🏡Foundation Behaviour Consultation 🏡
🥰Maddison, a long time bird enthusiast, recently fulfilled her dream of owning a baby Sun Conure. After encountering conflicting information online, she decided to book a foundation consultation with Jasmine, our Melbourne consultant.
During the session, Jasmine guided Maddison through essential topics, including setting up an ideal environment, establishing a nutritious diet, forming a healthy relationship and incorporating enrichment activities.🦜
✅️They also practised foundational behaviours such as point to point training, step up, and recall, ensuring Maddison Chilli started off on the right wing.
Well done Maddison & Chilli! 👏
🔎Encouraging Exploration 🔍
😱Introducing new items can sometimes be intimidating for our birds. While we might be eager for them to engage with these items, it’s crucial not to force or pressure them into situations where they feel uncomfortable.
Instead, we should focus on presenting the new item in a less threatening way, or by incorporating familiar and comforting elements to ease the transition.🧸
🦜For example, these two baby sun conures were initially wary of this travel bag. To help them feel more at ease, Jasmine placed the bag on a familiar table, added a towel they recognised, and included some fun foot toys they enjoy. Soon enough, the birds began exploring the bag with curiosity.
While they didn’t go all the way inside, they confidently played around and perched at the bag’s opening. This positive experience provides a solid foundation for further progress.✅️
🌿Foraging Friday 🌿
✅️Having versatile items like Hol-ee Roller balls or foraging bins in your collection is fantastic, as they can be used in countless ways to create a variety of enriching activities.
In this particular activity, Jasmine placed small almond pieces into wooden blocks and then placed the blocks inside a Hol-ee Roller ball, turning it into a fun and engaging foraging challenge for Luna. 🥜
🏡In-Home consultation🏡
🦜Jasmine had the pleasure of catching up with Marilyn and Billy for a follow-up session. During the initial consultation, Jasmine introduced a stationing technique that enabled Marilyn to enter the aviary safely to feed Billy and clean his space. Previously, Billy’s aggressive behaviour had led to several bites, making these tasks quite challenging.
With significant progress already achieved, Marilym expressed her goal of bringing Billy into the house for closer interaction.🏠
🪄To support this, Jasmine introduced target stick training as a foundational step towards crate training, starting with protective contact to ensure safety and build confidence.
Remarkably, this was Billy’s first experience with target training, and he showed impressive engagement right from the start!👏
🏡In-home consultation🏡
👌It’s always fun having some spare time during an in-home consultation after addressing some problematic behaviours.
Aggy and Adam had shown a strong interest in harness training Pinky and had already begun some desensitisation work.✅️
🦜With the harness ready, Jasmine guided them through the next steps of the training process.
If you're interested in learning how to harness train your bird, we have the perfect course for you! It's self-paced and completely online, allowing you to progress at your own speed. Find the link in the comments.👇
🌿Foraging Friday 🌿
👉Paper finger traps foraging activity 👈
💡Here’s a creative way to turn paper finger traps into an engaging foraging activity for your birds.
Start by filling the finger trap with a portion of your bird’s food or favourite treat, to keep the food from falling out, crumple small pieces of paper to block each end of the finger trap, adding an extra layer of challenge. 🥜
🧠This will encourage your bird to pull apart or manipulate the barriers to access the food, making it a mentally stimulating and rewarding experience.
Place the filled finger traps in your bird’s play area, foraging trays or just hand them to them. 🦜
❓️Is crate training really that important❓️
🦜Consider scenarios like picking up a bird for the first time or taking your bird to the vet—both can already be quite stressful situations. Now, imagine adding to that stress by forcing your bird into something they aren't familiar with.
This can lead to a cascade of negative outcomes, including a strained relationship and the crate becoming associated with negative experiences and fear. Over time, this negative pairing may result in escalated behavioural issues, making future interactions with the crate even more challenging.😱
Crate training, when approached slowly with positive reinforcement and patience, helps your bird feel comfortable and secure. A bird that willingly enters their crate experiences reduced stress during necessary travel or vet visits, making the process smoother for everyone involved. ✅️
🎥Video Description
There is a small blue and white crate with the door open, resting on a white towel on a bench. Jasmine cues Poppy, a baby male Eclectus parrot, to enter the crate. Poppy walks along the towel and steps inside, perching on the branch perch inside the crate. Jasmine reinforces Poppy’s behaviour with fruit purée from a syringe, then cues him to exit by pointing to the bench. Poppy hops off the perch and eagerly runs back along the bench towards Jasmine.
🌿Foraging Friday 🌿
❓️Did you know that slow feeder bowls can make fantastic foraging tools for birds
In thid video Jasmine sprinkled a small amount of pellets into a slow feeder bowl, encouraging natural foraging behaviour. 🦜
🧠To add an extra challenge, you could add a foraging substrate. This variation increases the difficulty, keeping birds engaged for longer.
🫧🧹Keeping it fresh 🧹🫧
😅Jasmine had a busy morning at our Melbourne branch, cleaning and refreshing her baby eclectus parrot's cage.
Regularly refreshing your bird’s cage is vital for both health and enrichment. Frequent cleaning removes bacteria, dust, and droppings, ensuring good hygiene and air quality. Rotating toys and rearranging perches prevent boredom by encouraging exploration and promoting natural behaviours like foraging and chewing.💩
🤏Even small changes can help birds adapt to novelty, reducing attachment to specific items and minimising stress.
Cage updates keep birds mentally stimulated and physically active, supporting their overall well-being.🧠
🎥This video starts with an assortment of bird toys, bowls, perches, and fresh branches. The next clip features an empty, spacious bird cage, followed by the same cage fully set up with two eclectus parrots inside. In the following clips, the birds are engaging with and exploring their new toys, branches, and perches, settling into their refreshed and enriched space.
🥒 Cucumber, rocket and pineapple icy poles 🍍
🌞These frozen treats are a fantastic way to keep our birds cool and entertained on warmer days while sneaking in some extra greens without them noticing.
Simply toss a handful of rocket, cucumber chunks, and frozen pineapple into a blender with some water. Blend until smooth, then pour the mixture into an ice cube tray or silicone mould and freeze. ❄️
👌These refreshing snacks are sure to be a hit!
🙂 The power of patience - Client update 🙂
🚫When Lisa first reached out to Jasmine, her family was grappling with some undesirable and dangerous behaviours from their black-capped lorikeet, Yoshi.
He was displaying excessive vocalisations and aggressive behaviour. Jasmine advised the family to take a step back and concentrate on basic, low-pressure activities to foster trust. They also focused on enhancing Yoshi's diet, providing enrichment, and engaging in fun interactions with plenty of positive reinforcement.🦜
⏳️Fast forward three months, and now Yoshi is recalling to Lisa, who was once afraid of him. He’s even reaching out for scratches—something he had never done before!
We are incredibly proud of the hard work Lisa has put in, and it’s wonderful to see her efforts paying off.💕
🌿Foraging Friday🌿
🍦Bird safe icecream🍦
🌞Are you looking for healthy treats to offer your bird now that the weather is warming up? Look no further!
These delicious bird-safe ice creams are healthy, fun, and an easy way to keep your birds cool.💦
🍨To make them, blend a portion of your bird’s pellets with a small piece of banana, then add water until you achieve a smoothie-like texture (Jasmine used diluted coconut water, but plain water works too).
Pour the mixture into an ice cube tray or silicone moulds and place them in the freezer. After about 10 minutes, insert popsicle sticks and let the treats freeze for a few hours. 🧊
