John: Hi Bird friends. It's time for Avian First Aid, episode 5. Today Dr. Gordy is going to talk about catching your bird, yeah. she is going to talk about catching your bird. He doesn't like that. Yeah, we know about that, you don't like that. He knows what towels are.
EPISODE 5
CATCHING YOUR BIRD.
Dr. Pam Gordy: Catching a bird, a bird that is stressed as he is having some kind of emergency situation happening. They may not respond to the normal commands. It's still useful to top and step up, step down, because if you can catch a bird with a least stress that it is having some kind of emergency, that is certainly going to be easier on them, but if you can't, what you'll probably need to do is towel your bird. Now if you've prepared the bird to use the towel and not be afraid of them, that's good.
Some birds, toweling in the situation with their owner in the bathroom, with their favorite towel, if they like, is will never going to be same as somebody with little stress trying to catch them and they are not feeling well. With small birds, finches, canaries, you want to be fairly quick, because if they get stressed their heart rates can get one so quickly, that they can have a heart attack. So have everything you think you wanted to have ready, to do ready. Don't be pulling the bird, running around looking for things, and when you are holding them, just assess them as you are going along, and how well you think that they are handling this.
If the bird you are holding has started to close his eyes and not struggle any more, you may want to put him down for a minute and finish the rest of what they are doing later, because they could die in your hand. When you towel a bird, what we are going to do is, demo, with our demo birds. So what do you want to do when you are catching a bird. If you possible can, do it in a area where the bird isn't going to injure itself further. You don't want to have other pets, who are all excited and running around, because you are all freaked out about your bird, and now you are going to catch your bird, it flies down and your dog bites it, and now you have an additional problem.
So try and choose an area reasonably quickly where the bird isn't going to get injured. Turn off the ceiling fans. If you have a ceiling fan, you have another problem. Don't try and do it in the kitchen, where you hot stoves, open pots of things that they can fly into. If you have windows, lower the blinds, because if they get afraid, and get to the window, that's another problem. So the ideal place would be a small room, with nothing else in it. Nothing they could fly on to, and grab. Now that's in an ideal room. You know what your house is like. Choose your best situation. But try and avoid creating a additional problem, because you can notice what else -- what's going on or flying into open toilets, it can happen.
A dark room is better than a super bright room, specially for catching really little birds. If you have a budgie or a canary, and you can move it to a bathroom, or you can close the door and it's dark. Their night vision is very poor compared to ours. So if you go in a dark bathroom, open the door just a crack, and stand, so the door is here, light is here, bird is here, you are here, and you can see through the cage, see the bird, and you can often catch them and get them out of their cage and also with the toy, without them getting scared and flying off around and banging into things, so in a large bird that may not be possible, because you may not be able to move them to that area. But for small birds it works quite well.
When you choose your towel, you want to try and choose a towel that is right size for the bird. Like for this bird, this would not be a big enough towel. It's not going to go all the way around. I am not going to not going to get that all the way around this bird. The other thing you should do is, choose the color that is boring. birds just get more excited, and are nervous with bright colors. So bright red, bright yellow, bright orange is not a good color to choose, because that makes them more anxious. Boring beige, off white, Grey or a color that is similar to the birds color. So in blue, if you have like a lightish green, that will be okay. But I find that they are the least stressed by boring colors.
Now certain birds hates certain colors and occasionally the clients will tell me that, you will know that about your bird, but if you are choosing in a pinch, choose the color that is not bright or exciting at all. When you are touching small birds, you may want to use a dish towel, if your man does all your dishes, this is a dish towel. It doesn't have any coil on it, and they're really small birds, can get their nails hooked in the loops of the terry towel. In large birds, their nails are too big and that won't happen, but in a small bird they can hook in the loops of terry. So in a small bird this type is a better choice. So you choose your size, you choose your color, and then what you want to do, and choose your area to make it perfectly safe. The best place to get a bird is on the floor, and the reason is that, if they are on the floor, they are not as likely to fly into something and break a blood feather, break a toe, do more damage. I don't generally like taking them off people, and that's really more for the human safety than the birds. Because many birds are sitting on the owner, and you go to towel them, they reach down and grab on owner, or they grab at ear. So the ideal situation is do not have them on the owner, occasionally that's not possible but.
John: That's it for episode 5. we will see you next time.
