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Housing
Bigger is better for any parrot. Buy the biggest cage possible!
Make sure that your bird is able to spread his or her wings without touching both sides. This is a minimum! For birds my size, the cage should be at least about two feet high and a foot and a half wide. Aviaries are great, but you have to keep them in tip-top condition. Square, or rectangular cages are the best shape. Round cages will often make a parrot nervous. It's nice to have a corner to hide or sleep in. Don't bother with those silly bamboo cages, with the little windows and towers. Us birdies don't give a flying flip about how our cage is decorated on the outside. Besides, all of those steeples and curly Q's are very hard to clean. Bamboo is unsanitary (Bugs and bacteria won't have a bit of trouble hiding in the cracks and crevices) and us parrot will chew through it in no time. A removable cage bottom is great.
FOOD!
Always offer a clean supply of water. Tubular feeders are best, because then I can't make poop-soup out of my water dish. Change the water EVERY day. You can purchase mineral supplements and/or vitamin supplements to put in your bird's water, but as long as you supply us with a cuttle bone & a fresh and varied diet, we won't need them. Pellets are usually the best diet for your bird, but a good seed mix with lots of greens and fruit will be great. I get a soaked seed mix from my Mommy, with Spirulina vitamin supplements, Bee Nectar, lots of fruit & vegetables. Sometimes if I'm good I'll get a miniscule amount of cheese. I also get spray millet, cuttle bone and a teensy weensy bit of grit.
Toys and perches
Both are absolute necessities. Perches should be natural, hard wood branches that of course haven't been sprayed with
pesticides. The more funkier & twisted they get, the better. Not only will the bird be able to chew on the bark, which provides
nutritional value, the different widths of the branch will help keep your bird's foot healthy. If you must have doweling, try to have different sizes. Make sure the size fits your bird's foot! Toys are just as important to birds as perches. Toys provide mental stimulation. In the wild, us parrots would spend all day hunting for food, flying around, taking care of young, etc, etc, and because you can't really offer that, you must offer toys. You can usually buy toys at your local pet store. If not, make yours. Make sure none of the materials you use are toxic! I like toys made for birds my size. Big toys will scare me, and little finch's toys will bore me.
Try to get toys that match your bird's colouring. It's just a theory, but most aviculturists believe that a parrot will be more inclined to play with a toy of it's colouring. It's just a thought, but I defiantly pay more attention to toys of my own colour. Ladders, bells, rings (make sure I can't get caught in them) and rope toys are great for parrots my size. Don't give your bird a mirror (especially if they are of the more intelligent type, in other words, a parrot)
Because parrots can bond with the bird in the mirror. This is not healthy. The bird in the mirror isn't real, and this can lead to all sorts of problems.
Don't stop reading here. Buy or take out some books on bird care. Have fun!
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