Feathered Family Inc.

The importance socializing your parrot.

We love them, we honor them, we feed bathe and play with them. As good parrot companions we take them for regular vet visits, but do we socialize them? We should.

Imagine  your parrot in the wild for a moment. Dawn breaks and the entire flock wakes together, fluffing, preening, and beginning the forage for food. Now remember where your parrot actually lives. I don't know about your home, but in mine dawn is a loud time. Each parrot greets the day with enthusiastic calls and songs, and does its best to get us up to join them. Its morning, they want breakfast, and they want to spend time with the rest of the flock. Its a normal healthy instinct, and one which many birds do not have fulfilled.

When I discuss socializing your parrot I don't mean play time with you. Most everyone (excluding the crazies) who loves their parrot will spend time with him or her. I'm talking about truly social time. Time to meet new people, time to preen one another, time to explore new areas and see new sights. Your parrot may have been born among humans but not very long ago its ancestors were wild birds who's home changed every day. That instinct is passed through the genes, just like the one for wood chewing and preening. Not all parrots appreciate time with other birds, but many do. Even when the birds are just in the same room it is a sense of flock, and birds need this. They also need to forage. Yes, I know you keep their food dishes full of healthy and delicious foods, but birds need to forage. Hide a few nutriberries around the house for them to discover, place a favorite treat on a skewer for them to nibble off. Foraging is an important part of socializing for parrots. Parrots need time out of their cages in safe environments where they can explore. If the weather permits and you take the proper precautions taking a bird for a walk outside can be a wonderful experience, for both of you.

Now that we've mentioned outside we come to the crux of socialization. Parrots were not meant to know only the people they live with. Many of the issues in parrots, such as screaming and feather destruction, can be linked back to lack of socialization. Sexual aggressiveness can be extreme easily in cases where you are the only person your parrot knows, who else is it supposed to bond to? A parrot needs to meet and greet the world.

Even the shy parrot can benefit from meeting new people and entering new situations. As long as you are willing to provide for his or her safety they can begin to look forward to their adventures with you, and it is a joyfully feeling to watch your bird solicit you when you walk up with your bird harness in hand. We try to make sure that the companion parrots that live with us are exposed to new people and situations at least once a week. Thats a great deal of work, but we do not have any biters in our home. There is very little sexual aggression, and our parrots genuinely seem to enjoy their trips. It may be as big a trip as to the vet for a checkup, or as small as a walk down the block, but we hold ourselves to this because it stimulates mental well being for our companions.

In conclusion, I ask you to remember that when you brought your bundle of feathers home you made a commitment, not only to feed and water this bird, but to do all you could to stimulate good mental health in him also. The time it takes to teach your parrot to wear a harness, or the money involved in getting an acrylic carrier so that the bird can see is a small amount compared to the heartache you save yourself and your bird in the long run.