Hi! I am Susan from FeatherHeads. We’ve been talking about how to care for your parrot. We have talked about your cage and where to locate it and how to outfit it. We are going to talk a little bit about the perches now that you chose for your cage.
Perches are very important for your bird. Imagine gripping on to a thin bar all day long, your hands will start to cramp greatly. Well, that is the situation a bird is in; he is standing on his perch all day, he even sleeps standing up most of them. So you want to choose a variety of perches that will afford him not only some fun, but exercise his feet and perhaps provide conditioning for him.
There are several different types of perches; some are destructible, some of the wood ones; some are made out of rope, which make it easy to climb and move around; some are edible, which provide nutrition and different types of supplements for your bird, and some called conditioning perches are good for keeping the nails trim.
About 95% of birds, you can avoid nail clipping if you choose the correct sandy perch. Another type of perch of course is just the plain old wood. He’ll peck at the bark here. This is a Ribbon Wood perch which has been sanded, but again he has some things that he can pick out. It is a smoother perch.
You want to choose perches with varying diameters within the limits of the size of your bird. So, if you have a Sun Conure, you are looking at perches anywhere from perhaps a half inch to three quarters of an inch, even an inch, you can allow your bird to have a space where he puts his feet out flat; that is good exercise for him. You want to allow him a sandy perch, which you place at the very top of your cage.
These are safe, I would say 99% of birds have no problems with these; and the few birds that have exceptionally tend feet, you are going to have to be careful with. But you place this at the top of the cage; the bird’s feet ideally should go about a half to two thirds of the way around this perch and it will keep the nails trimmed.
Another perch which is good which allows them, you can either place them vertically in your cage, there are some boings that hang vertically or across like this, are the rope perches. They are very comfortable, very smooth. They make it easy for many birds to climb around within their cage.
Birds are going to chew on their perches. This one is made out of cholla wood. They love it. It is an easy chew —fun. You should have some of these things that are fun to chew up and they can enjoy. And then there are some which are a little but tougher; the Java Trees. This one is for a large cage for a small bird; it has many different branches on it. There are curves, there are different diameters. It is very good for a small bird cage.
This is another type of conditioning perch. It has conditioning on the end; again, this one usually you place at the highest level of the cage that is where the bird is going to spend the most time. You want to place your perches so that they are not over top of each other. By placing perches right above each other you are going to find yourself cleaning perches frequently. You need a perch right by the food bowls. You probably need a conditioning perch up higher. If it is a fairly large cage then use a boing for mobility within the cage, and if you have got enough room, then choose one of the nutrition perches or something that they can chew up.
We have been talking about how to care for your parrot and choosing perches for your cage. Next thing we are going to talk about is toys, and the different materials, and what they represent for your bird.