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Changing Cages

Bird rooms, aviaries, cages, foraging trees, play gyms, and stands. Discuss your parrot's locations and perches.

Re: Changing Cages

Postby flappybird » Tue Sep 15, 2015 6:32 pm

Does that mean I should be feeding her dinner right before bed then? Because as it stands she eats about an hour before bed time (cage covering time) but is mostly winding down for that hour afterwards. If I feed her in that cage that means she'll be in that room by herself for part of our precious, short, evening quality time. The goal is to not be moving cages around every night.

She slept in her new cage in the living room again tonight, but we have yet had an evening where we stay up in that room and make noise after 8 because Michaels been coming home late and I generally try to be quiet and be in another room otherwise.

Our house is really tiny which is why the second bedroom arrangement is really convenient.
flappybird
Cockatiel
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 97
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Re: Changing Cages

Postby Wolf » Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:03 pm

I feed my birds dinner at about dusk, that gives them time to eat and relax to go to sleep naturally.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Changing Cages

Postby Pajarita » Wed Sep 16, 2015 11:22 am

Yep, same here. I just started feeding them dinner at 5 pm. It's a bit early and I actually could do it at 5:30 if I went by the height of the setting sun because it doesn't really get dark until 7 pm so I would still have an hour before they go to sleep if I did it at 5:30 pm - but I cheat a bit because I always do the cats and dogs at 7 pm and by feeding the birds at 5, I have two whole hours in between that I use for reading and watching TV - a super luxury for which I have been waiting all summer long! :lol:
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: Changing Cages

Postby flappybird » Thu Sep 17, 2015 8:00 pm

So, related question. I know that Wolf & Pajarita get to spend a lot of time at home with their birdies.. but what do the rest of you working folks do to figure out work and winter sun schedules? I know that after the time change I will be getting home after dark, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about getting enough quality time with Luna.

As it is, I spend about two hours with her in the morning, she's out the whole time doing morning things with me, and when I leave for work I leave her with some foraging treats to entertain her, and usually Michael is still at home until he leaves for class some days at 11 some days at 3, so she's out until he leaves. Then I come home at around 6:30 (sometimes Michael comes home earlier) and she's able to come out and hang out until she goes to bed around 8-8:30. 2-3 days a week I'm home most of the day and those are our really great days together.

She already knows what time I come home and when Michael is here and lets her out, she hangs out at the windowsill watching for me and getting really excited every time there's a false alarm. When she sees me on the street she starts going nuts and it warms my heart.

When the time changes, do we just do everything the same way even though the sun is doing different things? I don't want to spend even less time with her just because of it..
flappybird
Cockatiel
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
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Re: Changing Cages

Postby Wolf » Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:28 pm

I hope that some of the others will come on to let you know what they do to deal with this type of situation. I do indeed spend a lot of time at home with my birds, this is due to no longer being able to work so I am on disability. If it were not for that, I would not have the number of birds that I do have and am not really certain if I would even have the one. It was never in my plans to have birds living in the house with me. Why? They are messy and loud and have physical needs that I would not have been able to meet. However this one little parrot showed up starving and nearly frozen after I had been on disability for several years and changed my world. If not for her, there would be no birds in my life other than the winter feeding of the wild birds and the hummingbird feeders during the summer and early fall. Up until the arrival of Kiki, I would have done anything to not have to be on disability and be able to have gone back to work. I was so proud of my body and how strong it was and especially the amount of hard physical labor that I could do in any given days time. I have been fighting a major depression every since my body broke this way. As hard as it sounds, I would still trade it all to be able to function that way again and that would mean no birds living with me. Unfortunately for me that is not to be.
I don't have any real answers on how to effectively deal with the situation that you find yourself with although I do think about it frequently. I can only guess at the best approach to this situation and I often wonder what to do.
I think about if it would work to give the bird the solar light schedule, the correct diet, and then to slowly wake the bird for a couple of hours of play time after I got home and then putting it back to bed. I suspect that this is what many people try to do. I have never seen any studies on this and since I don't have to do this I have no idea as to what the long term effects on the bird would be and in fact I don't know what the short term effects would be either. I don't know, but this is probably what I would try to do. But please don't take this as a recommendation as to how to deal with this as I am afraid that I can't recommend doing this, you have a difficult choice to make in this regard and I wanted you to know that I do understand what your situation is like and that I am here for both you and your bird. Hopefully you can find your way through this.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Changing Cages

Postby Pajarita » Fri Sep 18, 2015 10:12 am

Actually, there was, at least, one study that I know of and it showed that even when people turn lights on and off with only four hours of light in between, birds can still produce sexual hormones.

I don't know what people who work full time do... I suspect they just don't follow a solar schedule erroneously thinking they will be able to get away with it. I used to work full time but my husband was home during the week so he would turn off the lights for them and feed them dinner but, once he started working full time, I tried to manage but couldn't because it wasn't that they did not have company all day which is a HUGE problem for people who have an only one bird, it was that I needed to observe them twice a day to make sure everybody was doing OK and this was impossible as I left when it was still dark and came back at night (I would clean the birdroom with night-vision goggles, believe it or not :lol: ). Birds only show symptoms when they are very sick so, when you see anything out of the ordinary, you need to act VERY fast and that doesn't mean waiting until the weekend...
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
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Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: Changing Cages

Postby flappybird » Mon Sep 21, 2015 10:21 pm

What about artificially changing the sunrise & sunset times with full spectrum lighting? As in, "sunrise" is still when I wake her up regardless of the fact that it will start to happen earlier (she can be in a dark room and covered until this time), and "sunset" is when I turn off the lights when she goes to bed?

Speaking of artificial lighting.. it doesn't get crazy cold here, it being Florida, obviously....but it will get cold enough at some points that I will have to make sure Luna is comfortable. What do bird people who live in colder climates do? It's unreasonable to keep the heat very high for obvious reasons.. Has anyone ever used any of those warming perches or do you consider them super dangerous? What about mild heat lamps like people use for reptiles?
flappybird
Cockatiel
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 97
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Blue Headed Pionus
Flight: Yes

Re: Changing Cages

Postby Wolf » Tue Sep 22, 2015 7:05 am

I most often use an oil filled radiator type of electric heater for any additional heat that I need in my home here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern NC.
Although I use a full spectrum light for my bird, I am somewhat leery of their use and for that reason I probably don't use it enough. You have to be certain that the CRI is 94+ and that the K Temp is 5000 to 5500 as if these are not correct it could seriously burn your bird or blind them and that scares me. And heat lamps are just that lamps and produce light that interferes with sleep, one must remember that birds are much more sensitive to light than we are and that parrots can see light that is invisible to us.
Perhaps the most significant part of light and the most difficult to reproduce is the twilight periods that have special properties that adjust the birds internal biological clock. Even if it is difficult to maintain I would do my best to maintain a solid solar light schedule.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Changing Cages

Postby Pajarita » Tue Sep 22, 2015 10:25 am

I also use an electric, oil-filled radiator lookalike space heater. I think they are the safest ones for birds because they produce no fumes whatsoever, they are not really that expensive to keep on all the time and, although they heat up the rooms real nice, they don't get that hot on the outside so even if the birds perch on them, they don't get burn. I don't use heat lamps with birds ever. If a sick bird needs extra heat, I use a heating pad at the bottom of the cage and cover all sides of it with some kind of material.

The problem with reproducing sunrise and sunset is that, basically, you can't do it well enough for birds. You can have different lights with different specifications, you can diminish the intensity of the light by using dimmers (which don't work with full spectrum, as far as I know), you can lower the angle of the light source by gradually moving a lamp from the floor to a table and then overhead or vice versa but you can't do the gradual change in the solar spectrum which is what triggers the avian internal clock. And it's a HUGE amount of work that doesn't only require about an hour in the morning and another at night but which you also have to 'adjust' every so often so as to reproduce the normal shortening and lengthening of the days because you can't keep the bird at the same daylength all year round, either.

But, of course, I would still try!
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

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