The Uncaged Bird

If one thing was drilled into our brains at Moorpark College, it’s that captive animals must have stimulation. Keeping them fed and watered is not enough. They need exercise and something to do, something that excites them. Modern zoo planners know this and do their best to meet the needs of various species while designing their enclosures. Zookeepers know it too and are always searching for ways to motivate their charges. Anytime I see an empty tissue box or a large cardboard tube, I think of my rats. When conscientious dog owners see a wide open field, they might think about how much their dog would love to run through it, right?

It didn’t seem so unnatural to me that my pet bird should be allowed to wander around a little outside his cage. I started doing this with our mynah bird years ago by simply leaving the cage open and letting him come out on his own for an hour or two. Mynahs kind of hop around like crows so it was fun to watch this bird trip-trap around the hard floors. Later, when we had a cockatiel, I opened the cage in hopes he’d climb to the top and just sit there on a perch I’d set up. He did this, but he also wandered further and further before I’d get worried and have to put him back in.

When I delivered medicine one day to the home of a client from the animal hospital, she showed me her bird room where she housed about 20 finches. There were at least six small finch cages on two or three narrow shelves. Each cage had its door open and the birds were flitting around, resting on other cages or jumping in and out. I was in awe. I never thought it could be done with small birds. Their keeper, Kathy, said they all settle in their cages on their own at night. She hung a sheet in the doorway to keep them from flying out, but it served mostly as a psychological barrier to keep them from trying.

I was inspired that day and would from then on have an open door policy with my birds. It was just a matter of conditioning in the beginning. I now open the cage door in the morning and feed the birds in the evening so they’re motivated to return to their cage. It’s important to note that I don’t give my birds an abundance of food. I only give them enough to last the day. This is one way of getting them to eat their healthier pellet food while limiting the amount of seed, but it also motivates them to go back to their cages at night. Only now and then does one give me a hard time about going back in. Sometimes I have to give one extra time or turn a few lights off to get a defiant one to cooperate.

When I get a new finch or a parakeet, it might take a few days for them to learn how it works from watching the other birds. The worst thing I’ve had to do is catch a small bird in a net once or twice and put it in the cage. They usually get it after that. If you’re going to give this a try with your own birds, start by leaving the door open for an hour or two at first. The bird may not even come out, but he’ll start thinking about it and it may be days before he gets up the courage. Just be patient, but also be home and ready to keep an eye on things. Any animal that has freedom could potentially meet with trouble. In my next post, I’ll share some of the calamities we’ve experienced as a result of giving our pets liberty.

Our cockatiel, Weston, experiencing our Open Door Policy. This is not his cage, but an extra one for climbing on and into.

How I Killed My First Cockatiel

If the owner of this first cockatiel ever reads this, I’m in trouble. And if enough people keep reading my blog, they’re going to think I’m a real exotic pet keeping loser. I can’t help it. I feel it’s important for people to know that mistakes will be made. It happens in general life and it happens with raising children and pets, especially exotics whose lives are so much more tenuous than those of dogs or cats. For me, it’s often the primary way to learn. Not that I’ve made major life mistakes, but I tend to take chances that sometimes don’t end well. Enough said.

As I’ve mentioned, working for veterinarians affords some advantages. One client indicated she had a hand-fed baby, gray cockatiel she couldn’t keep. She lived in my hometown of Chicago Heights which I suppose made me feel somewhat akin to her so I agreed to help her out. While I normally honor the previous owner by keeping an animal’s given name, I didn’t do that with this one. She hadn’t had the bird long and was calling it Elmo even though, without the bright orange spots on its cheeks, it looked to be a female. On top of that, I’m of the early Sesame Street era and I never really liked Elmo since he arrived late on the scene and started stealing the show from Kermit, Grover, Herry and Cookie. I named the bird Genny and set her up in a nice cage with food, water and toys.

As with all new arrivals, I didn’t bother her much those first few days so she’d have a chance to adjust to her new surroundings in a spare room of the little cottage where we lived at the time. One thing I learned working at Midwest Bird and Exotic Animal Hospital was that an all seed diet was bad for a bird’s health. If you wanted your bird to live a long, healthy life it was best to feed a pelleted diet. Pellets are similar to dog or cat kibble except they’re designed with bird nutrition in mind. They come in various colors and sizes for different birds. This was still fairly new thinking, but I was all in so I started Genny on pellets right away, while still feeding her seed. I could have also offered table food like corn, beans and rice, but I only did that if we had leftovers from our own human meals. The doctors always stressed that it should be a gradual transition from seeds to pellets, adding that it could take weeks or months. You’re supposed to slowly decrease the seed while increasing the pellets. Makes sense, right?

Well, I was so proud of myself because I had that baby girl eating pellets within about ten days. I knew that if an animal was hungry it would eat so we could just do away with the seeds altogether. This was over fifteen years ago and I truly can’t remember what made me think she was eating well, but whatever it was, I was terribly wrong because I found her dead at the bottom of the cage one morning. Of course, I was shocked and bummed and confused all at once. I wrapped her up and took her to work with me so somebody could hopefully give me an explanation.

Without even doing a post-mortem exam, it was obvious to the doctors and technicians that she was very, very thin. Her keel, or breast bone, was very prominent with no “meat” around it. I told them I had recently moved her to a pellet-only diet and thought she was eating fine. The simple fact is that I was wrong. She was still a young bird, maybe only a few months old, and shouldn’t have been expected to eat just pellets. She was dead now and I couldn’t go back. I hate that feeling. For one, I felt I had left the previous owner down. On top of that, my arrogance had made an animal suffer, something I would pay good money to never allow.

The client who gave me that bird came into the animal hospital at least once after that. I never told her what happened and she, for some odd reason, didn’t ask how Elmo was doing. There had been a long time between visits to the animal hospital, so maybe she wasn’t sure if I was the same person who had her bird or maybe she expected me to say something first. I always wondered about this. I’ve never been any good at lying and I’m glad I didn’t have to, but if she would have asked, I would have saved her grief and said the bird was fine, but that I’d changed her name to Genny. I suppose I thought disappointing her just a little with this truth was preferred over disappointing her a lot with the whole truth.

It was a costly, blatant mistake that I’ve not since made again. I’ve made others and I’ll surely write about them, but none that cost an animal its life, so I hope you’ll keep reading. My two current cockatiels are pushing 16 years of age and eat some pellets, but mostly seeds.

This is our cockatiel, Weston. His coloration is called "normal grey." If it was a female, there wouldn't be any yellow on the face and the orange patches would appear dull or faded.