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| Once you have a new bird
there is a lot of things to consider to make their environment safe.
Your bird should have its wings trimmed. This is relatively easy
to do but if you do not feel comfortable doing it, most breeders,
pet shops or an avian vet would do this for a small charge. The birds
wings should be clipped when you purchase it, but with time will
grow back in and have to be clipped again. Many a bird owner lost their
bird by thinking the wings are still too short for flight and once
outside the bird flies away.
My son lost his beloved cockatiel that way, the bird was found several days later about 10 miles from where they lived and returned to him (In exchange for a 100 Dollar reward). Should your bird ever fly away and stay in your yard in a tree and will not come down, about the only thing to do to get it out of the tree, spray it heavily with a water hose. You will need to get it soaked really good immediately and that makes its feathers too heavy and when it tries to fly it will tumble out of the tree. Be prepared to catch the bird to keep it from getting hurt. We recently had a young Mitred Conure do just that, the first attempt of spraying just made him fly to another higher tree, but we did get him soaked and he tumbled from limb to limb . The ironic part was, we had spent quiet a bit of money at the Vet's because he came to us with a broken wing and the Vet told us he would never be able to fly after the break had healed so we never bothered to clip his wing. To clip the wings, have one person hold the bird and spread out the wing. To prevent the bird from getting stressed out cover its head with a towel. Clip about 6 - 8 feathers, leaving the first 2 flight feathers intact. Clip both wings that way, and your bird will be able to fly a little. They can easily get hurt if only one wing is clipped, since this will throw them of balance when they are trying to fly, with both wings clipped they make a rather fast decent to the floor. Make sure you do not cut feathers too far back, if you can see a dark vein in the shaft of the feather, do not cut there. This is a blood feather and will cause your bird to bleed.. There are a lot of poisonous house plants, so please be careful when your pet is out of the cage. They love to chew on anything and this too could prove fatal. Do not overheat Teflon frying pans. They will omit a poisonous gas that is fatal to birds. I have known some people to throw out all their Teflon coated pans after buying a bird. Normal use of these pans is fine, but if they ever get too hot, they can be fatal for your bird. Ceiling fans often injure birds. However if your birds wings are clipped, you do not have to worry about that one. Hot water. Many birds love water and when out of their cage love to take baths. Therefore be careful if you have a sink of very hot dishwater or a tub full of bath water. Also when cooking be careful birds do not get to close to hot pots or hot stoves. Should your bird ever get
hurt and is bleeding,
there
is a product on the market called Quick Stop for birds, available in most
pet stores, that helps to stop the bleeding. If you do not have this
product on hand, try normal household flour or cornstarch. Both these prove
very helpful to stop bleeding. Apply
powder and pressure with hand till bleeding stops.
Be aware if your bird can fly it will most likely head for your glass window or glass sliding door unless covered by a curtain. Lead is poisonous for birds so beware. Those beautiful sun catchers you might have hanging on the window can spell disaster for your bird, if it chews on the lead part. We stay away from any toys for our birds that have a rope on them. We have used them before and the birds unravel them in no time and we had a Sun Conure hanging upside down with his leg wrapped in one string of the rope. We believe he hung that way all night long. He was not hurt except for the stress it must have caused in him, but it could easily have gone the other way. So no more rope toys for our birds. |
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