All Articles
401 expert articles on parrot care, training, and wellbeing. Page 11 of 17.
Showing 24 of 401 articles
Step-Up Training: The Foundation of Bird Training
The step-up is the single most important behaviour your bird can learn. This guide walks you through the setup, the exact cue-and-reward sequence, species-specific hand positions, and how to fix biting, flying off, and a bird that suddenly refuses.
Welcome to the Complete Bird Training Guide
The starting point for the BST Complete Bird Training Guide. Learn why positive reinforcement works, how to read your bird's body language, and a simple first-week plan that turns trust into a confident step-up.
How to Encourage Healthy Chewing in Parrots
Chewing is not a bad habit in parrots — it is a biological need that maintains the beak, burns energy, and keeps the mind busy. Here is how to redirect it onto safe materials, start a reluctant chewer, and avoid the woods and hardware that can harm your bird.
Kitchen Safety for Parrots
The kitchen is the single most dangerous room in the house for a pet bird. Learn why non-stick fumes, hot surfaces, toxic foods, and chemical hazards put parrots at risk, plus a simple routine that keeps your bird safe while you cook.
Safe Chewing Materials for Parrots
Chewing is a hardwired parrot instinct, not a bad habit. This guide covers the safest woods, shreddables, ropes and leather to offer, the heavy metals and treated materials that can poison a bird, why hookbills should never be given grit, and how to rotate it all so your parrot stays busy and your furniture stays intact.
Safe Toys for Happy, Healthy Parrots
The right toys keep a parrot's beak, feet, and mind healthy — the wrong ones cause choking, foot injuries, or heavy-metal poisoning. Here is how to choose bird-safe materials, match toy size to your species, build foraging into daily play, and run a simple safety routine.
Travel Safety with Your Parrot
A calm, well-planned trip starts long before you turn the key. This guide walks you through choosing an escape-proof carrier, securing it safely in the car, managing Toronto's temperature swings, planning for an escape, and keeping your parrot hydrated and low-stress on the road and overnight.
Why Parrots Love to Chew
Chewing isn't misbehavior, it's a wired-in survival instinct. Here's the real reason parrots shred everything they can reach, what happens when they can't, and how to give your bird safe, satisfying things to destroy.
Balanced Bird Nutrition: A Complete Guide to Parrot Food Groups
A practical, vet-informed guide to feeding your parrot: a formulated pellet base, a generous serving of fresh vegetables and greens, fruit and whole grains in moderation, and seeds and nuts kept to occasional treats — plus the foods to keep out of the bowl entirely.
Best Practices for Parrot Cage Placement at Home
Where you put the cage matters as much as the cage itself. A room-by-room guide to placing your parrot for safety and social connection: the safe-back corner rule, perch height, windows and overheating, Canadian-winter temperatures and drafts, escape risks, and a dark sleep zone — plus a quick-reference checklist.
Choosing the Best Perch Material for Your Bird: A Complete Comparison Guide
The right perch is as important as the right cage. Compare natural wood, rope, cement, PVC, leather, dowels, and rubber, learn how to size perch diameter in cm and inches, and set up a varied environment that protects your bird's feet.
Creating Safe Play Spaces for Your Parrot
A well-planned out-of-cage play area lets your parrot climb, forage, and join the family safely. Here is how to choose the right play stand, pick non-toxic woods and metals, bird-proof the room against fans, glass, open water, and kitchen fumes, and supervise the way a pro would.
Creative Enrichment Ideas to Keep Your Parrot Active and Happy
Enrichment isn't a luxury for a parrot — it's a daily need. This guide walks you through food-based foraging, chewable and shreddable toys, and DIY foraging containers, plus safety notes on bird-safe materials, so your bird stays busy, curious, and physically active.
Enriching Your Parrot's Life with Sound
Birds evolved surrounded by the sounds of the flock, so a silent home can feel unnatural and even unsafe to them. Here is how to use open windows, bird-specific recordings, and music to keep your parrot calm, curious, and less lonely through the day.
Essential Nutrients for Pet Birds: Sources and Health Benefits
A practical guide to the macronutrients and micronutrients your bird needs, the whole foods that supply them, and how a pellet-based diet delivers them reliably — with vet-backed warnings on all-seed diets and over-supplementing.
Feeding Safety 101: Keeping Your Parrot’s Diet Clean and Risk-Free
A balanced diet only protects your parrot if the food is also safe to eat. Learn how to wash produce, store and serve food, keep water and dishes clean, and which foods are outright toxic — the food-handling habits that prevent avoidable illness.
Foot Health Matters: Choosing the Right Perches for Your Parrot
Your parrot stands on its feet nearly every hour of its life, so the perches you choose quietly shape its long-term health. This guide covers correct perch diameters by species (with a sizing table), the safest and riskiest materials, smart placement, and a weekly foot check to catch bumblefoot early.
Healthy Snack Ideas for Happy and Active Birds
Sharing a snack builds trust with your parrot — but treats should stay under about 10% of the diet. Here are the kitchen foods and store-bought treats worth offering, the ones to keep off the menu, and how to turn any snack into foraging enrichment.
How Sunlight and Full-Spectrum Lighting Benefit Parrots
Wild parrots live by the rising and setting sun, and that light does far more than help them see. Here is how UVB drives vitamin D3 and calcium, why a sunny window falls short, and how to set up full-spectrum lighting and a proper day-night cycle for a bird living indoors through a Toronto winter.
How to Choose the Perfect Cage for Your Parrot
Your parrot's cage is their whole world, so choosing it well matters more than almost any other purchase you will make. This guide walks you through size, shape, bar spacing, materials, and placement so you can pick a home that keeps your bird active, safe, and happy for years.
How to Choose the Right Perch Size for Your Bird
The right perch diameter keeps your bird's feet, joints, and tendons healthy for a lifetime. Learn the 2/3-to-3/4 grip rule, a species-by-species size chart in inches and centimetres, and how to build a varied, bumblefoot-proof perch setup.
How to Create a Stimulating Home for Your Parrot
A parrot's home should challenge its body and mind the way the wild does. Here is how to build an enriched environment—cage, climate, light, cleanliness, foraging, and safe treats—that keeps your bird curious, active, and healthy.
How to Keep Your Exotic Bird Healthy, Safe, and Warm This Winter
A Toronto winter brings cold snaps, bone-dry furnace air, and short days that all tax a tropical bird. Here is how to manage warmth, humidity, light, and seasonal feeding so your companion stays healthy and comfortable through the cold months.
How to Maintain a Hygienic Home for Your Parrot
Your parrot's cage is its bathroom, dining room, and playground all at once — and keeping it clean is entirely up to you. Here is a simple daily, weekly, and quarterly routine, plus the pro tips that keep dust, mould, and airborne waste from harming your bird's sensitive respiratory system.