I’m completely with you on that note - I’ve always said once an animal is mixed with profit, the animal suffers. I’ve seen it with horses (the horrible things the Tennessee Walker show horses have had done to them) and we all know about the puppy mills, etc. It’s more than a shame.
3 Likes
Puppy mills are not responsible owners, so why compare them with responsible bird breeders? Responsible dog breeders will get you the dog with the best health and temperament for the breed, with birds you will buy one that was fed adequately as a chick, had other birds to socialise, etc.
3 Likes
And there are many rescue birds without “issues”. Evaluate the pet before you take it home. If you don’t know what you may be getting into, maybe this isn’t the pet you want.
While parrots are social, they’re not social like dogs or people. Most will become close to just one other and view everyone else as a rival or other threat. Also, unlike dogs, parrots are different species with different social structures and tolerances. The sweetest pet parrot with its people will not let a random stranger touch it. Larger species can be dangerous while defending themselves.
7 Likes
I have many birds and several small parrot species, all of them captive-raised from captive-raised parents. They are kept in groups with conspecifics (or closely related other parrot species for some.) I don’t think any bird should be a single pet animal dependent entirely on a person for everything. They need social groups and to be allowed to express natural behaviors with other birds. Their primary bond should not be to an owner but to another bird.
5 Likes
I think you described the difference between caregiving ( you give care to the cat) and care taking (you take care of the fish). I understand the difference that way.
As a devoted bird custodian, I find this to be untrue. Some small species adjust well to captivity, but the appropriate conditions for birds include miles of flight and active foraging.
4 Likes
Anyone interested in this topic should take the time to watch the PBS Nature Documentary “Parrot Confidential.” As the custodian of four (rescued) parrots, two of them now endangered species, my feelings are summed up in this quote from that documentary by the founder of Foster Parrots Ltd. Paraphrasing here, but close: “People call me and ask, ‘What’s the best size for a cage for a Macaw?’ The answer is ten square miles.”
Our birds are smallish birds—the largest is an African Grey—and none were intentionally acquired. Belize Bird Rescue, a rehabilitation organization for native parrots, regularly observes flocks of White-fronted Amazons (the same species as our Tino), flying three miles in a morning. That’s just over the course of a couple of hours in their day. The leading killer of captive birds in cardiovascular disease from inactivity. Tino is a great bird. He came here grossly obese and with fatty liver disease. He loves to fly. We do our best in our 1000 square feet of space. Our birds are not “caged.” Please understand that your home is also a cage for a bird.
I love Tino as much as I’ve loved anyone in my life, and he brings me so much joy and laughter. He has become sweet and affectionate beyond belief. It took four years of patience and trust building before we could physically interact without extremely damaging bites. If he could be free with that flock, I would live a lifetime of heartbreak for him. Ask me for Bandaid and wound care tips! (NexCare is great.)
Some species do ok, but they still don’t belong in our homes. People fear our Grey after seeing my partner’s nose almost torn off. She is an extremely sweet bird, but they are prey animals, and will startle and bite. We can’t have guests use our restroom unescorted because our Sun Conure is territorial and will mob them. Even this tiny bird can inflict painful bites and could easily maim a guest if they were bitten in the wrong place. He is an angel and a cuddle bug. We adore him. There’s no one I’ve ever loved more. He is a great, great bird and the best companion a bird can be. He doesn’t belong in our home.
Birds will nest in captivity if they’re comfortable. One of girls did so for the second time here, and she was plucking, desperate, defensive, and miserable. Her hormones were out of control, and she grieved her eggs. I’ve read up and keeping them uncomfortable and underfed is the way to prevent this. Sounds like fun for her, no? There is nothing natural about keeping birds in our homes.
Our Grey is literally chewing our house to bits. She’s bored and came to us badly plucked. She’s doing better but may always engage in feather destructive behavior. At least her wings have grown in and she can fly now. (Don’t get me started on clipping.) We will fix the house. Our only concern is using safe wood for her to chew. It is expensive to live with parrots.
Our birds are cast offs from others—people who bought them and dumped them—and they were all bred here. We just had to say no to a fifth, and I’m still filled with grief not knowing where he ended up. One of our birds had three plus previous homes, one four or five. They are amazing creatures, and we adore them and structure our lives around them. We can’t travel. We don’t usually go out together. And although it would break my heart in ways I cannot hope to convey, if they could be happily returned to the wild I would do so in a hot second. Many people with parrot companions feel the same way. Of course some parrot people are reprehensible.
In my opinion, no one should purchase a parrot. Cockatiels and budgies apparently do better in homes, but risk being ignored because they don’t interact the same way we do. Every vet visit with a new vet (btw, very hard to find avian vets—we have to drive 90 minutes and feel lucky) starts with education about all the things we should not expect of our birds and what to do if we want to abandon them.
Birds are not mammals. Most birds do not like to be cuddled, although our wonderful parrots do adapt sometimes. They are not good natural companions for people, especially living such unnatural lives. Nobody really knows what to feed them—what they want to eat is fuel for miles of flight a day. They need to chew—keeping them in toys is wildly expensive and time consuming, and some don’t know how to entertain themselves and pluck. The husbandry can be exhausting. You will have to change your shirts constantly and poop is everywhere, waiting to be cleaned. That happens constantly.
If you’re ready and have a heart full of unconditional love, please adopt. But that is also hard. We had to wait eight years for our second and third parrots, even though shelters are overflowing. Most won’t adopt out of state, because they require home visits, usually within a four-hour radius.
If you love parrots, there are organizations like Belize Bird Rescue who rehabilitate and release birds captured as pets. One Earth Conservation works on poaching parrots, as does the Limbe Wildlife Center in Cameroon. There is one African Grey observation on iNaturalist as far as I can tell. It is from Cameroon. Our darling Ecco loves to hear it.
Parrots are the most wonderful creatures you could imagine, and they deserve to be wild and not poached.
11 Likes
Many reprehensible human behaviors have a long history.
What you find untrue? I said it depends on pet owner.
I am new to this format and not good at navigating, so I apologize if I’m not correctly addressing your question, but I don’t think it’s possible to give birds an adequate life in captivity or to ethically keep parrots. Adopting is iffy because the rehoming rate is extremely high. Very few birds roost, and their wonderful gift of flight means they should be traveling many miles a day, even the small ones, and traveling to widely dispersed resources. Those conditions are not possible to even approximate in a home. As mammals, many people want to hold them, which is stressful and unnatural for birds. They are amazing, extremely intelligent, and adaptable, but they are not domesticated. I grew up with cats and dogs and it’s an entirely different experience. Also, keeping them, especially in the age of social media, raises demand and puts pressure on wild populations, many of which occur in areas of the world where economic pressures on human populations are extreme. There are areas where 100 percent of parrots’ chicks are poached. The exotic animal trade is one of the most lucrative illegal activities on the planet and contributes to habitat degradation and extinction. That’s what I meant by my comment, and I hope I’ve not gone off track. Thank you for thinking about animal ethics.
4 Likes
My first comment wasn’t about parrots though, it was about pets in general, I could imagine being rich would allow you to build enclosure big enough.
Well, that’s a much wider topic.
When I was a kid in the 80s, I remember borrowing library books with words like “Wild Pets” in the title. Wild “pets” like bears, ocelots, kinkajous, monkeys, and the like. The books were clearly trying to de-glamorize such pets; there were very frank accounts of the unexpected difficulties these pets’ owners encounter because of their wild instincts; how difficult these creatures are just to live with, how difficult they are to keep healthy, and also a bit about their suffering while being trafficked – and how that affects their behavior as pets. By the time I’d read a few of these, they’d had their desired effect on me, as I had abandoned any ideas of ever desiring such a pet.
It was only mammals. Books published about exotic birds during that same time period were much more about practical aviculture, without raising questions about the ethics other than that captive-bred were to be preferred over wild-caught. They didn’t really distinguish, ethically, between keeping fancy canaries and keeping, say, captive-bred parrots. The same applied to books about exotic herps and fishes. I wonder if this was in part because birds, herps, and fishes at that time were often captive-bred, whereas “exotic” mammals were not.
Only now, in the age of YouTube, do I see the kind of ethics questions being asked about birds that were being written about 30+ years ago about mammals. One YouTube channel that comes to mind is 2Can TV. The guy has several toucans, but a lot of his content is about how they actually don’t make good pets. He goes into their problematic behaviors – problematic in that they don’t work well in human households.
At this point, the only pets that really interest me – smaller than cats and dogs, I mean – are domesticated rats. Nothing exotic about them: their wild conspecifics are so ubiquitous that they are one of the most maligned animals in the world. But the domesticated ones are so full of love and play that they are a joy to have around, and their needs are easily met – in part because they naturally don’t range long distances but have evolved to live in human houses.
5 Likes
Rats are lovely pets and at least in Germany they are also frequently given away as second hand pets. However I always refrained from getting some due to their short life span that often ends the same cancerous way. Its hard bonding with such amazinly clever individuals and having to let them go so soon again.
1 Like
Yup, that’s the channel I watch too!
My choice pets are guinea pigs, but they’re much harder than what a pet shop will tell you, tons of money to spend on their health (with good rodent vets being rare and much more expensive while knowledge on their health is still not complete), and as rodents evolved to just die when something wrong happens, they often lack will to survive and can die from something minor in a matter of hours, there’re many debates on which specimens will live longer, one from good breeder or one survived in a pet shop, but what is seen is a fast shorteing of their life, there were many who lived 10+ years just 20 years ago, now those who meet 5 year birthday are seen as old ones, they have personalities and are far from being stupid (though as grass-eaters they don’t need it much), but I try to tell everyone who asks me not to get one, as they require very big cages and have to live in same-sex pairs and this pairing isn’t easy either.
3 Likes
I know - no IDs here - but - a rescued pet, which has been rehomed.
I would like the new owner to know how best to care for - what looks like a young parrot?
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/121728002
I agree, I think rescuing a bird is a way to go. If the bird needs a home & would not survive on its own in the wild it makes sense to help it. But perpetuating the capture & breeding of birds in captivity seems to be counterintuitive. I think any animals that needs humans to survive, ie dogs, arguably cats, are better choice as far as pets go. There is also the idea that wings need to be clipped often so birds do not fly away… seems inhumane.
4 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.