Pressure Sores

This week when I was cleaning cages, I noticed Crazy Bird, my Blue front amazon, had a small pressure sore starting on his foot. There are a lot of reasons for pressure sores to start (check out the blog post about it here) but the main ones is sitting on the same perch too often and obesity. Amazons are very prone to obesity and are known to be a “lazier” parrot species. CB isn’t overweight, and thankfully I see the reason why. He always wants to sit as close as he can to Jo and Ringo, who will sit in their aviary close to him too occasionally. So, he’s choosing to sit on the same perch more often to be close to them.

In other instances, your bird may do this if you have a perch going from one end of the cage to another, closer to the couch or a main hallway or doorway, close to a window they look out of, on the food perch, their favorite enrichment is close to that perch. No matter what it is, there are a few methods of fixing to try.

One would be rearrange the cage. Move enrichment around often. Take out perches and rearrange where they are located in the cage. Swap out perches to entirely different ones. If the bird hangs out on the food perch and really won’t budge, buy screw on stainless steel bowls and place them throughout the cage (as long as your bird is able to do so) and change the bowl location often. Even separating the food and water so they have to travel more.

The easiest for my case is to simply rotate the cage! Since CB wanted to be closer to the boyfriends, I just needed to put different perches closer so he will sit there and have that variation. Because it’s just me and my cages are so large, rearranging the perches is a task and a half and I do it once a month unless it’s absolutely necessary to do it sooner. So just a simple rotation on the smaller cages is the solution!

It doesn’t matter if you even block the door to the cage with a wall, as when you let your bird out, you’ll just rotate the cage so the door is accessible again!