Bird Care - How to Outfit a Cage

Transcripts

Hi, I am Susan from FeatherHeads. We have been talking about how to care for your parrot. You have purchased your cage and now we are going to talk about how to outfit it when you have brought it home. First of all, you need to select your location in the home for your cage. Dont put your cage over a heating or an air conditioning vent; the drafts can be harmful to your bird. Be careful if you put your cage in a window, that you are not leaving the bird exposed to sunlight all day while you are at work. Make sure you check this before you leave the bird unattended for long periods of time. Alright you have got your cage where you want it now; we are going to start to fill it. First off all you need to put something in the bottom of the cage; whether you choose something like a cage catcher which is a commercial paper, cut to fit the tray or you choose newspaper, or you choose one of the many beddings available such as Carefresh.

This is a very good bedding for the bottom of cages, colorful too. Okay, you have chosen to put your bedding in; now we are going to show you where to put some of your toys and things. This particular cage has a hook for toys, but toys should be put away from the food bowls, so that the bird is not hanging on them and dropping things into the food bowls. So, we have two food bowls over there on the side, one here; you can choose to put your toys up here. Make sure that when you put your toys in, you screw the hooks tight. Many birds can unscrew them; make sure you do them tight, you dont want your bird to catch his leg. One of the things that may be worth investing in is a Wide Jaw Quick Link in stainless steel. These can never harm the bird, they are easy to place on all the cages, and they are safe.

Be careful if you buy toys, particularly for smaller birds; some of the toys have hooks that are too small for the bird; you dont want something that the bird can catch his leg in. If you like a toy and you get it, just change out the latch for it rather than leave it with the bird unsafe. Okay, another item that you may want particularly for a small bird is some sort of swing. This one is made of sisal; I would place it back here where again, away from your food bowls, but the bird can play with it and move around in his cage. This particular cage also only has a single dowel across it. You are going to want to put another perch in. Now, the highest perch in the cage is usually where the bird spends the most time.

So, you want to locate the perch that you want the bird on most of the time at the highest level. This particular one is a conditioning perch which helps to keep the birds nails trim. You would probably locate that up at the top of the cage. As you can see, the cage fills up very quickly. We have been talking about how to care for your parrot and outfitting the parrots cage. Next thing we are going to talk about is the type of perches and why you need different types of perches for your cage.