Free Range Parrot Owners!

[hlasdf]

I've just recently heard of "free range parrots" that roam about the house without a cage. What kind of precautions do you take? Where do they sleep? Are they potty trained? Has it had an impact on your bird(s)' temperament or personality? Are they "free range" only in a bird room/aviary or the entire house? This sounds like a pretty awesome thing to do, but I don't know if I could ever be so mindful of everything! I'd love to hear your stories and experiences with this!

[pennyandrocky]

mine are free to roam the house from 7am-7pm. i'm a stay at home mom so i can keep them out all day. at bedtime they fly back to their cages.i have to clean upstairs in the living room and game room a few times a day there is always a damp cloth or mop handy. penny is the only one who flies downstairs to the kitchen where he has a potty to go on, just a wicker basket with a handle. they still sleep in cages but i'm hoping to do some remodeling in the basement where i'll put my son then the birds will get his room and i hope to get rid of at least mya's cage. penny likes to sleep in his so i'll keep his. they mostly use the game room and the living room since they have plenty of room to fly plus different places to hang out playstand, a tree,and a hutch that mya remodeled for herself.

[marie83]

mine roam free when ever we are in most of the time. There are days they dont though. We keep them used to having cages and being in them for varying lengths of time for their own safety and sanity. If I were to die and they went to new homes I wouldn't want them to be stressed because they aren't used to beig in their cage for longer peiods of time.

Safety precautions should be the exact same as having one thats only let out for a few hours a day, in fact I would be stricter as they are less likely to be supervised as well.

[Dasphatness]

My birds are free ranged as long as there is someone there to monitor them. My wife will usually let them out in the morning for a bit, and put them away before she goes to work. Il come home for lunch and let them out again, and put them back when im leaving. But as soon as 5:00 rolls by and I am home for the night, they are out until usually around midnight. All four of them pretty much keep to the living room and roam around from couch to couch ( the floor is lava!), they will run around the computers or the television. Their favorite place to perch up is the retired ceiling fan that is never turned on. but with a four bladed fan, each bird gets their own perch.

Its nice to have them out and about. You get unexpected visits in the form of shoulder landings and randomly attacked with birdy kisses or a nicely preened beard or eyebrows.(my beard has never been softer! ) They will find trouble to get into, but its usually something silly, like getting stuck in my boots (melody loves stinky feet?) or the parakeets will wander into one of the other birds cages and eat all their food even though they are well stocked in their own cage, which then starts a whole mess of drama, especially with the cockatiel, who is very picky about what he eats and doesnt like to share.

I find that having your birds out as much as possible helps them understand that they are welcome to be social with the rest of their flock (you and me). It is better for them to have this comfort as one would assume training, playing, and even just plain cuddling would be much more appreciated and easier to do when birds know they have very little to fear in "their" house! Not to mention that maintaining a mellow or cool attitude is much easier when all you need to do is fly off to another shelf/chair/tv/curtain when an obnoxious bird starts sassin you. ( for the most part, my parakeets are the trouble makers but rarely is thier behavior ever a true issue towards the temperment of the other birds in the house

Better temperment, cooler attitude, slightly more entitled, and always a source of entertainment waiting to happen!

[Strawfrawg]

Though I think every bird should have a cage for their own protection when unsupervised, I really think it's better for the bird to be loose as much as possible.

Marvin has been out of his cage from 8 AM - 8 PM since the day I brought him home. He prefers to be with me/on me most of the time, but if I put him on or in his cage (with the door open) he can keep himself busy and quiet for quite a while. I think this freedom has been very healthy for Marvin because he feels independent and free to socialize when he wants to, though he isn't fully potty trained yet so I have to check his preferred landing spots for droppings periodically through the day. He's starting to act more mature so I'm starting to get more serious with potty-training. My boyfriend's Sennie was always loose in the house and rarely had an accident once she was trained.

The most important thing for me has been to make sure everything in the house is safe to land on, both for his sake and to prevent damage to my belongings. Safe not only means safe for landing but also free of dust, etc. Houseplants had to be removed. I put him in his cage for a bit if I'm cooking, for his own safety. If I don't want him in a particular room I just shut the door.

It would be very hard for me to cage my bird when I'm home. I'm free-range, and so are my dogs. Only fair that Marvin is, too. As long as I can keep an eye on him.

[Strawfrawg]

Another note...it took him a while to learn to fly around the house safely. He misjudged and crashed a couple of times, but now he's an ace. He found mirrors very confusing at first. I find that he doesn't tend to fly off somewhere too far from me. He mostly uses his freedom as a way to stay with his flock.

You mentioned sleeping...Marvin takes his naps on the windowsill, the top of the TV, or on me if I'm sitting still long enough. If he's really tired he packs himself off to his cage.

[janetafloat]

I'm reading all this in amazement & awe. I let Alfie out of his cage as much as possible and would have him out all the time if I could but he's so destructive it's not possible. My home is small, basically a one bedroom flat, so he and I are mostly in the combined living room/kitchen and he often is just going from one thing to the next trying to chew on it. I'm trying to 'clean up my act' and put everything away but I really don't have enough storage so there's quite a bit of stuff about. What does he chew....? everything! Handbags, picture frames, books, pictures on the wall, furniture, papers of any kind, the dog lead, zips on any jackets/sweaters, etc etc the list is endless. It feels like practically everything I own has a few chunks out of it, Currently he likes hanging out on top of the kitchen cabinets so I put a little play gym thing up there which he enjoys but his main interest at the moment is picking holes in the kitchen cabinets which is going to really prove a problem if he continues. I recently invested in a table top Java tree and put loads of toys on it and he has a whole bowl of foot toys where I mainly sit but he's really not interested in the Java tree as yet - I spend some time every day 'playing with it' myself and encouraging him to by putting treats on it but he's not impressed - and the foot toys hold his interest for a few minutes maximum then he's off to find something else to destroy. It's really turning into a problem for me and sometimes I feel at my wits end. He's also quite nippy so if he's hanging out on me he can be nipping my fingers or my neck and I gently shake him off me onto the sofa, say, at which point he immediately goes and starts chewing on something he shouldn't and after he's gone from one thing to another I end up putting him back in his cage in sheer frustration.
His training is coming along well and I do some recall training and a bit of trick training every time Iet him out which we both really enjoy but he just doesn't seem to deal with unstructured time well at all (in ways that I want him to, that is...he's perfectly happy with it! )
He only a baby of course and when I think about my dogs when they were young or when I first had them he's certainly no worse. Still, I'll be happy when he this improves...please god???

[Pajarita]

Most of my parrots live cage-free but in a birdroom fitted for them (the handicapped are in cages and only allowed to come when I am in there). I have four that live in human areas in cages (a female senegal, a bonded pair of GCCs and a GCC male who lives by himself) and they are not allowed to come out without supervision as a human home has way too many dangers for them (they all come out for three hours every day, always at the same time, for one-on-one time with me)

[mrbowlerhat]

We've got some kind of an 50/50-ish arrangement over here. Uh... Let me explain.
So, we've currently got two different cages in use, Miley's Sleeping Cage in the Birdroom, and The Big Cage In The Living Room Downstairs.
Every other day, Miley's sleeping in her sleeping cage in the birdroom, and every other day she's sleeping in the big living room-cage.
The days when Miley's in the birdroom, Alaska's sleeping in the living room cage. When Miley's in the living room, Alaska's sleeping cageless in the birdroom.
During the days, they're free range inside the birdroom all the time, except if I have to go away (which isn't often) - if I do, I either cage both (Alaska in the big cage downstairs) or I put Miley in the big cage and leave Alaska in the birdroom.

When Miley's in the birdroom at night, she climbs into her cage herself to sleep when she's tired, and climbs out when she wakes up next morning. I never close the cage door.
When Alaska's in the birdroom at night, she flies/climbs up to the highest point of the sisal boing and falls asleep when she's tired.

When they're in the living room cage, I bring them downstairs at about 7PM and they'll eat a bit, chirp for a while, play a little and then go to sleep. Same for both. Then I bring them back up to the birdroom as soon as I wake up next morning.


Considering they're both only actually caged for a few hours every other night, I'd consider them as "pretty much" free-ranged inside of the birdroom
I love it. I'd hate to lock them in their cages more than I have to; when I feel like I need a break, I simply leave the room for a while. ...Come to think about it though, it is a combined birdroom/bedroom and it used to belong to me, but look at me now! They're driving me out of my own room!
Haha, no but really, it's great. I'd love having them free ranged in the rest of the house too, but we've got four crazy dogs, so that's not an option right now. Good thing the birdroom is quite big, and I'll soon be upgrading to an even bigger one!

I have somewhat birdproofed the room, though I wouldn't leave Miley alone in there for way too long, she's always up to trouble.... With the new birdroom though, I'll make sure it's completely safe first thing I do!

They're not potty trained, but once you're used to it, wiping poop all day really isn't that bad! ....At least I don't think so!

I hope in the future Alaska will be able to be entierly cageless. She was, in fact, entierly for a little bit over a month, when I had to monitor her weight and make sure she was eating, it was just easier keeping her in the birdroom with me at all times during that month. When she started eating better again, I started putting her in the big cage every other night again and now it's all working out fantastically. She did however do really well being cageless.
Miley, on the other hand, strongly prefers sleeping in covered cages, so she'll keep doing that of course.

[Eric&Rebecca]

We do the same with the older cockatiel with having the cage door open, he goes in and out when he's hungry and at night the cagedoor is shut to sleep. Obviously, only when we at home and in the room to supervise. I would like to have a bird room eventually but at the moment we don't have the right amount of space. We are looking to move soon though and the bird room will be a definite must! When they are out they have natural wood table perches and a playgym. I would eventually like to get a Java bird tree but I haven't found a suitable one yet. I'm also looking into an outdoor aviary area and harness training. In hot weather we place the cages under the sunshade outside (so they not in direct sunlight) they tend to get spritzed or take their own baths during these times which is sweet. It would be nice to have an aviator harness and outdoor perch though as our garden is completed sealed off an elevated so there's no wild animals that can enter the garden that way they can perch out of their cages.

The younger cockatiel is getting used to the idea of going in and out but due to quarantine for the first month we haven't started with this section of training just yet and have been focusing on taming and diet conversion. He gets to come out in the morning and evening for exercise and training. Once we start introductions into the larger cage together I think George will learn from Edmund but I guess we will have to see how that goes.

I think it's nice for them to be out as much as possible. Took us forever to 'bird-proof' the sections of the house they fly in but its worth it. Also Edmund will fly to us on command which makes it easier The vet commented on how well their muscles are developed for their age and Edmund is an excellent flyer! Just got to get George to start flying to us now, sometimes he does it sometimes he doesn't but its all work in progress