DIY Bird Treat

Hi, Rachel here! I have a DIY treat you can do for birds today--either pets or wild birds! Almost all birds love popcorn. Making a popcorn string is relatively easy and it should last for a little while.

You will need:

Popcorn
thread
needle
a bird-safe stopper, such as a wooden bead

So, you will need to start with some popcorn. You shouldn't use the packaged bag popcorn because chemicals and such in the popcorn are potentially harmful to birds. There are three ways you can make bird safe popcorn easily.

With an air popper, you don't need anything but the kernels to make popcorn. With the stove popper, you need some kind of oil, so I would suggest coconut oil. The last way to make popcorn safely is to place a small handful of kernels in a brown paper bag, fold down the top a few times, and put it in the microwave for a few seconds, till the pops are about 1 second apart. Don't leave it too long or it will get burned!

After you have some clean popcorn, you can thread it using the needle and thread.

Use your stopper to tie to the end so the popcorn won't just slide off. For pet birds you only need 10-15 pieces of popcorn but if you want to put some outside for wild birds, you may want a string several feet long. It's all up to you though.

Don't be surprised if your bird won't touch the treat for a few days. Many birds will take a little time to be comfortable enough with something in their cage to try chewing on it.

Bird Taming

     Parakeets make great pets for young people or for people with little time to take care of a more demanding pet. But if you have a parakeet and you have enough time that you want to tame it, here is a post on the methods I found most useful. Over the years I've had several budgies, and all of them have been hand tame. One parakeet that I had (my first ever, in fact,) was very friendly. He hardly needed to be hand tamed. The first morning after I had brought him home he was ready to be out of that cage. After a day, I had to use a piece of wire to tie the door down so he wouldn't open it with his beak and hop out (I had a dog also at the time so it wasn't exactly safe for a little bird to hop around on the floor). Needless to say, with that kind of an adventurous attitude, he hardly needed to be hand tamed. If you held your hand in front of him, he hopped on to go for a ride. But unfortunately, not all birds are this easily hand tamed. The bird I had after he died was a real Scrooge. He hated to come out. He was slightly more difficult to tame because he would rather sit in his cage than come out and go for a ride. Many parakeet books will suggest using a piece of wood such as a dolrod to train him to step up, and eventually switch to your finger. I found it much easier to do it quickly and just skip the dolrod. Hand taming is best done about three days after you've brought your budgie home. A word to the wise--babies are so, so, so much easier to hand tame than adults. So if you have a choice when choosing a bird, go for a healthy baby. You can tell that they are babies because they will have bars all over their foreheads as opposed to the blank foreheads of adults.

Take your parakeet out of the cage in a light towel (make sure he can breathe!). The cloth is so that the budgie will not associate your hand with being frightened. It also keeps you from being bitten, an unpleasant experience. Take the bird (still being held inside the cloth) into a small room without things the bird can hide under or be crushed by (weird as it is, I went into a small bathroom with tile on the floor and walls). Take something with you that the bird really likes. All of my birds have liked millet spray. Set the bird on the floor and let him look around for a while until he seems more comfortable. Then offer him the millet. If he is comfortable enough to eat, then you can let him take a few bites and then move the millet (or whatever you are using) into your hand. Hopefully the bird will want it bad enough to follow onto your hand. Once he realizes that your hand isn't a monster, he should be comfortable with you placing your hand close to him. Of course, move slowly so he isn't startled. Something that helps with timid birds is having an already hand tamed budgie with you. If you are taming your bird soon after you bring it home, it will probably be missing the other birds that lived with him at the breeder's or wherever he came from. Seeing another bird will excite him and he will probably want to play with the other bird. If you can get the other bird to stay on your hand, then the little tyke will most likely come and join him after a little indecision. Another technique that I found helpful was to get the bird to sit on a perch, and then move the perch toward my hand. It cannot be the other way around or it will not work! If my hand is staying still and the perch is moving, my hand will suddenly look like a more secure place to sit. If the bird does not switch places of its own accord, then press your finger against the birds lower stomach BY MOVING THE PERCH FORWARDS. Do not move your hand.

By pressing here, you are knocking the bird off balance, forcing him to step up or fall off. Birds, being birds, have a paranoia of falling. They were made to fly so falling is unnatural. Not to mention it hurts. Again, having another bird around that is already tamed will also help with this. If the birds are sitting together on a perch and you move it so they are both being pressed in the same spot and the trainee sees the other bird step up, he will probably follow suit.

The white bird, Jub Jub is already hand tamed while Perth, the  azure one, is being tamed. Seeing JJ stepping up with no problem gave her a lot of confidence in people. Now she is fully hand tamed and will ride around on my shoulder.

That is all for now, I hope your hand taming goes well!! Have fun and maybe learn a few things!

-Rachel-