Come and learn how to spice up your pets life! Follow The Buzz on Enrichment for great DIY enrichment for the animals in your world.
Filtering by Category: foraging
Foraging takes up a massive portion of a wild birds day. How much you say? All. Day. Realistically it’s between 40%-75% of daylight. Studies found that “birds generally started to feed before sunrise and continued to forage at a steady to increasing rate throughout the day.” Sun up to sun down, parrots are foraging.
Read MoreEnrichment is a wee bit intimidating for some like these lovebirds so making things difficult for them is only going to result in untouched enrichment and then what's the point? So, for beginners, we put this pumpkin on the floor to give them something to chit chat about for today. Over time we will offer enrichment of varying difficulty all over the aviary, but we start where they are most likely to be successful and for these guys its ground foraging.
Read MoreEveryone feels it. What do you think of when you think of Spring? Flowers growing and...
.Birds Singing.
I have cockatoos, so insert ear piercing shrieks where you would typically think of beautiful sing song melodies. If you have cockatoos, you feel me. How about those hormones? Yep. Broody hens? Got it. Molting? THANK whoever is upstairs.
With spring comes new beginnings and fresh starts. Get your behavior modification program up to speed. No behaviors you want to decrease? Thats cool, step up your enrichment game.
How better to start than to knock out a few birds with one stone? <-except don't do that.
.Lets make an herb basket.
What you'll need:
soil
herbs
pot
So, I won't lie. I decided to do this because of this stellar pot from IKEA. Its powder coated steel and I can hang it wherever I want. Coolest part? The whole pot is solid so I don't have to worry about heads or toes getting caught anywhere. Done.
The soil is from this cool company, Ecoscraps. I opted for this soil because its organic and consists of two ingredients: compost from plant material and compost from forrest material. no poop here. Dont stop there though, did you know that you can sterilize soil? Yeah, just pop some soil in your oven and cook to 160 degrees like research shows here to kill off mold, fungi, bacteria, and creepy crawlies that you don't want in your cage. Ill be honest though, I bring my parrots outside, they have an outdoor aviary and I bring browse in. They're exposed to a whole lot more than what comes in a bag of soil.
Last, pick out some plants! I went with some of Bonnies Organic choices. Romaine Lettuce, Kale, Oregano, Basil, Spinach, and Dill. You can go crazy and choose some greens to fit your birds fancy and your green thumbs ability.
I like simple. The more simple you keep things, the easier it is to keep up with it. This little garden is cool for a few reasons:
novel/healthy food choices
offers these choices in a novel way
change in environment...and this pot is easy to move around.
promotes foraging and exercise.
Hang it. Let them munch. Pull it out to let it recover.
