| New Zealand's Nature & Science Discovery Centre |
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| There are many ways of keeping cage birds stimulated throughout the day. This is extremely important as birds kept in a monotonous environment will suffer from boredom and depression. This often leads to boredom behaviours such as feather plucking and self mutilation. Keep the environment changing and make sure you have a roomy cage that allows the bird to fly, not just to step from one perch to another. A long flight cage is best. Most birds LOVE hay - attach a handful to the cage or aviary with a cage clip. Whether you keep parrots, finches, canaries or quail, all will spend many hours happily sifting through a bunch of hay. This is a particularly cost effective way of enriching the lives of cage birds. Fresh branches - think of birds in their natural state - would they choose to sit on the same couple of perches day after day? Fresh branches, preferably daily provide interest and entertainment and are especially good for the birds feet as they are constantly adjusting their grip to the new perch widths. Safe branches include; willow, bottlebrush, teatree, fruit trees, birch, gum trees and pittosporum. Bamboo, though a little on the smooth side for perching is a favourite with most birds. Finches, canaries and budgies will take great delight in hanging from a large spray of bamboo secured in the aviary or cage. Following on from the above, if you have dowelling or plastic perches, throw them out! They are very bad for birds feet, causing at best discomfort and at worst arthritis and callouses. Perches should be natural branches as above and changed on a regular basis. Vogels bread baked hard in the oven and clipped to the side of the cage is another good way to keep birds occupied and it's good for them too. Parrots and parakeets like things to destroy - in addition to branches, try an egg carton attached to the cage or aviary or cardboard rolls - these will usualy be immediately shredded providing valuable activity for confined birds. For those birds that utilise toys, make sure these are rotated regularly to maintain interest. The same toy hanging in a cage for years on end is not providing alot in terms of environmental enrichment or mental stimulation. Have enough toys to make weekly rotations on a 4 week cycle. Eg; 2 new toys per week for 4 weeks = 8 toys in the toybox. What do you do to keep your birds entertained? If you have a great environmental enrichment idea that you would like to share - let us know at info@hippo.co.nz. |
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