Hello! Do you give your birds free range of your home? My birds have their own room but I would like to give them the ability to explore the house. What precautions do you take when theyâre out of their cage? Thank you!
The birds have their own scheduled out of room time where they get to free roam. I canât really say we do a whole lot out of the ordinary, nothing so extreme to me anyways.
Both Jack and I communicate a lot when the birds are out so everyone knows not to go outside (or use the side door that has an interior door we can shut so someone can go outside with the birds never able to access the exterior door). This may also include communicating everyoneâs whereabouts in case Mia is trying to nap on the floor so no one accidentally hurts her
Any shelving units or decor that is most definitely going to become a bird perch is made of bird-safe materials as far as we can control (obviously things like paint canât necessarily be bird-proofed). Just in case someone decides to chew something we knows it isnât going to be horrifically toxic to them. Same goes for house plants.
When it comes to the other animals in the house everyone gets restrained desensitization to eachother and they all get reinforced for calm behaviour. This way if someone breaks out of their room outside of their designated free roam time it wonât be a big surprise when they see eachother and everyone will know the right response is to be calm. We actually had this happen the other day, Newt slipped through the door and got out while our dog was out and about. Thankfully we seem to have done a good job reinforcing the calm behaviour because as soon as she saw Newt she just sat down on her own accord and waited until I told her sheâd done good and could resume whatever she was doing once the escapee had been returned. If youâve got a multi pet household I definitely recommend having some sort of âoh itâs you itâs time to be calmâ behaviour in place. It really helps.
Work in progress at the moment but the birds both have an âoffâ cue, if they land somewhere that could be hazardous to them, or is just somewhere I donât trust them being they can be cued to get off of it. With that it means Iâm not grabbing a stool to try and reach them and potentially getting an angry bird because Iâm forcibly removing them from where they want to be, this way they know that getting off of it will usually bring something more positive. (this is particularly helpful with Newt who occasionally tries to land on the fishtank. Weâre trying to morph this in to a âdonât land here everâ understanding which Mia is gotten down, Newt needs a bit more work.
When the birds are out we make sure food is away, any cutting boards or utensils that may have touched harmful things arenât accessible
We may also do a quick sweep of the main area the birds will be, Newt likes to try to seek out crumbs on the floor so we may just quickly brush it up to reduce the odds of him getting in to stuff he shouldnât.
how much you end up bird proofing really depends on your relationship with your birds (and how mischievous they may be). If theyâre not tamed you may need to find a way to cover high perches and things that could be hard to retrieve them from, cover windows they may bash in to and things like that.
When we first moved the birds got a good walk around of the house so we could tap on the windows and show them where everything was. Otherwise if they get spooked at take off itâs more likely they may crash in to something they werenât expecting to be there. For the first while I kept suction cup perches and open blinds down on the windows so if they did book it towards a window they had somewhere to land instead of hitting something. They didnât really end up using any of it but itâs better safe than sorry.
