Polly Stinks! How To Make Her Smell Nice
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Many new bird owners are confused about how to properly care for their birds. One example is hygiene….how do you bath your bird and keep it clean?
For starters, birds do not smell. In some cases, especially in the wild, some birds omit a natural odor from their oil glands that protects it from predators in the wild. This is not the case for pet birds.
If you do smell odors from a bird, in most cases it is coming from the cage. This is the result of bird dropping decomposing, stale water, or old food. Proper cage cleaning will always eliminate this smell.
But birds do need their bath!
SHOULD YOU FORCE YOUR BIRD TO TAKE A
Never force a bird to bath. Dropping the bird into a sink of water, or improperly spraying it with a mister only terrorizes them. You need to experiment a little and find out what the bird likes. It will vary widely from bird to bird. Some birds can barely tolerate a light misting with a bottle of warm water. Others love to sit on a shower perch and have water spray all over them until they are a dripping mess! That is how my wife’s Military Macaw wants his bath!
Experiment a bit to learn what your bird likes. Start by getting a spray bottle and lightly mist the bird. If he’s interested, he will stand on his perch, spread his wings out and beg for more. If not, he runs away from the bottle and looks for a place to hide. Obviously this is not his “preferred method”.
Offer a bowl of water. The bird will sit on the edge and splash water on himself (and everything else in the area).
Another method is to place the bird in a sink and run a thin stream of water into it. The bird will run in and out of the water to bath. Or try buying a “shower perch” and install it on the wall of the shower. Run the shower (but not on the bird directly) and let him move in and out of the spray.
BIRD SHAMPOO?
There are a number of products on the market designed as a shampoo or bathing aid for your bird. NEVER use these products. If the bird is properly cared for there is never a need for them. To make matters worse, they can make a bird sick.
The only time I can ever recommend such a product is if the bird got extremely dirty.
That goes double for “mite and lice” sprays. Very rarely do birds get these pests, and if the cage and environment are kept clean it will never occur. Never use this sort of product without the close supervision of an avian veterinarian.
This advice also goes for those bird perfumes or anything that you would spray on a bird. Your bird already has the natural instincts to care for itself, preen it’s feathers, and keep clean. So save your money, or use it to buy a nice birdy toy.
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