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Making sure
that you provide the best possible "house" for your bird is a key element to
having a healthy bird. When your bird is in it's cage, it is inevitable that
it will be on a perch! Thus, perches need to be made comfortable for your
birdie whether it is Manzanita, a wooden dowel, acrylic, plastic,
Eucalyptus, etc.
Making sure that your bird has
perches that he can fit his foot comfortably on is a must! The bird's foot
should not be stretched and it should not be touching underneath of
the perch. Make sure that your bird has different size
perches. If he is always on dowels or on the same size perch, his feet will
cramp into one position and arthritis or other diseases may occur. A
perfectly round dowel is bad for your bird's feet. Make sure your perches
vary in diameters and in hardness of the wood or material they are made out
of. Parrots actually "rest their feet" by gripping perches of different
diameters. The tree branches that they perch on in the wild are not all the
same diameter. Even on one limb, there is a variance in diameter...some
parts being thinner, others wider. Rarely are they the same size from one
end of the limb to the other. Just like our feet get tired during long
shopping trips and feel better when we change shoes, our birds' feet feel
rested by changing perches because the grip is different for different size
perches. To help with this, you can look for "orthopedic perches" that are
made with various sizes on the same perch. Using different perches gives
your bird the variety he would find in the wild.
Cleaning the perches is critical. There are many safe sprays to clean with
including: Poop-off, Kennelsol, bleach water, Avimate, VirkonS
or Chlorhexiderm (Nolvasson). A wooden perch is harder to clean
than a plastic perch, but wooden perches also give the bird different
diameters of perch to exercise their feet on.
Living like we do (on 2.5 acres with probably 40 trees!) our birds get
natural branches for perches as well as "concrete" or "sandy" perches. We
have found that Eucalyptus, Cottonwood, Fruit trees (such as Apricot, Peach,
Plum, Apple, etc.), Manzanita wood and Grape vines make the best. You can
use other kind of wood including: Ash, Beech, Birch, Cactus Wood, Crabapple,
Dogwood, Elm, Fir, Mulberry, Pine, Popular, and Willow. We like the natural
branches because the birds like to chew on them. They will destroy branches,
though...so have a lot handy
 . BEFORE
YOU PUT THE BRANCHES IN THE CAGE, MAKE SURE THAT THAT TREE HAS NOT BEEN
SPRAYED WITH INSECTICIDES OF PESTICIDES!!!!! We use a 5 gallon bucket with some bleach/water mixture to clean the
branches. Make sure that they sit for 20-30 minutes in the mixture. When you
are done soaking them, put them in the sun to dry...our hot AZ sun will kill
any remaining bacteria.
This site also has a link
that is very descriptive on how to make perches for your birds
http://www.mdvaden.com/bird_perches.shtml and
he even includes a blurb on how to tell stainless steel from the
dangerous zinc washers.
In each of our birds cages, we have at least one cement perch. They are also
called "Sandy perches" and they help keep their nails short. There are some
concrete perches that are twisted.
The
"twisted effect" helps make it so that they are "exercising their feet" by
gripping different holds. They come in all different sizes and colors. They
are rather expensive but we love them and they sure help the birds.
The birds instinctively go to the
highest perch in the cage, so you may want to put your concrete perch
highest so that your bird sits on it the most. I have also heard that if you
put it in front of the food/water dish, they will have to stand on it. Don't
get me wrong, the bird will still need their nails clipped but if they have
a concrete/cement/sandy perch, you won't have to do it as often. They are
extremely hard to clean and if you have one by food or veggie dish, they
will get dirty quickly. In order to really work well, the bird's foot
needs to reach at least 2/3 to 3/4 of the way around the perch...not
touching front toes to back toes or you need to get a bigger perch. However
good the cement perch may work, you need to have other perches in the cage,
too....it would be like standing on sandpaper all day...it would start
to hurt!
We do not recommend dowels, they
do not exercise the feet enough due to their conformity in diameter and will likely as not cause arthritis!!!
Sandpaper perch covers are not recommended. They are too rough and can cause
wear on pads and open sores on the bottom of your bird's feet. The cement
perches are not sandpaper covered. You can buy concrete perches here:
as well as
on www.ebay.com... Ebay has everything!!!!
Make sure that you place your birds perches at several different heights,
like a tree. If they are scared, they will go to the highest perch like they
would in the wild...top of the tree. Again, make sure that the diameters
vary so that the bird can find the most comfortable on as his/her "roosting
spot."
Make sure to clean and disinfect perches as needed. Allowing your birds to
perch and play on dirty perches is bad because old fermented food can very,
very, very, very easily have bad bacteria in it. Birds often "clean up after
dinner" on their perches so their "eating spots" will need to be cleaned
more often. You will probably want to place the most easily cleaned perches
next to their food bowl. This may sound like "Common Sense," but here
goes....placement of the perches can make a difference on how often they
need to be cleaned. Put them so that they do not cross over or under other
perches.
When you put perches in a cage,
make sure that they are stable.
Your bird needs to feel secure, not like the perch is suddenly going to slip
out from under him....IT MAY!!! We attach our perches to our cages with
bolts and nuts so that we don't have to worry about falling perches and
crushing or injuring birds.
OK, almost done...Make sure that the perches have several different
diameters and heights in the cage. Pick out perches according to the type of
bird, size of bird, behavior of bird, etc. Choose perches carefully as they
are a big part of a healthy and happy parrot!
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