- Whoa, baby Bo,
baby Bo, baby Bo.
Hey everyone.
Jamieleigh here with bird tricks along with baby Bo,
a baby blue macaw.
And today I want to talk about baby bird feather care,
because it's a beast all in itself.
These guys aren't always the greatest about taking care of
their feathers, and as you'll notice,
especially with baby birds,
going through a weaning process,
they tend to get stressed bars on their feathers.
No matter how smooth of weaning process it is,
it's stressful for any baby bird to go from being fed to
having to do it itself because geez, that's a lot of work.
(upbeat music)
Muah.
- Did you know that there's several dozen things
that you can do in the birds first year of its life
to put these beautiful things into rescues
for the rest of their life?
- We just created a baby bird course.
So check out the link in the description.
If you feel like you need help setting your baby bird up for
success, but in the meantime,
enjoy this baby bird related video.
All right, so I will brief this with baby birds are hard
on their feathers and you need to condition baby birds
to like and enjoy bathing early on
and get yourself some really high quality aloe.
I will leave a link in the video description for the aloe
that I sell on my website cause I 100% love it.
So the one thing that I want to say about the aloe is that I
found a lot of aloe sprays on the market
that I just didn't like,
and it didn't feel good about putting on my birds feathers.
So I've been using aloe for gosh,
over 15 years now on my own birds.
And it specifically started with one of my macaw's
who just tends to have a naturally more dry skin than my
other birds.
And this was happening no matter what climate I was in.
So I lived in Florida for six years. It happened there.
So aloe is something that I've just kind of adapted for all
of my birds. And it's also something that I use on clients,
birds to make their feathers just super shiny.
You can kind of think about it as a feather conditioner,
so to speak. It just really, really hydrates the feathers.
And so if your bird is not into taking baths
an aloe bath will go a lot longer way
than just a normal water bath.
So I highly recommend it for those birds,
especially that are just like not wanting to bathe at all,
but definitely use it for baby birds,
just so that they're used to it. What are you doing?
You don't even know, weirdo.
So feather care can be really, really tricky for these guys.
I had six foot diameter aviaries for my macaws when they
were babies and Jinx and Tusa did great with that,
but Comet, my Camelot McCall that's yellow dominant.
He just found a way to ruin his feathers.
He would actually hang onto the bars of the aviary,
push his tail forward and then like almost sit on it
and he would break off the tail feathers by doing this.
Now baby birds are just kind of
clueless, to the fact that or
oblivious to the fact that they have these long tails and
they have these long,
beautiful feathers that they actually need to take care of
because they use them for flight.
They can just be really, really rough on them.
So oftentimes baby birds look really rough.
Bo actually looks super good for the baby bird.
My baby birds had like all these feathers sticking out,
especially at the end of the end wing end of the wing.
And he has a little bit,
you can see that he's like a little rough,
but it's just from him,
like throwing himself at the side of the aviary when we come
in cause he's so excited and he's not,
he's not being the most gentle on his landings and he's just
kind of like do it. And baby birds tend to be full force.
They're still learning all of their whole control panel.
And so sometimes things aren't smooth and gentle,
like with older birds.
So just understanding and being okay that your baby birds
gonna look a little rough.
The more space you can give them the better. I will say,
like although the six foot diameter aviary worked for my
other macaws,
I wish I probably would've had double or triple that for
Comet, and maybe that would've made a difference.
Maybe not.
Maybe he still would have found the side of the aviary and
done the exact same thing, but who knows,
maybe not so bigger is better as far as the amount of space
that you can provide.
Also conditioning them to accept bathing is really,
really important.
Our birds have been used in shows in the past
and PR appearances.
And sometimes one of them will get pooped on because they'd
be housed together.
And so one would just have like a poop stain on its back
or on its tail looking a little gnarly, and I,
instead of having time to fully bathe that bird,
I would just take a spray bottle and,
and spot check those specific spots.
And in my birds are very conditioned to allowing me to do
this and just kind of clean off certain areas.
You're shifting your weight,
are you going to poop because I don't want to be pooped on,
get over there.
And so conditioning your bird even to allow that is really
cool, especially with tails.
Cause tails tend to get things on them.
His actually looks pretty good,
but being able to just kind of like pick off impurities and
stuff and having your bird allow that is really awesome and
important, especially for baby birds.
Baby birds also tends to be a lot more tolerant.
So now is the time to condition them to be okay with stuff
like that. I actually did it to Bo this morning.
He wasn't as crazy about it because it,
but there was like a little spot on his chest where I think
he had gotten food or something else.
And it was just kind of like sticky.
Like the outer parts of the feathers are just kind of sticky
and not looking and not laying perfect. And it bothered me.
And so I just took this aloe spray that I have,
that I sell on my website.
I'll leave a link in the video description and I just
sprayed a couple spots and then just smooth them out with my
fingers and made it nice.
So being able to kind of spot check your bird like that and
conditioning them when they're really young is super duper
ideal because he was very tolerant of it where maybe an
older bird would
not be okay.
Also starting with areas that they feel a little less.
So the chest is obviously not a good example of that.
They feel that water, they feel everything all right there,
but doing maybe an a part of the wing that's at the very end
like wing tip or even the end of the tail would be much
easier to get away with spot checking,
then a different part of the body. So starting easy.
Cause as you can tell,
he doesn't care that I'm holding onto his feathers.
And so if I wanted to spot check any of this and clean any
of this, which it doesn't need it,
he would be very awesome about it.
And I could do that and give it a treat if I wanted or give
praise or give petting.
Cause baby birds tend to be more into the there's other
forms of reinforcement than treats.
You're so cute.
Okay, what is there, what else is there about feather care?
I would say it's just kind of the common sense ones where,
knew that was coming,
where space is key.
So they aren't hitting or dragging through poop or hitting
on stuff,
giving them enough space because they are very
what's the word, clumsy,
and then keeping their stuff clean so that
they aren't as likely to like push against all that stuff.
So, so keeping it as clean as possible,
cause they're pretty darn messy.
The other thing that's really important to me that I feel
like is undervalued in the pet parent community is sunlight,
natural sunlight.
There is no substitute for natural sunlight, sunlight.
I mean, you can do a great diet.
You can give all the space in the world,
you can use the aloe,
but unless you have the ability to give your birds natural
sunlight, like that is just, oh,
it's everything for their feather care.
So finding a way to do that, whether it's an outdoor aviary,
whether it's like taking your bird out on a travel carrier
or on a harness,
some way of exposing your bird to natural sunlight for its
feathers, just so good.
Even if you could only do about 15 minutes a day,
that would just be fantastic.
And I know those of you probably live in the same climate
that I do, where you get all four seasons.
So I really try to get my birds as much sunlight as I can
when the weather permits like it is, I'm all in.
I don't take flight trips over the summer.
I am like my birds need to be in all the sunlight
as much as possible.
And then I do actually take trips specifically for free
flight in the months where it starts to turn cold
where I live.
So I go to someplace warmer so that I can get out and get
that sunlight.
It's just so, so important, you guys.
And I think that a lot of people almost looked down on
outdoor aviaries. I know that I get comments about it,
about keeping my birds outside. People just don't like it,
but these birds were naturally meant to live outdoors.
Their feathers need what the sun has to offer.
So personally,
I feel like it's a must and you should find a way to offer
sunlight to your bird,
whether it's a baby or whether it's older,
it's just as important.
And the feather care's kind of the same,
other than older birds tend to take better care of their
feathers overall, also baby birds,
if you guys are feeding and especially if you're feeding
like mushy gooey foods, which babies tend to be eating,
you're going to have a lot more mess around the face,
especially if you miss with that syringe or however you're
feeding or they're just messier.
So I like to be able to, again, it comes back to that spot,
checking, just being able to like spray a little spot and,
and kind of loosen the stuff that's around there.
I think it's really, really important.
So again, the aloe goes a lot longer way than just water.
And so it's my preference for my birds.
I don't make every single bath, a aloe bath,
but I do try to do it often enough,
especially in the sunlight.
So on flight trips at the very end of the day when
everybody's done flying and they're exhausted,
I bring out the aloe bath,
and I'm just like spraying everybody down,
their just loving it in the sunshine.
It's just really, really great combo.
It's just the best combo.
So those would be my recommendations for baby bird,
feather care, and just feather care in general,
to be honest.
So I hope that this has helped you and hopefully you can
find ways to offer this to your birds.
Hey guys, don't forget to like, and subscribe.
If you find this video helpful or any of my videos helpful,
I would love to have you on my subscribers list so that
you're notified every time I publish a new video on birds.