Medicating Your Parrot

I have an older blue-fronted Amazon parrot. She is at least 25 years old. Since she was an adult when she came into my life she is likely quite a bit older than that. Her body is certainly showing evidence of aging. She was diagnosed with arthritis a number of years ago and has been taking glucosamine daily ever since.

Giving her glucosamine is fortunately relatively easy. Avian veterinarian Dr Scott Echols gave me a resource for excellent quality supplements. I learned from him that supplements are not well regulated and you can’t always be sure you are buying what it says is on the label. The source he recommended is a company called Usana. I buy glucosamine tablets from them and pulverize them. I sprinkle the powder on cooked quinoa (a high protein grain) that my parrot adores.

To pulverize the pills, I use a mortar and pestle, a tool I was introduced to in college chemistry class. It just takes seconds to get a fine powder when you use this ancient tool. I bought mine for a few dollars at World Market. I also use the mortar and pestle to pulverize the heart worm pills I give my dog. Despite their claim to be tasty, my dog is not fond of them. After I grind the pill up I mix it with palatable treats such as cheese or tuna juice. They taught us about acids and bases, how to make soap and the formula for alcohol. But now it turns out the handy dandy mortar and pestle was the best thing I gained from chemistry class.

I also recently learned about another way to give medications that has exciting potential for the parrot world. Dr Susan Clubb and I recently lectured together at the Kaytee Learning Center. She mentioned she has delivered some medications transdermally, especially Haloperidol for parrots with feather destructive behavior. I LOVE this idea. Can you imagine simply gently rubbing a medicated cream onto your parrot’s foot? The medication is then absorbed through the skin. This wonderfully non stressful way of delivering medication is perfect to help maintain trust between the caregiver and bird. Too many birds learn to fear their owners when they end up being toweled over and over to be medicated. It can take a long time for some parrots to trust humans again. Unfortunatley this method is not yet readily available for all types of medication.

This predicament caused by restraint is why I made an eBook to help people learn how to train their parrot to take medication from a syringe. It is a pretty simple behavior to train and one I demonstrate at most of my parrot training workshops. Best of all it also helps avoid having to restrain a parrot to medicate it. However most people don’t take advantage of this resource until it is too late and the bird is already sick. This is a resource to use now, before your parrot is ill. To encourage people to train this behavior right away, I actually offer this resource for free. All you have to do is visit this link for the free eBook offer. You will need to go through the motions of “buying” the eBook. You will see a box for a promo code. Enter the code PARROTRX. This will take the balance of your order to $0. Don’t click “Make Payment” unless the balance says $0. You will immediately be sent an email with a link to download the book.

Please note the eBook works best on PC’s. We had a hard time finding a resource that would work well with both PC’s and Macs. (Wish those two would play nice with each other.)

Just recently I received this wonderful email:

"I want to let you know that your video on medicating birds was extremely helpful. I was able to train my 30 year old Congo African Grey parrot to accept oral antibiotic medication within minutes of being offered the medication in a syringe while he was sitting on a free standing perch. I have been toweling him for years and it was never a positive experience for either of us. I was absolutely shocked when he immediately accepted the antibiotic solution. Your video helped turn an unpleasant experience into a fun event. He willingly swallowed more of the antibiotic than he ever swallowed when held in a towel. Thank you so much for your video. I just wish I had known about it sooner!

Emails like this make my day. It makes me happy to know there is one more parrot who has learned taking medication can be fun! Medicating a parrot is something all parrot owners will likely face at some point in their bird’s life. I hope you find the ideas and resources above helpful to you when that day comes.

Barbara Heidenreich
Copyright 2011 Good Bird Inc
www.GoodBirdInc.com

Scale Training Parrots. A Life Saving Behavior

What simple behavior could save your parrot’s life? Scale training! Sounds silly but getting and recording regular weights on your parrot can be a life saver. One of the things we know about parrots is that they have a tendency to mask signs of illness. The theory behind this is that in the wild standing out as a sick parrot might make you a prime target for a predator. Therefore it is to your advantage to “pretend” to feel good, even when you don’t.

Many times when a parrot is not feeling well, they consume less of their diet and water. Sometimes they don’t process food properly. Such parrots can drop weight very quickly. Because parrots can easily fluff up their feathers and look quite robust, a weight loss may not be visible to the naked eye. However the scale doesn’t lie. A sick bird can drop quite a few grams, even overnight. And this rapid weight loss can be a signal to parrot owners to take their bird to their avian veterinarian or at the very least keep an eye out for more signs of illness.

A scale that can be used to weigh a parrot can be purchased at most office supplies stores. Look in the postage scale section. I was able to find one for around $30. Be sure to pick one that weighs in one gram increments. Five or ten grams increments are too great of a fluctuation for weighing parrots.

Some people prefer to use a scale that has a perch attached to it. Avian specialty stores often carry these. However I found it quite simple to train a parrot to step from my hand onto the flat surface of a scale. Just be sure to place the scale near the edge of the counter so that the tail of the bird can hang freely. If the tail is resting on a surface it will influence the number on the scale. You can get step by step instructions on how to train this and other behaviors helpful to the health and welfare of your parrot from my DVD Training Your Parrot for the Veterinary Exam.

In this clip you get to see Blu Lu the Blue Throated Macaw and Delbert both demonstrating how they step up onto a scale. I weigh them about one time per week just to make sure they are maintaining a healthy weight. Keep in mind each bird is an individual and the perfect weight for your bird may not be perfect for someone else’s. For example, I have two Amazon parrots in my home. One has weighed about 306 grams for over twenty years. The other typically weighs in at 460 grams. Neither is obese nor skinny. They are just right for their body size.

It takes practice and exposure to a number of parrots, but another great way to evaluate your parrot’s condition it to feel the muscle on either side of their keeled sternum. This is called body condition scoring. In the Summer 2010 (Vol 6 issue 2 )of Good Bird Magazine there is a chart provided by the Kaytee Learning Center to help you interpret what you are feeling for when checking a parrot’s condition by touch. This does take some practice and it helps to have an experienced person by your side to help you learn how to do this properly and tell you what to feel for. But if body condition scoring doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, rest assured that scale training is super easy and something most parrots can learn to eagerly do in one to two training sessions. I hope you will give this behavior a try with the parrots in your home. It’s a life saver!

Barbara Heidenreich
www.GoodBirdInc.com
Copyright 2011 Good Bird Inc

Train Your Parrot to Accept Medication

I just had to share this video clip from parrot lover and friend to Good Bird Inc, Dot. Dot has attended a workshop and is a Good Bird Magazine subscriber. She really has done a fine job of applying what she has learned about parrot training to her birds.

As a retired teacher I think she knows that learning never stops and I have had such fun hearing about her training successes with her birds. Here is a super important one. She taught her birds to take medications from a syringe!



I love this behavior because it is easy to train and will help prevent a lot of stress down the road if your bird ever gets sick and needs medication. It breaks my heart when I hear of birds who became terrified of their owners after they were grabbed and restrained twice a day for two weeks to take medication. That experience can really damage the trusting relationship between human and parrot. That is why teaching people how to train this behavior is such a favorite of mine.

It can usually be accomplished in just a few training sessions. Many times it is trained in just one session. Once it is trained it is just a matter of maintaining the behavior. This may mean offering water or juice from a syringe every few weeks or so.

You can learn how to train this behavior from start to finish in the Ebook Train Your Parrot to Accept Medication. Hopefully watching Dot will inspire you to train your bird!

Barbara Heidenreich
http://www.goodbirdinc.com/
Copyright Good Bird Inc 2010