Pajarita wrote:It's not that they get sick, it's that they cannot breathe so well on their backs. I think it has to do with the fact that their lungs are so different from mammals... theirs are rigid (ours flexible), they have no diaphragm to bellow them (they use the flight muscles for it) and are much larger than ours (they take up 1/5 of their body cavity while ours are only 1/20). If the bird is OK with it, it's OK for a few seconds but it's not something that should be done for long periods of time or often. It's kind of like with horses laying down for too long and getting reperfusion from it. Nature made it so horses and birds even sleep on their feet (meaning an upright body) so changing the rules that evolution set for a species doesn't work well (you don't fool around with mother Nature).
I never put her on her back myself well I don't touch her at all actually but what about Parrots that sleep on their back?