In my next life, I wanna come back as one of Broomstick’s birds!
My conure eats chicken. I have to keep reminding myself that he’s entirely unsentimental.
Parrots eating chicken is no different than humans eating cows.
Actually, all my parrots have loved chicken. Or turkey, they love turkey, too. They usually get a few bits when we have chicken. It makes up for the fact that there are very few suitable bugs for eating purposes running around our residence. Once people realized that parrots not solely seed eaters or vegetarian their in-captivity lifespans started going up significantly.
You can purchase things like mealworms for a “natural” (because commercial bred and sterilized mealworms are “natural”, right?) diet component, or use a bit of whatever protein you’re eating. Actually, in the wild parrots will go for fresh road kill as the opportunity presents itself, or abandoned fast-food burgers, or whatever. The larger parrots, like macaws, have been known to kill rodents and rabbits and eat them. They aren’t dedicated predators like hawks or eagles but they are opportunistic and somewhat omnivorous.
Yesterday the boys got a hot breakfast - I made scrambled eggs. They love scrambled eggs. Actually, I suspect they’d like eggs in any form, including raw.
That said - their diet is mostly plant-based, but they do require more protein than was believed, say, 50 years ago and meat is a convenient way to dispense it. In the wild they eat things like bugs because taking down a zebra or wildebeast is near impossible for a small flock of parrots, it’s what live prey they can manage.
Yeah. Right. Huge.
Personally I could not keep a caged bird, myself. I’m cool with other people doing so, if it agrees with them. I’m not about making others stop doing it.
But there is no way, no how, not ever, could I keep a bird in a cage.
I could never get passed knowing that the universe granted this creature the ultimate gift, the freedom of flight. I could never then deny that creature that gift. Not for any reason, certainly not for my amusement or enjoyment.
If bird owners can sleep at night, knowing they’ve denied a creature the gift of flight, good for them. However I would never be able to sleep at night knowing such a thing. Never.
And no, letting it fly around your house is just a slightly larger cage and no substitute for freedom, just so we’re clear!
(To be clear: thus is NOT an attack on bird keepers, only an expression of my feelings, as requested by the OP. My choice is NOT an indictment of your choice!)
Is it just me who kinda wants to round up the more extreme animal rights activists and let them go somewhere in a remote jungle “You’re free now, as nature intended!”
I’d fully agree that people have a duty of care to animals they own, and are responsible for provinding the best conditions for their animals that they can-and that some people really should not have pets- but the idea that we should just let domestic animals loose and call it natural? Cages can be just as much for the protection of a bird as something to keep it in- saying don’t use one at all is as stupid as my former housemate’s claim that training her dog not to run into the road when you opened the door was unnatural, and therefore bad.
Animals don’t see the world like humans do- if someone built a massive cage over your back yard; big, thick bars, it’d feel like a prison to a human, and horribly oppressive. It wouldn’t bother the dog at all, and a gibbon would actually prefer it that way- hey, more things to swing on!
Agreed, but to say the truth, I’m bothered too by people living in apartments and owning dogs or cats. I was raised in the countryside, and the idea of having a dog that can’t even run around in a backyard seems wrong to me.
Leave the door open, my dog won’t leave. Leave a window open, your bird is gone like a fleeing prisoner! So, not quite the same thing, but I take your point!
I was always more struck by people explaining at length why where they live is too small, crowded, not enough outside space, too many cars etc, so they won’t get a dog! (I’m always wondering to myself if they realize they are living in conditions they wouldn’t relegate a dog to!)
While the “huge campaign” poster is a poor advocate, I think the point is that people who keep birds in relatively good conditions – plenty of freedom and out-of-cage time, enriching environment, lots of interaction – are rare overall, even if some have posted in this thread. Many people stick them in a cage and dump seed in daily. Hell, Oprah’s magazine once recommended buying a bird whose color matches the drapes! That kind of thinking about live minds is indefensible.
Also, turning on someone who suggests a moral course of action with accusations of hypocrisy is sadly common. I mean, sure, Oskar Schindler slept around and was comfortably corrupted. He only saved Jewish people when pushed by outside forces. You could say he was a hypocrite for not fighting the war single-handedly, or not freeing the Roma victims, or what have you. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to kill Jews; it just makes you look like a quibbler.
Sorry for the Godwinization. It’s just a response I see each and every time anyone feels judged. When I advocate for puppy mill puppies, passersby accuse me of killing cows for meat. If I explain to them that I’m vegan, I can see them scouring my shoes and clothing for leather so that they can roll right into their next personal attack and thereby suppress their guilt over not helping the puppies.
There is (for now, anyway) a middle course between buying birds on impulse and warehousing them, or opening all the cages and letting them fend for themselves in a world for which they are unprepared. One can rescue/rehome captive birds who are socialized to humans and unable to succeed in the wild. That’s what we’ve been doing for years. We’re down to one bird nowadays, Cosmo, a silly cocatiel whom I am sure wouldn’t know how to survive by himself. Heck, for years, whenever our female would solicit for mating, holding her body level and warbling invitingly, Cosmo would run from side-to-side with his crest elevated, as if saying, “What!? What!?”
Our birds have a dedicated bird room and are closed in their cages only to sleep or if high winds threaten to break a window. They get daily “out time” in other rooms with us. Right now Cosmo is alone, which is hard for a flock animal, but he has his banana. Yes, for some reason he has bonded to a banana. We change it for a fresh yellow one whenever it starts to go black, and he’s pretty happy hanging out talking to it if we’re not around. But we try to give him more face time with us these days. It’s imperfect, but we rescued him from total solitude in a cage, and we are mostly happy together.
I work in dog rescue and I agree with you. To me, the epitomy of humane treatment of animals is the duty of care, the responsibility to NOT cause them undue pain and suffering. Throwing all the dogs and cats into the streets to let them fend for themselves is actually the opposite of that. Believe me, I rescue dogs from a European country that neither believes in spay/neuter nor in keeping hunting breeds of dogs as pets. When they’re not brutally killed at the end of hunting season, they’re abandoned to fend for themselves as feral dog packs. (Also, you guys remember the dog cull in Romania that caused an internet fury last year?) These are not healthy dogs. They roam through towns scavenging in dumpsters, slowly starving to death, getting COVERED in ticks, dying of diseases, having puppies in these conditions and if that’s not horrible enough it’s also a public safety/hygiene issue. You do not want diseased animals running around your town. The dog culls are a poor “close the barn door after the horse is out” solution to this problem. (Spay/neuter is the better solution.)
Keep in mind that there are many dogs bred for purposes other than herding and hunting. We can’t unfortunately turn back the clock to un-breed chihuahua’s. Also just because a breed lives in a house doesn’t mean it’s not doing it’s job. Greyhounds, for example (I have two retired racers) are an elite breed with a short career. While racing, they live in climate controlled kennels. By the time they’re retired, they’re acclimatized to heating and air conditioning, and have little interest in being out in the snow and rain. I love the fact that I can tell people my dogs are retired. They had a career.
I think it can be wrong to project human attributes to animals. I think many animals do not have anything equivalent to what we call freedom. To most wild animals, life is just an ongoing struggle - day after day of trying to find enough food to eat while trying to avoid being eaten by some other animal. And every animal in the wild eventually loses that struggle when it has an off day and dies in what’s usually a horrible manner.
Being held in captivity is a release from all that. They’re brought all the food they need on a regular basis without having to struggle for it. They’re removed from any dangerous predators. They’re given medical treatment if they’re injured or ill. If animals developed religion, cages would be their version of heaven.
Now I understand this isn’t true for all animals. There are animals that need social interaction or that have an instinct to hunt or range that will be thwarted by captivity. But we have to accept that most animals have no interest in abstractions like being free. They want to have enough to eat and drink, have a safe place to sleep, and not get eaten.
So…short life in the rainforest or long, long life in a cage? I know what I’d choose!
Don’t you value social interaction with their kind, in their destined environment, at all?
Italics mine.
And here we have the entire animal rights debate in 2 short sentence fragments.
I’m not taking a position here, just pointing out the juxtaposition. Well done folks.
Our African Grey is the offspring of two domestically bred and raised birds. He likes french toast for breakfast. He gets excited and does a dance when we offer him a chicken wing. Although he has free range of our home when we are there, he flies only as far as the nearest shoulder. He comes to work with me and our three dogs, and taunts the dogs mercilessly.
Just sayin.
Bird lovers (especially the above poster with an African Grey parrot) should read “Alex and Me” the story about a Grey Parrot who was trained to communicate verbally with his scientist trainers. It was an experiment in animal communication - lots of studies have been done with primates, like teaching Koko the gorilla how to do American Sign Language. But until Alex, nobody had tried teaching a species that is capable of making something that sounds close to human vocalizations. His story is breathtaking.
TL; DR: They’re smarter than we realize.
“I’d write more, but I have to get on the road. I have a long commute to the office.” 
Seriously, though, my bird gets a long life snuggling up with the being he wants to be with more than anyone else in the world. He is not an individualist; his ethos is centered upon fanatical devotion.
I laughed so hard when I was reading this that I scared my cat off my lap. I seriously had water coming out of my eyes.
I don’t have birds and I’ve never had birds so I didn’t know anything about how birds should be raised and cared for. I’ve learned a lot from this thread. I’m now laughing again at Cosmo singing love songs to his beloved banana.
The main reason I don’t have birds is because I have cats. I do have a friend who has a cockatoo and several cats. I’ve never seen the bird in its cage and one day I asked my friend if she wasn’t worried that the cats would attack her bird. She said that her bird had outlived 4 cats and that every time she brought a new cat into her pride all of the other cats warned the new one to NOT FUCK WITH THE BIRD. She thinks some of the original cats did try to mess with the bird and got their butts kicked, learned their painful lesson and never tried it again.
Still laughing at Cosmo and his banana.
OK, one thing you have to understand about flight and birds. Flying is work. It’s like running is for us. Yes, birds enjoy being able to fly, but they don’t really do that much flying without pressing need, like looking for food or escaping predators.
I’ve had birds ask to be carried around rather than flying. Would you rather run 10 or 20 miles to go to another city or drive a car there? I mean, I sure like being able to walk but that doesn’t mean I want to walk absolutely everywhere.
For birds like parrots, being in a flock and with people they know and trust is much more important than being able to fly. Birds deprived of a social life become self-abusive, unhealthy, and tend to die relatively soon. Birds deprived of flight due to injury can live full lifespans and remain healthy. Birds are not mammals, and they are definitely not humans!
That’s one of the most important things a bird owner needs to learn. You need to supply what the bird actually needs and not what you project onto it.
The only times my cockatiel, Caesar, was in his cage was bed time and when the Mrs. and I were not home. He had full flight and never got hurt… too badly.
As with all pets, responsible ownership is completely ethical.
Depends on how smart the bird is and how much space they are given. I have real issues with keeping something as smart as a human toddler in a cage, be that creature a chimpanzee or a parrot.