birds – Pamela Clark, CPBC

From Rags to Riches: One Cockatoo’s Story

About 20 years ago, I took a series of parrot care classes from Jamie McLeod in Summerland, California at her store the Parrot Menagerie. I drove two hours one way on Saturdays to attend and it was well worth it. I learned a lot.

One day in the middle of a class, Jamie said something I have never forgotten: “Parrots are what you make of them.” This statement offers in a distilled version all you really need to know about living with parrots. And to illustrate, I want to tell you about Georgie Pink.

First Phone Call

Wendy called to talk to me one day when I was working as a veterinary technician for Oak Hills Veterinary Clinic in Salem, Oregon. We had never met and she was not a current client at the clinic, but someone had told her about me.

Wendy was seeking advice. She had never had a parrot before and she wanted to adopt a Moluccan Cockatoo. I spent the next 30 minutes explaining why that was a terrible idea. I do not consider Moluccan Cockatoos appropriate for first-time parrot owners and believe that keeping them successfully in your typical home is a difficult task at best. The number of cockatoos without feathers is testimony to that.

Second Phone Call

Wendy was undaunted. Two weeks later, I heard from her again. She had found a Moluccan Cockatoo that she wanted to adopt. He was a male, about two years old. He had been raised in a bird store, then adopted to a private owner, who then took him to a second bird store for boarding and never returned for him. He had spent a year at the second store before Wendy and her husband, Lee, came upon him.

After inwardly calming my own emotions, I explained why adopting this particular bird was a really terrible idea. Male Moluccan Cockatoos can be more challenging than females (in my experience) and this bird obviously had not had the ideal beginning, since he had so far spent his entire young life in bird stores.

On her end, Wendy was researching cockatoos and visiting with many species at the store. She listened to recordings of Moluccans screaming, talked to people who had experience with them, and realized that I was right – the odds of long term success were not good.

However, her thoughts always returned to this one bird. In her words, “I would see him again and realize I would do whatever it took to launch him successfully in life for the long haul.” Wendy understood that her best chances of success would be to have some professional guidance for this.

Game On

About two weeks later, she called again to say that she had adopted the male Moluccan from the store and wanted my help in creating a suitable home for him. While harboring some significant doubts, I agreed to help. Game on.

I gave her a shopping list designed to create a suitable physical environment for him – a King’s 506 cage, an Atom, an outdoor aviary from Corner’s Limited, and lots of suitable toys. A big bird like that needs a big life. As she remembers it, “I was on the internet with my credit card until 3:00 am, making as much happen as I could before bringing him home.” This amounted to several thousands of dollars in investment, about which Wendy didn’t blink an eye. Within a week, she had them all. I was impressed. This clearly was a woman who knows how to commit.

Wendy named him Georgie Pink.

When I asked her years later why she adopted him despite all of my advice, she had this to say: “Because I am crazy? Because I want to be deaf? Mostly because he was abandoned and I wanted to be the one to love him.” (You should know that this is a woman who once found a litter of field mice in a household drawer and hand-fed them until they could be released into the nearby pasture.)

Creating Appropriate Challenges

Once we had the physical environment in place, I made several suggestions aimed at creating an appropriate psychological and emotional environment for him. He would need learning opportunities, challenges, and a broad variety of life experiences.

We began with teaching him simple behaviors like targeting, then gradually created more difficult tasks for him. Wendy had never trained a parrot before, but she dove into the experience eagerly. At this point, Georgie knows 19 tricks which he practices regularly. Wendy says that he is only limited by her own imagination, in terms of thinking of things to teach him. He loves his training and learns quickly. He recently mastered a “rooster call” in one evening.

Georgie also has an inexplicable fondness for hats and models them eagerly. Wendy is happy to oblige. (She also throws him annual birthday parties.)

Creating His Social Experience

We talked at length about the importance of an appropriate social environment. Wendy closely followed my relationship advice, preventing the formation of a pair bond by not encouraging too much close time physically. To this day, Georgie interacts cooperatively and happily with Lee and many other people.

I frequently read on social media that “cockatoos need cuddling.” The opposite is true. Such activities appear to trigger increased production of reproductive hormones, which can lead to feather damaging behavior, aggression and increased noise. It’s a recipe for disaster in most cases.

Instead of focusing on physical affection, Wendy established and has maintained trust through consistency, respect, and the use of positive reinforcement. As a result, Georgie Pink is a good psittacine citizen with no behavior issues.

A Diversity of Experience

She took to heart the advice that parrots need diversity in their lives. Creating an interesting life experience for Georgie was the next challenge. This has taken a variety of forms over the past 14 or so years that she has had him.

Robin and Aviary — Robin with the Cockatoos

During the lovely Oregon summers, Georgie spends most of his time outdoors in the three aviaries on the property. There he has lots to chew, a large variety of perch types, and the ability to forage for growing vegetables.

Along the way, Wendy adopted a second Moluccan and an Umbrella cockatoo. She has a close friend named Robin, who is equally as kind and savvy about animals. Robin adopted a Moluccan of her own several years ago. The presence of other birds has helped to augment Georgie’s quality of life. Conspecifics are important to companion parrots.

Wendy did meet with some significant challenges. Georgie hated to bathe. However, keeping her eye on the goals to which we had agreed, she continued to work to teach him to enjoy this. Wendy gradually exposed him to different types of bathing experiences, using positive reinforcement. And, just look at him now!

Wendy and Robin have established a cooperative rotation for the birds. Wendy’s birds have “sleep-overs” at Robin’s house and Robin’s bird comes to visit at Wendy’s. This exchange involves traveling in the car, different enrichment, and a slightly different schedule. This variety of experience serves to increase quality of life and keep things interesting for all the birds.

Georgie also enjoys visiting nursing homes with Robin. He engages happily with the residents there, always gentle and enthusiastic about making them laugh. In Wendy’s words, “He is a happy, boisterous, loving, funny boy.”

This is a cute, heart-warming, happy story. It also offers us some serious things to think about.

Cockatoos are over-represented in rescue organizations and sanctuaries. Many will tell you that large cockatoos should no longer be bred in captivity. Over 50% of my clientele are folks who have problems with their cockatoos.

Are cockatoos the problem? No. We are the problem. We are the problem because we don’t acknowledge the depth of life experience that they have evolved to need. They are not much different than we. They need space, the experience of the outdoors, the chance to go places and learn new things, and a healthy diet in order to be their best.

Moreover, this is true for all parrots. Our tendency has been to vastly underestimate the scope of life that each needs, while at the same time engaging in over-protective practices, often narrowing their life experience to sitting on a shoulder for hours a day.

I often hear owners talk about their desire not to “stress” their birds. There is stress and there is STRESS. We should never intentionally scare our birds. However, bringing them just slightly out of their comfort zone to teach them to accept new experiences through the application of positive reinforcement training is a life gift to them.

We have much to learn from Wendy. This incredibly caring woman set many things aside for Georgie Pink so that he could have the best quality of life possible. Her dedication to her parrots is unparalleled in my experience, surpassing my own. Many thanks to her for allowing me to share her story.

Independent Georgie Pink wishes all of you in the United States a Happy Independence day!

Thank you for reading my blog. I am Pamela Clark, an IAABC Certified Parrot Behavior Consultant. My passion is helping people with parrots by offering behavior consultations and publishing information you can trust. To access free resources, schedule a consultation, or subscribe to my newsletter (which is a different publication from this blog), please visit me at http://www.pamelaclarkonline.com. Until next time!

Please note: Jamie McLeod is also the founder of the Santa Barbara Bird Sanctuary where she continues her extraordinary work with parrots and other birds. If you are able, please send her a small donation.

10 Tips for Relationships with Parrots

It has occurred to me that this blog post could turn out to be just a piece of self-indulgent fluff. However, the topic fascinates me. How do we best craft long-term relationships with our birds? So, I ask for your patience as I sort out my thoughts and I will leave it to you to be the final judge of its worth.

Recently, I asked someone whether it might be possible that they had fallen out of relationship with their parrot. I’ve never asked anyone that before, and the question just popped out. It derived from an intuitive sense about what might be going on. My friend, an excellent caregiver whom I have known for years, just hadn’t been aware of what was really going on with his parrot. The bird had been startling and falling more often, but this had gone unnoticed until it created a wound.

It would make sense, wouldn’t it, if we did fall out of relationship with our parrots from time to time? Our relationships with people we love certainly go through ups and downs if they last for any period of time. We aren’t always kind and loving; at times we may fall into a state of disconnect. Obligations, guilt, and the needs of others can become overwhelming at times, generating the need to create some emotional distance.

Why should it be any different with our parrots? They live a long time, affording the opportunity to have a relationship that spans decades. They are socially sophisticated and have a deep sensitivity to us and our moods. They are emotional and intelligent, as are we.

I find it very odd that, in conversation with each other, we don’t seem to focus ever on the quality of our relationships with our birds. Do we even recognize that we have a relationship with each parrot? Do we instead have a tendency to objectify them?

When I read comments online about parrots, I see plenty of labels like “cute,” “needy,” cuddly,” “sweet,” “aggressive,” “nippy,” etc. But I rarely hear anyone talk about their relationship with their birds. That is good cause for concern because relationship difficulties often evolve into behavior problems over time.

Everyone agrees that relationships take work. Relationships with parrots certainly take work. Despite all of their good qualities, parrots don’t appear to exhibit much gratitude or awareness about all the work we put in to keep them well-fed and healthy in a clean, enriched environment. Not a one of my parrots has ever said “thank you” as I cleaned sweet potato off of the wall or “I’m sorry” as I scraped the bottom of my shoe off after having stepped on a piece of fresh pear. Beyond that, they apparently lack any awareness of the need to be nice. They are, to a one, incredibly unapologetic.

If I look back at my own life with birds which spans four decades now, I can easily identify periods when I was not as motivated to provide enrichment, got lazy about diet, and was not much inclined to provide behavioral guidance. I often surfaced from these times after attendance at a good parrot-related conference or a workshop with Barbara Heidenreich, once again motivated and re-energized.

My conclusion is that it’s normal for us to fall out of relationships emotionally with those we love from time to time, those with our birds included. Given that, the question becomes: How can we form the very best relationships with our birds and prevent them from falling apart?

When we take a new parrot into our homes, we should be forming a relationship by looking to the future and imagining what we want that to look like, just as we would with a small child we had adopted. I don’t think we do that. Evidence to support this would come from the number of parrots relinquished daily to second, third or fourth homes. If the number of parrots living in rescue and adoption organizations like The Gabriel Foundation or Phoenix Landing is any evidence, we don’t put much thought into this at all.

It’s quite popular these days to refer to our birds and other pets as “family members.” However, saying so doesn’t make it so.

I think most of us fall into relationship with parrots in the same way we form them with dogs and cats. Aside from their daily care, we interact with them physically by holding and petting them. It is soothing for us to have a well-loved cat or dog on a lap or right beside us and we have promoted parrots to a place alongside them, keeping them on shoulders much of the time. All of that physical contact meets our needs for love and companionship, but does it meet our birds’ needs?

Parrots are not yet domesticated, as are our mammal friends we keep as pets. Their needs are diverse and complicated – so much so that we still don’t know exactly what they are. Much of their behavior is rooted in instinct. When that peach-colored head rests on your chest does it mean that your cockatoo loves you or does it mean that he seeks to form a mate-like bond with you? Reproducing is high on his list of instinctive priorities, while this possibility might not even be on your radar.

Forming a relationship with a parrot by focusing on physical affection may be a feel-good practice, but it creates a host of problems. Based upon my experience as a behavior consultant, engaging in a lot of close physical contact not only encourages dependence for the bird, but serves as a trigger for the development of a pair bond. Once the parrot has formed a pair bond with you, what comes next is not a feel-good experience at all if you happen to live with other people

Parrots with pair bonds typically display a host of unproductive and problematic behaviors – aggression toward others in the home, increased noise, and a tendency to destroy feathers. They develop a desire to get down on the floor more often, looking for “nesty” spots and destroying woodwork in the process. They slowly lose their desire to interact with enrichment or do much of anything except pursue activities related to nesting.

For the human in the pair-bonded relationship, problems also derive from this focus. I would describe this primarily as a lack of vision when it comes to really seeing the parrot in front of you for all that he is.

Author Henry Beston once wrote: “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

There’s nothing wrong with showing our birds we love them by offering physical affection, but when we focus on cuddling with our parrots to the exclusion of other ways of interacting, I think we forget that they are “other nations.” Instead, we see only the “feather magnified” – a distorted image at best. The only way to stay in functional relationship with our parrots is to see them as the resourceful, complicated creatures that they really are, rather than as simply objects of our affection.

If you search through articles and websites about success in human relationships, the number available is staggering. It’s an amazing reflection of just how self-absorbed we can be as a people. Further, no one agrees what a healthy relationship really depends upon. The 10 Signs That You Are in a Healthy Relationship published on the Psychology Today website serves up quite different criteria than does 7 Signs Your Relationship is Healthy on the Huffington Post website.

How can we know that we are creating healthy, i.e. functional, relationships with our own birds that will stand the test of time? Here are a few thoughts, about which most of those publishing information on human relationships agree:

Respect: If we respect our birds, we don’t use force with them. Instead, we learn to use positive reinforcement to teach them to do the things we want them do. If a parrot won’t step up, we don’t push our hand into his abdomen to insist. Instead, we decide on a preferred food for which he will work, set up the request so that he is likely to comply, and reward him consistently when he does. We afford them autonomy.

Good Communication: We don’t assume we know how they are feeling. Instead we learn to read body language and change our own behavior according to what the parrot communicates. The only way our birds can “talk” to us is through body language and we understand this and respect them enough to learn their ways and preferences. If a parrot leans away from us when we offer petting, we don’t insist. Instead we back off and give him his space. Further, we make sure that our own communication is understandable. If asking for a behavior, we give clear, distinct cues so that he understands what we want.

Anger Control: If a parrot bites us, we don’t blame him. No matter how much it hurts, we control ourselves and instead of lashing out, we look at our part in the problem. Much biting stems from a lack of sensitivity to the body language they have tried so hard to use. If the biting continues, we take responsibility and seek help from someone who knows how to solve the problem. That does not include taking the problem to social media to have strangers weigh in. No one that I know who really has a foundational knowledge of how behavior works hangs out on social media answering questions for free. There is no reinforcement for doing so.

Empathy: We strive to see things from the parrot’s perspective. If a bird is driving us crazy with screaming, we examine what we expect from him and wonder if perhaps we are asking too much. Are we meeting his needs? Is he getting out of his cage for sufficient time each day? Is he getting enough enrichment, bathing opportunities, and exercise? Expecting a parrot to stay in his cage 22 hours a day or remain isolated in a bird room most of the time without exhibiting problems is simply expecting too much. In addition, if a parrot ever displays fear, we stop in our tracks and rethink what we were about.

Commitment: When things get difficult, we don’t automatically look at the option of giving the parrot up. Instead, we remind ourselves that this is a long-term commitment. Things won’t always be wonderful. Sometimes they get hard. We can accept this fact with some patience and perhaps a sense of humor and wait for other answers to come. We pay money for help when we can’t solve the problems that have arisen.

Problem Solving: We realize that keeping an undomesticated creature inside of four walls is a daunting task. We don’t blame the parrot when problems arise. Instead, we seek solutions and release our preconceived notions of how things have to be. Rather than staying stuck in black and white thinking, we open ourselves to other possibilities.

Compromise: I’m a great believer in the idea of creating balance in any social flock or family. Everyone must have a way to get their needs met, husbands and parrots included. This takes an open-minded approach that allows the family to strike a balance.

Enjoying Time Spent Together: We find ways to enjoy our birds that don’t involve cuddling and petting. We devise games. We put on music and have a dance party. We teach them to perform fun behaviors. We spend time outdoors together in a safe enclosure. We honor their need to enjoy parallel activities and bring them to the bathroom while we get ready in the morning or into the kitchen as we chop vegetables. We think about what they might enjoy.

Acceptance: We appreciate and respect the parrot for what he is… a flighted spirit. We don’t mutilate his wings to prevent flight without determining that this is absolutely necessary, rather than a matter of convenience for us. We accept him as the “other nation” he is, including his ability and need to fly. Every aspect of a bird’s physiology has evolved for the purpose of flight and this birthright should not be removed without an absolute need, such as preventing him from losing his home.

Trust: Each relationship is a bank account. Each trust-building interaction creates a deposit. And every time we spray the bird with water to stop screaming or force him to do something, we make a withdrawal. We cannot expect to have trust in these relationships unless our account balance is far in the green and stays there. It is possible to become overdrawn and it’s a difficult road back from there.

It is easy to get sucked into conversations about how these birds shouldn’t really be pets. That ship has sailed, my friend. Instead, let’s expand our thinking. Our parrots aren’t dogs or cats or rabbits or reptiles or horses. We need to create a new category of “pet ownership” that calls upon us to take into account their exceptional intelligence, resourcefulness, emotional sensitivity and long, long life spans. And, that takes some thinking!

This post isn’t about making anyone feel guilty. I get it that sometimes we must relinquish a parrot to another home. I get it that sometimes we do have to clip wings. I get it that there will be times when the parrot can’t get out of his cage for enough time. I never blame anyone for making those hard decisions. However, I think we can set the bar a little higher than we have in the past by simply thinking a bit more about how we should be shaping our relationships with our birds.

I would love to hear your thoughts about being in relationship with the parrots who live in your homes. Please send me a comment and I will be sure to reply.

Thank you for reading my blog. I am Pamela Clark, an IAABC Certified Parrot Behavior Consultant and licensed veterinary technician. My passion is helping people with parrots. To access many free resources or subscribe to my newsletter, please visit me at http://www.pamelaclarkonline.com. Until next time!

Parrots: Navigating the Ocean of (Mis)Information

Rarely do I work with a client when I don’t spend time debunking myths. I do this patiently most of the time. I enjoy talking with my clients and getting to the truth about things. I feel genuine distress, however, for those who experience such frustration at hearing that the information they worked so hard to find and have trusted is not reliable.

Mostly, I marvel at how resistant to extinction this incorrect information has become. I have been around long enough now that I was there when some of this material was originally published decades ago. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now. Nevertheless, it gets repeated ad infinitum online and in print. At this point, some of it qualifies as urban companion parrot legend.

Here are a few of the myths that I have addressed with people within the last two months.

Myth #1: Parrots need 10 to 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.” Not true. I believe that I have put this issue to bed with this previous blog post.

Myth #2: Parrots must be kept at warm temperatures since they originate in equatorial regions. Not even close. Parrots, like all animals, acclimate to the temperatures at which they live. (Dawson, Marsh. 1989)

Myth #3: Parrots must be protected from drafts. Not true…mostly. “Contrary to popular opinion, drafts are not harmful to healthy pet birds. A draft is really nothing more than a slight movement of air, usually accompanied by a mild temperature drop. A bird’s feathers provide insulation against temperature extremes far in excess of what a draft represents.” (Animal Hospitals USA, 2018)

This information about the need to protect against drafts originated decades ago when homes were not well-insulated. People would place canaries in front of windows, around which there was an icy draft in winter. This set the bird up for illness.

These days, most of us live in well-insulated homes that don’t have drafts, unless we create them artificially by using window air conditioners. These should not be placed where they will blow directly on a parrot.

Myth #4: Cockatoos are cuddly, needs birds who require more attention than other companion parrot species. Definitely not true. The real truth is that cockatoos display different behavior characteristics depending upon how they are reared. Current rearing practices that remove babies from their parents early on and force wean them to increase profits produce birds who arrive in their homes with a wealth of unmet needs. They appear cuddly and needy because they didn’t get the nurturing they needed in their early stages. Those who are parent-reared until weaning do not display these qualities. They are independent parrots who need no more attention than others.

How does it happen that incorrect information gets repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact? How do people get away with posting information that is untrue?

I’ve given this problem a lot of thought and have decided that the following factors all contribute to this problem. If we can understand how a problem occurs, we can get closer to a solution.

First, material written by experts is not updated regularly. This means that you can pick up readily available books and magazines that contain incorrect information. Knowledge is always evolving, but what gets published doesn’t always reflect this increased understanding.

If someone wants to reprint an older article of mine, I make sure that I update it first. My own knowledge has grown over the years and I want to ensure that people are reading what most clearly represents my current thinking. (I was wrong about a lot of things early on.) Authors of hard-cover books don’t always have that luxury.

Second, many people have a bad case of not knowing what they don’t know, coupled with a strong desire to be helpful. It feels good to dispense advice that fills a need someone else has. The opportunity to sound like an authority is very compelling. This leads to an endless amount of incorrect information being repeated online, since these helpful folks don’t check their facts before offering advice.

Third, the internet erases our ability to evaluate the signals we usually rely on when it comes to judging people and their information. Experts differ in their exact estimate of just how much of communication is non-verbal, but a range of 60% to 90% is generally accepted as accurate. (Eastman, 2018)

The largest component of any communication is non-verbal – body language, tone of voice, inflection, eye contact, facial expression. This means that, when you read online something that someone else has written, you are missing between 60% and 90% of important information about them and their message. On social media and websites, anyone can appear to be an authority.

Fourth, speaking as an authority is seductive. Some individuals who are very knowledgeable in some areas still give advice in others in which they are not, apparently unable to stop themselves.

Last, tribalism is alive and well in the “parrot community,” just as it is in politics. It is difficult to know when those publishing on social media have an agenda that is driving their posts. Much incorrect information is published with a real sense of urgency and commitment, simply because the speaker seeks to validate herself and her friends’ information.

I first decided on this topic two weeks ago, and spent some time searching online for examples to illustrate my points. Oddly, I was having a difficult time. The usual crap I read was absent from social media that day. Then, the two posts below dropped into my lap when a friend sent me these screen shots. These were published publicly on a Facebook group within the past week. Since they came to me unbidden, I deem it within the bounds of fair play to use them here.

Now, let me be clear before I go further. I believe this author has good intentions and I don’t think she meant any harm. (I did contact her personally when I received the posts and she understands that I would be using them here.) She clearly cares about nutrition and wants every parrot to be eating a healthy diet.

However, as so often happens, she dispenses valid information along with some very incorrect details. This illustrates the BIGGEST problem with online sources, which I did not list above. Most sources offer mixed advice – some good, some bad. This astronomically complicates the issue of finding trustworthy information.

Let’s examine these posts using critical thinking (the objective analysis of facts to form a judgment):

I am not a parrot behaviorist. I do not have the credentials. I am certified as a parrot behavior consultant through the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants (IAABC).
There is no such thing as a “parrot nutritionist.” There is no educational program or certification for this title. Instead, many of us are knowledgeable about nutrition due to intensive self-study. This is an extremely complex topic due to the number of parrot species and their diverse regions of origin, making it highly unlikely that anyone will be sporting this title in the near future.
Vitamin supplementation will not cause organ damage when a parrot is severely deficient in nutrients. Added vitamins will never be a valid replacement for a good diet, but can be very helpful in the sort term. Calcium is especially helpful and is used widely in cases of chronic egg-laying. Any vitamin supplementation undertaken should always be at the direction of an avian veterinarian.
These posts were written in response to something one of my previous clients had just contributed on that forum. Unintentionally, this client had misrepresented the recommendations I had given her. The author of these posts did not contact me to verify that the information was correct before publishing her opinion.
The author dispenses nutritional advice for a parrot who has had a life-threatening medical condition in the past, without asking the individual what her veterinarian had advised her to feed.
The author herself provides a great deal of nutritional advice in her posts, although she herself is not an avian nutritionist. Her qualifications, according to her profile, are that she is a “diamontolgist” (which is misspelled) and “former esthetician.”

To correct the record for those of you who care:

I do recommend pellets as a staple in the diet, as a recent blog post discusses.
I do not recommend TOPs pellets as the primary dietary staple.
I do not recommend a plant-based, mostly veggie diet.
I do recommend limiting carbohydrates and excessive fats in the diet.
I do not recommend vitamin supplements unless a veterinarian has suggested their use.
The diet I had been coaching the client to feed had been recommended by her veterinarian.

I will leave you to arrive at your own judgement, but I think that these posts are an excellent example of the ways in which misleading information gets established as fact each second of every day online on websites and parrot forums.

So, how can you protect yourself when you go online for information about parrots? We certainly can’t ignore the value of the internet when it comes to researching and learning, but how can you identify sources that you can trust? How do you decide who really knows what they are talking about?

I suggest asking the following questions and evaluating the following criteria when deciding whose information to trust. They have served me well over the years.

What is the educational level of the author? People can certainly become well-educated through independent effort, and well-educated people can certainly publish incorrect information. Therefore, this criterion will not serve as a definitive indicator. However, I believe that those with higher education will be more likely to research their topic, have a higher commitment to publishing truth, and may be better able themselves to identify trust-worthy information.
Spelling matters. If you see someone dispensing information about Scarlet McCaws, that should serve as a red flag.
What credentials does the speaker have and are these related to the information being posted? We should hold people accountable for what they publish. It should be acceptable to ask about a speaker’s depth of experience in the topic under discussion and the speaker should graciously welcome the chance to explain how she knows what she knows.
Does the individual provide sources to support the information being published? When research about a given topic is available, it should be cited.
Does the information posted contain generalizations, such as “Amazons need….?” Behavior is a study of one. What any given parrot needs depends upon his previous socialization and training. Such declarations cannot possibly be accurate when we are speaking about parrots.
Is the speaker a recognized expert in the field? Has she published peer-reviewed journal articles? Is she certified by any institutions who recognize knowledge and achievement?
If the speaker is dispensing nutritional or veterinary information, does she herself have real work experience of any duration in the field of avian medicine?
Does the speaker publicly criticize or speak poorly of others? True professionals are respectful and are supportive of others in the field.
Follow a resource trail. Identify someone you consider to be a knowledgeable resource, and then ask who they promote and whose information they trust.

One excellent resource recommends evaluating information for: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose (CRAAP.) (Illinois State University. 2018) To paraphrase, this source recommends asking the following questions:

Determine the date of publication. Is the information outdated?
How applicable is the information for your needs? For what audience was the information intended?
Is the author a knowledgeable source? Examine the author’s credentials or organizational affiliation.
What is the accuracy of the content? What type of language is used and does the information seem to be well-researched?
Why was the information written? How might the author’s affiliations affect the slant or bias of the information?

This is a problem that belongs to us all. If we are ever to be able to go online and trust what we read, we must each take individual responsibility for evaluating the information we find and for being careful about what we post. Thus, the most important question of all becomes this:

Where does YOUR level of commitment lie when it comes to the welfare of companion parrots? When you are online, is it more important to be liked and validated or more important to stand up for parrots and their welfare?

If it’s the latter, you will ask for credentials before trusting information that you apply to your birds or pass along to others.

If it’s the latter, you will question everything you read and use the criteria above to evaluate the information you accept as true.

If it’s the latter, you will not repeat information or offer advice unless you yourself have hands-on experience in the area under discussion and/or have absolutely verified it to be true. “I heard it somewhere” or “I read it in a book” is not good enough.

If it’s the latter, you will support those who work hard to publish truth about parrots.

If you just want to chat online for fun or to get validation, be clear about what it is you are about. On the other hand, if you are trying to learn, then please first don your critical thinking cap. Don’t lend truth to this slogan: Critical Thinking Skills… the Other National Deficit!

It’s up to all of us to stem this never-ending tide of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation that undermines our ability to provide a good quality of life for our birds, to effectively deal with behavior problems, and to maintain their physical health over their optimal lifespans.

If we step up and accept this challenge, just think what we might accomplish when it comes to the political climate in this country! Get out there and vote everybody!

References:

Animal Hospitals USA website. 2018. “Bird Care: Drafts.” Accessed October 22, 2018. http://www.animalhospitals-usa.com/birds/bird-care.html

Dawson W.R., Marsh R.L. (1989) “Metabolic Acclimatization to Cold and Season in Birds.” In: Bech C., Reinertsen R.E. (eds) Physiology of Cold Adaptation in Birds. NATO ASI Series (Series A: Life Sciences), vol 173. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0031-2_9

Eastman, B. 2018. “How Much of Communication is Really Non-verbal?” The Non-Verbal Group, 548 West 28^th St, Ste. 231, New York, NY. http://www.nonverbalgroup.com/2011/08/how-much-of-communication-is-really-nonverbal

University of Illinois, Guides at Milner Library. May 2018. “Determine Credibility (Evaluating): CRAAP (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose).” https://guides.library.illinoisstate.edu/evaluating/craap

Chop Mix: Perfect Nutritional Supplement or Popular Nutritional Disaster?

I often choose blog topics because of something I’ve recently seen or heard that troubles me. This one is no exception. After talking to a few clients recently and reading comments online, I’ve grown concerned about how Chop Mix is being prepared and fed to companion parrots.

What is Chop Mix, you ask? Chop is a mixture of finely chopped vegetables with cooked grains, cooked legumes and/or beans, and other ingredients. It has been described as an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to preparing supplemental food for birds.

I and others have used some form of the chop mix concept for a couple of decades. However, in the past several years, this form of feeding parrots has gained huge popularity, mostly thanks to the efforts of Patricia Sund and others who have written so widely about it.

I love the concept and recommend it to others. Feeding Chop, in addition to high quality formulated foods, is a great way to get healthy variety into our birds’ diets. It makes conversion to new foods (pellets and vegetables) easier. It is relatively simple to prepare and serve, since it is typically frozen for storage, eliminating the need to prepare fresh food every morning.

So, why my recent concern? I think there are a couple of problems with how Chop is being prepared. First of all, people seem to have gotten the idea that the sky’s the limit – that you can put anything into Chop and the resulting mix be a valuable thing to feed their birds. This is not the case. The nutritional value of Chop is only as good as the ingredients you put into it. Some individuals are adding ingredients that really should not be offered in any quantity to companion parrots on a daily basis.

When I searched for the term “chop mix” as I prepared to write this, I immediately found 21 different websites that all offered recipes for Chop. I stopped counting after two minutes. I found chop mix for cockatiels, chop mix for Eclectus, chop mix for African greys…and the list goes on. The “recipes” were all quite different from each other, as was the advice directed at owners.

On those 21 different websites, I found a lot of strongly-worded, very confusing advice. Some recommend including uncooked grains, which is definitely not a good idea. Grains should always be at least soaked and sprouted, if not cooked, in order to make them more digestible and eliminate the enzyme-inhibitors present. Some people advise adding raw yams or sweet potatoes; others say these must be cooked. Others include vegetable or whole wheat pasta, while their counterparts recommend no pasta at all. Some sites advise the addition of fruit; others warn against this, since it creates a wetter mix. How is anyone to understand that Chop must be prepared conscientiously with all of this different advice floating around?

I see two main problematic strategies being used when preparing Chop Mix. The first recommends the addition of high quantities of carbohydrates to prevent the mix from being too wet. The second involves adding too many “goodies” in the desire to create a mix the parrot will eat.

The creation of a truly great Chop poses one distinct challenge. When you chop up a bunch of vegetables and then freeze them in a plastic bag, the cell membranes of those vegetables rupture, releasing all the moisture that was inside of them. Thus, you can wind up with a very wet mess that your birds won’t eat.

Those dedicated to the Chop concept have gotten quite creative over the years as they have attempted to deal with this inconvenient problem. Some individuals recommend making large batches in the bathtub, advising that this way all the juice will go down the drain, thereby solving the problem. Ahem.

I don’t care how much bleach you might have used, it’s not a good idea to prepare food in your bathroom, no matter who you intend to feed it to. Take it from one who has spent years staring at microbes through a microscope lens. If you need to make a large batch, you can always use large plastic storage tubs reserved just for that purpose.

Second, “all the juice” contains many valuable nutrients. You don’t want that going down the drain. You want to preserve as much of it as possible, hopefully getting it into your bird at some point. So, the second option to which people resort is the addition of dry ingredients that will soak up the moisture. Suggestions for this include pasta, rolled grains, certain seeds and others.

Consider this photo, which I lifted off of the internet. Please ignore the fact that there seems to be a parrot taking a bath in the middle of a bowl of Chop. I want you to look at the ingredients. Can you see how much pasta is in there?!?

That is a problem. You simply can’t add that amount of refined carbohydrates to a mixture and believe that it’s going to be a healthy thing to feed your birds. I have written previously about the dangers of unbalancing your parrot’s diet by feeding high levels of fatty foods and simple carbohydrates in the diet. If you rely on dry carbohydrates to soak up excess moisture, you will have a parrot eating too many carbs in his diet.

I also see folks getting a little crazy with “additions.” I once watched a speaker at a conference prepare a large beautiful batch of Chop. I then watched as she ruined it by dumping in whole bags of nuts, pumpkin seeds, and dried sweetened coconut. “Egads,” I thought. Any parrot eating that mix will be able to load up on goodies and ignore the grains and vegetables.

Chop can be a wonderful supplemental food for parrots…or a nutritional disaster. If we strive for the former, we must embrace the fact that a good Chop Mix must be prepared carefully according to certain guidelines.

First, it should conform roughly to the same percentages of protein and fats as balanced formulated diets contain. This can be estimated by simply looking at it, if you have a fundamental knowledge of the different categories of nutrients (protein, fat, etc) and which ingredients contain them.

Second, the overall percentages of “ingredient types” matters. A good Chop Mix should contain roughly 40% grains, 50% vegetables, and 10% other ingredients. By using that formula you stand a better chance of approximating the protein and fat percentages in formulated foods. You also will avoid creating a mix that allows your parrot the opportunity to fill up on things like coconut, nuts and pasta due to their too-high percentage in the mix.

Third, the quality of your ingredients matters. The grains used should be in their most natural form, as close to their harvested state as possible. White rice and other refined grains should not be used.

Nor should you include white or vegetable pasta. Cooked and/or sprouted whole grains are best. Vegetables must be in their freshest state and washed carefully. Additions to control moisture or create greater interest must be chosen very carefully and used sparingly.

I am not going to provide a complete description here of how to make Chop. You too can Google “chop mix” and find 21 recipes in two minutes. But I do have some tips for dealing with the excess moisture. I will share with you what works for me. I am able to create a mix my parrots love without sacrificing their nutritional status to the carbohydrate gods.

First, do not include:

Vegetables high in water content, such as cucumber, chayote squash, jicama, celery. These can always be added right before serving, once the base mix has been defrosted.
Fruit, unless this is freeze dried. Fruit has too much moisture to be included and should be limited in the diet anyway. A few pieces of fruit can be added to a Chop serving right before feeding.

Second, when creating your base mix that you will freeze:

Slightly undercook your grains, which will allow them to absorb a bit more moisture once mixed with the vegetables. Sample them yourself to determine doneness. The grains should be tender, but still a bit firm. Do not include mushy grains – these will support more bacterial growth and only contribute to your moisture problem.
Allow the grains to thoroughly cool before adding the finely chopped vegetables.
Add dry, uncooked pasta that is made from legumes, quinoa, or brown rice. If you’re going to do so, add in a small quantity only. Do not use pasta made from white flour, which includes most “veggie” pastas.
Add a bag of Trader Joe’s Super Seed & Ancient Grains Blend – this works as well as pasta or better to absorb moisture and adds better nutrition.
Add raw, uncooked oat groats or a small amount of rolled grains.

After defrosting and before serving:

Cut a tiny corner off of the bottom of the defrosted bag of Chop. Allow the liquid to drain from the bag into a large measuring cup. Store this in the freezer for adding to birdie bread.
Add raw hulled hemp seed.
Add sprouts – these will continue growing slowly in the food dish or refrigerator, absorbing some moisture.

This is the last Chop Mix that I prepared. It is dry, with individual pieces easily separated from each other. The ingredients I used this time included: kamut (cooked with cinnamon), broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, lightly cooked winter squash, sugar snap peas, green beans, red bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, parsnips, yellow squash, zucchini squash, sprouted white winter wheat, sprouted rye berries, sprouted sunflower seed, sprouted mung beans, sprouted lentils, sprouted millet, sprouted poppy seed, sprouted fenugreek, sprouted buckwheat, sprouted sesame seed, sprouted purple barley, corn kernels, 100% lentil pasta, garbanzo beans (canned and rinsed), raw oat groats and raw hulled hemp seed.

Greens and fruit are added right before serving, directly into the dish. This works best since they are such fragile foods.

A final tip: it’s important to limit the size of your servings. You will see that the portion of Chop I provide to my greys, Amazon and Moluccan is relatively small. They each get ¼ level cup of the mix each morning. By limiting the amount served, I further avoid the problem of any bird picking out only what he wants. They are encouraged to eat it all and they still have room for pellets, which they also enjoy. For more information on Chop, please go to Life from Scratch. This article is the best I have ever read about making Chop Mix.

I would love to hear from readers. I’m sure that many of you have better ideas than I do. If we collaborate, I’m sure that the quality of Parrot Chop will only improve for all parrots! Please add a comment to share your thoughts.

Thank you for reading my blog. I am Pamela Clark, an IAABC Certified Parrot Behavior Consultant and licensed veterinary technician. My passion is helping people with parrots. For more information and to access many free resources, please visit me at http://www.pamelaclarkonline.com. Until next time!