How To Put A Bird Collar On Your Bird

[@garzoroberto7623]

Hi Pet Parrot Lovers, Our male Eclectus (Mambo) has been living with us for 20 years now (Australia). We hope this feedback "Comment" helps other pet parrot owners, as this is why and how we have had no difficulty with Mambo 🦜plucking his feathers: 1) Early in Mambo being our young, hand-raised, tame pet parrot family member we noticed that Mambo would intentionally bath itself when given its morning fresh clean drinking water 💦 (fresh water also given late afternoon before his tea), but he would choose to bathe himself only once weekly, and would also get our attention too! 2) We early read that the Eclectus parrots' original natural habitat is the Tropical Rain Forests of North Queensland and the Tropical Highland Rainforests of PNG (Papua New Guinea), & some of the tropical Pacific Islands. That’s when we thought that they would live with showers of rain 🌧 in their original tropical rainforest habitat, and we put this together with Eclectus’s also being a very high DANDER bird that Mambo would probably enjoy, at his chosen time to bath, with us also giving him a gentle shower spray with an indoor pot plants water 💦 spray bottle. Well yes indeed! Mambo LOVES his weekly bath 🛁 plus light water-spray shower all over and under his body -- he even spreads his wings wide so we can spray under both his wings and both sides of his chest. Mambo prefers this weekly wash in the morning, and he happily chats away after his bath and water spray. So pet parrot lovers, our take on why Eclectus parrots 🦜 (& some other parrots too!) have a reputation for being feather-pluckers is NOT necessarily a nervousness condition, nor consequent to a health issue or boredom either, but rather with their high dander skin-replacing body, the build-up of dander becomes irritating to them. Thus the scratching and pecking at their irritated skin (with feathers coming out while trying to relieve themselves of the dander skin irritation) is why parrots understandably scratch & peck their skin. I would be scratching my skin too if I didn't shower daily, and I don't even have a high-dander skin!🤗 And yes, the stress-factor to the parrot with the DANDER irritation can understandably impact their general health and wellbeing, and happiness! This DANDER skin irritation probably adds to bad behaviour, like screeching, etcetera. We have 3 pet parrots, and they have never had the problem of plucking feathers. They all live indoors in our home with us to keep them safe from outside predators (snakes, rats, and predatory birds - e.g. Butcher Birds, Magpies). I have had pet birds most of my 70 year life - and approximately 100 racing pigeons as a young teenager and belonged in the latter 1960’s to the Brisbane QLD Racing Pigeon Federation (the best I got was a 3rd place 🥉 in a long distance pigeon race back to their loved home lofts -- birds love an easy resort-lifestyle and security). Enjoy wonderful pet birds, as they love human company too! Cheers, Garzo 🎶🦜 - see in the KZbin Channel “ILLUSTRA MEDIA” documentary entitled “FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds” Trailer on KZbin, and with a Google search, the complete documentary is available for purchase on DVD 📀, it’s an awesome documentary. Enjoy 😃

[@scarletmacaw]

I just put a hard plastic neck collar on one of my Scarlet Macaws. I sustained a lot of scratches on my hands despite wrapping him up in a towel. This is definitely a two-person job but I had no one to help me with it and it was imperative that I install the collar immediately.

[@birdsupplies1]

Yes, larger birds are more difficult to collar! My Moluccan would require two people.

[@stephancordell697]

I made loose fitting pancake collar out of tshirt after using a felt one first easy to get on but she pulls on it spins it around she now has ruptured an airsack what's next step?. Not going back to vet for that.

[@birdsupplies1]

Stephan, I'd encourage a vet visit for anything respiratory. That can turn deadly very quickly.