- Hey everyone, JamieLeigh and-
- Dave here from "Bird Tricks"
and today we're gonna be talking about seven habits
of highly effective parrot owners.
- This is my idea. (laughs)
- It's a great idea.
- Thank you. - Yeah.
- If things on this list surprise you,
let us know in the comments.
If you can check all the boxes, yes to you.
Kudos to you, many points to you, many imaginary,
very valuable points.
- It's like the game show where the points mean nothing.
- Yes, I love that show.
- With Drew Carrey, it's a great show.
- It's my favorite.
- Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Whose Line Is It Anyway?
- Yes, it's like that.
- Only we're not that entertaining.
- We're not.
Not even close.
- Okay. So number one, do you wanna start?
And these are in no particular order.
- Yeah. Number one is sleep.
- I, what? - Yeah,
just like you were saying earlier,
your preface was like,
"Well, it might surprise you,"
but yeah, I think sleep is one of those critical ones.
- And this is one that I see people mess up.
They either offer too much sleep or usually it's not enough.
And usually it's in a high traffic area,
like sleep in the living room
when all of this crazy stuff is always going on
and you're getting about five and a half hours.
So adequate sleep should be prefaced with this.
Just having a habit
of intentionally prioritizing your bird's sleep.
- And a little tip to make that happen.
Actually in the room right behind us
is our quarantine room
and somebody needed in there to check
out the air conditioning unit
and they're like, "Oh, want me to hit the lights?"
because turning the lights on and off is such a habit.
And I was like, don't touch 'em!
- Don't touch 'em! - 'Cause they're all
on timers so that we have the habit
of exactly 12 hours of sleep, lights go on and off,
we don't even have to think about it.
- Yeah. It's awesome.
Okay, so number two,
I don't think is gonna surprise anyone
that has seen a single video of me here
on the channel or talk to me in person
or has any experience with me.
- If you're new here, you'll have no idea.
- Diet!
Yeah, this will probably be my number one,
but anyways it is such a high priority.
A lot of people, especially on consultations,
will be like "I've got this, I'm nailing diet,
here to the six different brands of pellets I feed."
And I'm like, ah, ah,
or putting fruit in their chop or just all the things.
There's so many things you can do wrong with diet.
So getting diet right,
again, it just comes down to prioritizing it
and I think a lot of people tend to feel overwhelmed
when it comes to diet,
so really taking it one step at a time
and making achievable goals for yourself.
So, and I've talked about this
in other videos as well but I'll just leave it at that,
I won't go on a rant and rage, promise.
- Oh, come on. That's what people came here for.
- I mean. - Right?
If that's what you came here, hit that like button,
make sure you subscribe, leave those comments.
- No? There's so many
ranting diet videos on the channel you guys,
like, they're there.
All right. - So, so,
a quick hack to make sure that your diet
is actually a habit is just simply follow what we teach
in our family-friendly parrot formula,
do seasonal feeding in the morning.
You can pre-make a huge batch
and have your one pellet, preferably our pellet,
on hand so you can give that in the evening.
And that's just a great way to make it a habit for you.
But making sure again, that it is actually habit, is key.
- Yeah, for sure.
I think this third one's actually gonna surprise people.
- I think so too.
- And it's a big deal to me
and I feel like we get actually a lot of flack
for prioritizing this one.
- Flack from the neighbors or-
- I mean, yeah. - Well.
- When you put it that way,
- Only one neighbor. - yes.
Sunlight, adequate sunlight.
And I know this is really hard for a lot of people
to offer their birds, but I feel like it's essential.
It's incredibly important and it's underrated.
- Yeah. - People think that-
- Parrots aren't nocturnal. - What?
- I know, right? - Shocker.
- You would be surprised with some of the comments.
- Don't be one of those guys. - Yeah. Don't, don't do that.
Or do so we can pin it and make fun of you.
- Oh, okay. (Dave laughs)
Okay, so number four is your jam.
- All right. Number four is exercise.
How do you make exercise a habit with your parrot?
Include 'em in your daily routines that you do.
You could take 'em out,
especially if you like to free fly,
it's just amazing to get these birds to exercise
and I'll even backtrack it to like,
what if my bird can't fly?
Even doing walking recalls as we call it,
is a great way to just kind of build future recalls,
hint, hint. (laughs)
But it's a great way to kind of build some muscle
for when they do start to get their feathers back.
They're already conditioned to walk
or eventually fly to you.
- Or climb. - Yeah.
And it's just a great way to get that energy
out so that they have less aggression
and they have less of these mood spikes throughout the day
'cause they burned off all that energy,
whether it was walking or flying.
- Yeah, love it.
Alright. So next is basic training behaviors.
And these might look different for some people.
What I would consider basic is definitely target training,
that's kind of your out training behavior,
where you can socialize,
you can get a bird back in the cage, like anybody can do it.
You know, it's like your get outta jail free card I feel
but it's actually like get back in your jail. (laughs)
- And it's not always free because sometimes you need
to be using your bird's favorite treat
and not some times but all the times.
- Yeah. - Keep in mind,
just going back to basics.
And to that point, step up is one of the most
overlooked kind of basic training behaviors.
So when you take your bird out in the morning,
take that opportunity to set it up
as a formal training session and use that click
or use your bird's favorite treats.
I know it sounds almost ridiculous to say-
- But my bird loves me,
he just wants to step up for me all the time.
Except for this few times lately where he just bites me.
- Right, 'cause birds in the wild love humans,
and they're nocturnal.
(JamieLeigh and Dave laughing)
All right. - But seriously,
okay, and then one more,
just one more in there that would be
a basic behavior to me is going onto the scale.
I feel like that's incredibly important
and that should be one of your foundations
of weighing your bird every day, so.
- Like Blueberry. - Like Blueberry,
she just flies to the scale to prove I am
in need of breakfast, I'm not lying.
- She's like, I am 29 grams. I'm starved.
- She's usually lying. (laughs)
It's like I'm down a gram, does anyone notice?
Yeah, it's so cute.
- I'm the same way.
- I'm down a gram? - Yeah,
and then I'm like, I'm starved.
All right, you can do this one.
- Oh nice. I don't want that topic.
You go for it. - Nope, you go for it.
- Okay. So this next one is housing,
which I know sounds very broad and it could be a bird room,
it could be a walk-in aviary,
it could just be a really large cage that you ordered.
It could be, you know,
somebody recently had bought some cages
and just kind of like,
made it work because it was really hard for them
to find correct bar spacing for small birds,
but a huge cage
and so they had made this beautiful,
I literally told her, I was like,
your house looks like Pinterest.
(ethereal music)
Like it's so beautiful.
And where did you find these cages?
And she just went, you know,
full blown to find exactly what she wanted for her birds.
And I think that housing and really put a,
putting a lot of emphasis in, again,
prioritizing amazing, immaculate housing for your bird,
will not only make your life easier
but will make your birds really happy and content
in their environment.
And like, what's better than that?
I think that's what we all really truly want.
- Yeah, we've seen people get super creative too,
with having indoor outdoor-type housing set up.
And then for us, we just have the aviaries
so we don't have multiple cages, but we have,
that's a different story.
We have aviaries that we had custom casters kind of,
created for it so that these things can just wheel out
and outside like in this room out here,
there's a full deck that the birds can slide out
onto during the day, get their sunlight.
And we built in some of that immaculate housing
as one of our habits.
- Yeah. So I think, you know,
there's some really unique ideas out there
and I think the more creative you are
with making sure that your bird loves it, the better.
And even these foraging trees,
like I've seen these set up in like, bird rooms and stuff
and I just think they're awesome, so.
Whatever you come up with.
You make it cool.
- I wanna add to that,
that the housing means your bird should be in there,
a lot more than, you know,
people think that you have to be out 12 hours a day,
but they really thrive on being
inside an aviary that's properly equipped.
Or in this case, like a tree stand.
- Yeah. (parrot squawks)
You are so cute.
(Dave chuckles)
- You are so distracted. - I'm sorry.
He is just looking at me and I was lookin' at him
and his face was puffy and I'm like, oh.
- I was looking at her, looking at him.
Last one is enrichment.
- Yeah. Which kind of goes into housing
but I do feel like enrichment could be all sorts of things.
It could be toys.
It could be your interaction.
What are you-
- I was looking at you,
I was distracted.
(JamieLeigh laughs)
So cute. I love you.
- This is getting awkward. - Yeah. Only for them.
- Yeah. Okay anyways, moving on.
Enrichment can be a lot of different things.
So like I said, it can be toys,
which I know a lot of you, I hear this all the time,
like, oh, my bird loves this one texture
or this one toy so I'm buying like 50 million of those.
And it's like, that's great,
but we should have your bird be able to chew
on a variety of toys and really like,
keep offering different textures and variety
because you really want them to be able to enjoy everything.
I think enrichment could go back to housing.
It could just be like, that you change it up.
We have some clients where they have the cage
that the bird lives in,
but then they also have a bird room
that it spends like the majority of the day in.
And so maybe the cage is just for sleeping.
And I just think there's all forms of enrichment.
I think free flight is a type of enrichment.
I think that training- - Training-
- Ahh! - Ah, jinx!
- He's the best.
- It's funny, you're talking about enrichment
and I have this Christmas movie stuck
in my head where the kid only had one toy.
It was A Boy Named Christmas
and he, his only toy was a turnip
with like a drawing on it and his evil aunt like-
- Aww. - cooked it for him,
- And he ate it. - and he ate it.
But you know, the enrichment is you should have more
than just one toy.
- We just ruined that movie. - Yep.
- Anyways. - Yeah.
- If you guys could keep it down, that would be great.
- Hey, if you could just not be distracted.
- Quiet on set. - That would be awesome.
- Quiet on set. (parrots squawking)
- Can you tell they finished their breakfast?
- Like we're good.
- Well, good thing we got to the end of the list.
- I think so. - Because,
(parrot squawks) that's annoying.
- Distracted.
(JamieLeigh and Dave laughing)
It's super annoying. - It's so annoying.
- I don't understand why people have birds.
- Why? They're so annoying.
(Dave laughing)
However, - They're adorable.
- Comet, Comet is getting cute with his clicking
because at least he's playing with a toy.
Tusa- - I know,
speaking of enrichment, we buy him this whole toy
and that clicking is him just eating the tag.
You get it, buddy.
- These birds today, these birds today.
Which birds should we use?
Do you think this is gonna go well?
- Let's use the obnoxious one.
- Does it ever go well?
- Hey, we should do, speaking of obnoxious ones,
our next video should be with just the sun conures.
- Just watch it on mute with subtitles. (laughs)
And us going like this. - Yeah.
All right. - All right,
well let us know if that's what you guys wanna see
'cause I'm sure that'll get a lot of,
thumbs up. - Ehh.
No. - No.
Well, thanks for watching guys.
Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already,
if you want some more obnoxious bird sounds.
- We could just make this a musical soundtrack.
I'm just thinking, listen to this.
(hip-hop techno music) (JamieLeigh beat-boxing)
Oh, if there's any talented musicians out there,
I would love to collaborate
and make music out of bird sounds
and like create a rhythm and have it actually a song.
- But it has to be catchy. - Yeah, we could do it.
Well, I can't but, (parrot squawking)
somebody else. - Somebody else could.
- Yeah. - Somebody much more talented.
- I could provide the birds.
- We'll provide the obnoxious sounds we use to put together.
She said it's so annoying.
- He's the most fun to road trip with though, by far.
Just in the truck. - What's the most annoying
sound your bird makes?
I know you would think it was like, a macaw screaming,
but this, this is probably
the most annoying sound that Tusa makes.
(parrot squawks)
(laughs) I was like, silence!
All right, silence. (parrot squawks)
Thanks guys for watching. - Have a good one.
Let us know if you agree. (chuckles)
Nobody got- - No.
- we don't care, we don't wanna know.
(parrot squawking)
(JamieLeigh and Dave laughing)