Does Your Parrot Have Sore Feet?

Boots may have been made for walking but parrots don't wear them and if they could would they want to? Well that just might depend on the state of your birds cage or more to the point the state of the perches you have put in his cage.

When you first got your parrot cage it probably came with two wooden doweling perches. The sad news about that is these kinds of perches are not good for your bird's feet. What you should do is cut some natural perches from trees in your garden or local park (don't get caught!).

Birds are not like us humans. They don't always need to be standing on a horizontal surface. In fact if you look at them in the wild you will see they often "perch" on vertical branches. So make life interesting for your bird and put a variety of perches in his cage. It is not difficult to cut them to size and fit them into the cage.

Not only do perches like these give your bird some variety in his life they are also very good for his feet. The irregular texture and surface keeps your bird's feet exercised at the same time as keeping his nails in tip-top condition. These perches have the added advantage of being chewable and your bird is quite likely to strip them bare of any bark, and probably in quite a short space of time. When this happens just get back out into your garden and cut another perch.

Sadly there are cement perches being sold from pet shops, these are not good for your bird as they are cold, hard and very definitely not chewable. Pet shops will also sell you sandpaper to cover your doweling perches with on the pretext it will keep your bird's nails short and in good condition. Before you get taken in by this consider how well your feet would cope with walking on sandpaper all day - so why then would you even consider subjecting your bird to that kind of treatment.

You can make your bird cage or aviary really bird friendly with just a little imagination in preparing natural perches cut from real trees positioned horizontally and at varying degrees of verticality. Small branches can be easily cut and trimmed with little effort. Your birds life can be made so much more interesting and exciting with minimal effort on your part.