The Holistic Parrot by Leslie Moran
Parrots are thinking, feeling intelligent beings. They can be psychologically sensitive and emotionally complicated animals. The type of experiences your bird had before coming to you will have a huge impact on how easily they can learn to cope with stress and change.
Over the past three months we’ve explored topics related to behaviours. In the April issue 316, the link between unwanted behaviours and unbalanced nutrition was examined with factual evidence from Greg Harrison, DVM and Debra McDonald, PhD. In the May issue 317, we did a deep dive into how stressful and anxious behaviours are impacted by unbalanced nutrition. That article detailed the top nutrients most often missing in an unbalanced homemade diet and offered an easy to implement clinically proven solution. And in the June issue 318, we provided a variety of ideas for enrichment including self-directed play, teaching a parrot to actively select and play with toys on their own.
One technique I teach all my clients is to talk with their parrots, in advance, about the changes that they want to make, or the new toy, person, or other animal, they want to introduce before actually doing it. For some people this comes very naturally while for others it takes a bit more effort.