – Bird Care and History for Pet Birds

General

I had my first contact with Goffin’s cockatoos in the mid 1970’s, while working for a bird importer. At that time, they were among the least expensive of the parrots, and for this reason were branded as a poor choice for a pet. Yet even in the importer’s chaotic holding rooms, amid thousands of other birds, I noticed that they stood out somehow – calm and, if given a chance, eager to engage with people.

As it turned out, these Indonesian natives have proven to be among the most gentle, and easily trained of the cockatoos. These qualities, combined with their small size and quiet tendencies (“quiet”, in that they are less likely to let loose with the “ear-bleeding” screams of their larger relatives) render the Goffin’s an ideal “first cockatoo”.

Enclosure and Physical Environment
Cockatoos are among the most active of the parrots, expressing themselves more with body and beak than with sound, and the Goffin’s is no exception. Your Goffin’s cockatoo will require a larger cage than other birds of a similar size.

The smallest cage I would recommend is the A&E Bird Dometop Cage (36″ x 28″ x 65″), but a macaw-sized model (i.e. A&E Bird Stainless Steel Bird Cage) is preferable. When choosing your pet’s cage, bear in mind that it will likely spend most of its time therein – more so than other parrots, cockatoos are liable to get into trouble if left out unsupervised. They are just too inquisitive and athletic to be given the run of a room unless carefully watched.

Your Goffin’s cage should be outfitted with a wide variety of perches of various materials and thicknesses….rope perches are especially appreciated and will give rise to all sorts of acrobatic performances. Your bird’s feet should extend ¾ of the way around the perch upon which it spends most of its time. Please see my article Choosing the Proper Perch for Pet Parrots, Finches, Canaries and other Birds for more detailed information.

Goffin’s cockatoos must be kept occupied when left alone. Provide your pet with a rotating supply of heavy duty parrot toys, especially models that can be dismantled. I’ve had great feedback on the Fetch It Pets Fill Your Own Piñata – your Goffin’s should have a ball with that one.

Recently I wrote about the nutritional value of seed sprouts, and highlighted Vitakraft’s Sprout Pot, a most convenient way of growing them (please see below). Today I’d like to describe a method of sprouting additional types of seed at home.

Seeds to Use
The seeds chosen for spouting should be fresh and be comprised of as wide a range of plant species as possible. A simple way to achieve this end is to utilize Kay tee’s Forti-Diet Safflower Seed Blend as the basis of your new “garden”. You can also purchase a wide variety of seeds from most health food stores. Particularly nutritious, and favored by many birds, are safflower, lentils, mung beans, sunflower, wheat berries, barley, buckwheat, popcorn, brown rice, oats and wheat – but there are many others as well.

Producing and Using Sprouts
You will need to rinse the sprouts several times each day, so they should be grown in a colander or other porous container. Then simply proceed as follows:

Rinse the seeds and remove those that are broken or damaged.
Soak in water overnight.
Spread seeds on a colander and place in a dark, well-ventilated location.
Rinse 2-3 times each day; discard moldy seeds.
Shoots will appear in 1-3 days.
Drain to dry and serve.

Unused sprouts will keep well in a refrigerator for several days. You can also dry the sprouts in an oven (use lowest setting) and later re-hydrate or feed to your pets as is.

Additional Notes and Cautions
A wide variety of animals relish sprouts – try them on cats, tortoises, herbivorous lizards, red-eared sliders, hamsters, gerbils, chipmunks or other pets you may have.

I have not experienced any mold-related problems while sprouting seeds, but if this or bacterial contamination is a concern, you can add grapefruit extract to your soak water.

Ventilation is extremely important…the sprouts will invariably develop mold if kept in a closet or similar location. Try using a shelf blocked off by a cloth if you have difficulty finding a dark, well-ventilated site.

Popcorn needs to soak for 18 hours before being set out for sprouting; buckwheat only ½ hour. Overnight works well for most other seeds.

Some hobbyists have reported that fava, black, kidney, lima, pinto, navy and similar beans have caused digestive upset in pet birds, while others note no problems at all. I have used lima and kidney beans for eclectus parrots without incident.

You can read more about the nutritional value of sprouts, and how to grow them using the VitaKraft Sprout Part in my article entitled Product Review: Vitakraft’s Sprout Pot – a Convenient Method of Supplying Your Birds with Valuable Nutrients.

The nutritional needs of some of our most colorful and interesting pet birds are not met by seed-based diets. Lories and lorikeets, for example, require a soupy mix of fruits and nectars. Many gorgeous softbills, such as the shama thrush (Copsychus malabaricus) and Peking robin (Leiothrix lutea) subsist largely upon insects, and require a high-protein diet if they are to thrive in captivity.

Dietary Specialists
Such birds were, in earlier times, considered to be “delicate” captives, and hence were largely ignored by aviculturists, or left to well-heeled experts.Providing them with a balanced diet required painstaking daily efforts, and usually involved gathering a variety of uncommon ingredients and a good deal of cooking.

I well remember preparing, twice daily, meals for the Bronx Zoo’s rare Tahitian lories (Vini peruviana).Breakfast was put together at 5:30 AM, and consisted of a blended shake containing fresh papaya, blueberries, nectar (apricot, pear, peach and guava), yogurt, vitamins and mineral powder.Their second meal was comprised of several types of commercial nectars (designed for hummingbirds and sunbirds), each containing several ingredients and mixed separately, as well as various tropical fruits and insects.

Commercial Diets for Picky Birds
In time we learned that many birds formerly thought to be difficult captives were actually quite hearty and long-lived, given the proper diet. Commercial, pre-mixed diets evolved, and now we are in the happy situation of being able to keep a wide variety of interesting species in our homes. Pretty Bird Species Specific Food for Lories and Goldenfeast NectarGold for Lories and Lorikeets serve well as basic diets for the specialized lories and lorikeets. Pretty Bird Softbill Select and Higgins Egg Food are of great value in maintaining toucans, barbets, tanagers, bulbuls and a host of others.

Many seed eating birds, especially the various finches, consume insects and fruit in the wild, and nearly all will benefit from a bit of Softbill Diet and Egg Food from time to time. When such birds are rearing chicks, these foods are vital.

Live, Canned and Collected Insects

Live crickets, mealworms, waxworms and other insects will be appreciated by nearly all softbills. A very useful innovation to appear recently has been the Canned Insects (marketed for reptile pets) by Exo-Terra and ZooMed.

I urge you to give these a try for finches and other softbills. Zoo Med’s Bug Napper Insect Trap provides an easy (and interesting!) means of collecting wild insects – trust me, your birds will consider moths, beetles and the like a very special treat indeed.

Next week I’ll describe what was involved in feeding the Bronx Zoo’s huge collection of insectivorous birds before the advent of commercially-prepared diets.

Please see my article Providing Insects to Pet Birds…Useful Products Designed for Reptiles, on this blog, for more information on feeding softbills and other birds.

Parrots are among the most vocally gifted of birds, and rely heavily upon complex communication skills when interacting with one another. Their vocalizations originate in the syrinx, or “voice box”, and it is from this organ that their voices’ complexities were assumed to originate. However, as bird keepers know, parrots continually bob their tongues up and down when calling or imitating speech. Wondering why parrots might do this, researchers at Indiana and Leiden (Netherlands) Universities looked closely at this behavior.

The Parrot Tongue at Work
Their work led to the discovery that the tongue’s influence on sound may be as important to parrots as it is to people…in common with us, the sound that leaves the parrot’s voice box is not that which eventually exits the mouth. Parrot tongue action is finely controlled, and variations of a fraction of a millimeter can produce sounds that differ in character as much as do the human ‘O” and “A”.

As hobbyists know, parrots are both highly intelligent and social. So, in retrospect, it makes sense that they would have evolved a means of producing complex sounds to communicate with each other. Also, they can be quite choosy (maddeningly so, to breeders!) when deciding upon a mate – perhaps the tongue’s action imprints each parrot’s voice with a distinct quality, as it does in people, and this somehow functions in mate selection.
Parallels in People
These findings have important implications for human speech and communication behavior research. In birds as in people, vocalizing is largely a learned behavior, and specific areas of the brain are involved. Studies of these areas, and how they affect the parrot’s ability to imitate human voices, may shed light on the origin and treatment of human speech maladies.

There is always something new being reported somewhere in the world of birds.

You can read more about the parallels between human and parrot (and other animal) vocal abilities at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3430481.stm

On of my first jobs as a fledgling keeper at the Bronx Zoo was distributing grass sprouts at the World of Birds building.  Grown hydroponically (in water, without soil) the tiny green shoots were relished by nearly all of the zoo’s vast bird collection, from finches to ostriches.  Sprouts were given to the majority of the zoo’s other animals as well, including beetles, tortoises, elephants, squirrels and even supposed die-hard carnivores such as otters and weasels. 

Why Use Sprouts?

Zoologists and experienced aviculturists know that sprouting plants are packed with all of the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, enzymes and trace elements that are needed to get the plant off to a good start.  What’s more, these nutrients are in an easily digestible state, much more so than later on in the plant’s life.  The animal consuming sprouts spends little metabolic energy to reap great health benefits.

I have noticed that sprouts are sometimes overlooked as a food source for pet birds, despite the fact that they represent the easiest way of providing a host of hard-to-find trace elements and nutrients.  What’s more, nearly every common and not-so-common pet bird species – parrots, finches, canaries, doves, jay-thrushes, quail, ducks, to name a few – will gobble them ravenously.

Vitakraft’s Sprout Pot

I strongly recommend that you offer your pet birds the Vitakraft’s Sprout Pot.  The plantain, grass, garden cress and lettuce seeds it contains will sprout in 5-6 days, and a convenient water reserve will keep them fresh and growing thereafter. The water reserve is a particularly important accessory, as the sprouts’ nutritional value declines after 5 days or so.  Providing your bird with continually growing plant shoots is therefore the best route to take.  Seed packets to re-fill the unit are available.

Fresh, growing sprouts, as your bird’s reaction will confirm, stimulate the appetite and the foraging instinct.  The sprout pot serves, therefore, as a form of behavioral enrichment, allowing your pet to feed in a more natural and, I can’t help but think, “enjoyable” manner.

Another Sprouting Option

You can also sprout a variety of seeds on your own – its more time consuming than using the sprout pot, but is a useful way of increasing dietary variety.  Please look for my future article on this topic.  

An interesting perspective on the nutritional value of sprouts and other bird foods is posted at:

http://www.drkarenbecker.com/sec_feathers/total_avian_health.htm