Fruits, Vegetable, Berries and Weeds for Lovebirds

Most lovebirds eat some form of green food. For lovebirds it is a supplement ingredient of their diet. You can collect some green food yourself, but there may be some drawbacks to this.

The herbs, and fruits may have been contaminated by dust produced by heavy industries, exhaust fumes, or pesticides. That is why people who keep a lot of lovebirds often grow herbs in their own garden or on their balcony, so that they can be sure about the quality.

When you give green foods to the lovebirds make sure that it has not stated to wilt, rot or even become moldy. If any green food is left over, make sure you remove it the same day. Fruit should be washed very thoroughly and offered in small pieces.

Fruits and Vegetables

The following types of fruits and vegetable are suitable:
Sweet varieties of apple, pears, bananas, grapes, orange segments, mandarains, papayas, dates, figs, apricots (dried or fresh), pineapples, soaked raisins and currants, carrots, tomatoes, corncobs, celery (in small quantities). Never feed your lovebirds avocados, as these are poisonous for a lot of birds!

Berries

The following types of berries are suitable: blackberries, raspberries, hawthorn berries, elderberries, berberries, rowanberries, rose hips, firethorn berries.

Green Food

The following type of green food are suitable for lovebirds: chick weed, coltsfoot, sheperd's purse, lady's-thumb (the seeds and flowers), ground-sel, plantain, sorrel, milfol, dandelion, garden peppergrass, fresh grass seeds, evening primrose, sow thistle.

Lovebird illness: Learn the Symptom of Lovebird Illness

Lovebirds are really skilled in hiding the symptoms of disease/illness because showing their illness in nature will help the predators to attack them. In order to have the best chance of saving the life of lovebirds, you should lookout for telltale symptoms of sick lovebird.

Early signs of lovebird illness include change in feeding habit, overly quiet, and fluffed feathers. Once your bird shows any of these symptoms, you should approach an avian vet as early as possible to avoid any untoward incident.

The symptoms of lovebird's illnesses are the sequel of some of the lovebird's diseases. Some of the common diseases/ conditions that pave way for sickness are enteritis, respiratory disorders, coccidiosis, intestinal influenza, egg drop syndrome, ticks, mites, internal parasites, bacterial and viral infection (avian pox, polyoma viral, etc), yeast infections (candidiasis) and infighting.

Once your lovebird have shown symptoms of running nose, reduced appetite, dull or watery eyes, sleeping in their enclosure with eyes closed, dull plumage, ruffled feathers cloudy eyes, and soiled vent, you may come to conclusion that your lovebird is going towards the sickness.

Some of the sick lovebirds love to stay near the feeding cup. Even falling from the perch, excessive scratching, sneezing, labored breathing, and tail bobbing are the final symptoms of lovebird illness.

As a responsible lovebird owner, once you found illness in your lovebird, an avian vet check should be the FIRST thing you do! It is always advisable to catch sicknesses first, to be safe than sorry, rather than realize it once it is beyond the reach of the vet.

How to Tame An Untamed Lovebird?

It is not Joke that if you try to peep into your untamed lovebirds cage, chance are you will loose a piece of skin off your finger because lovebirds are very territorial birds. Hence it is highly advisable to follow the step by step procedure to tame an untamed lovebird as a pet training book is suggesting. This will help you maintain your lovebird not only hale and healthy but also act as a key to successful taming your untamed lovebird.

In case if you're having two untamed lovebirds, you need to separate them to give training. Once you tame them you can bring back them together. In addition to this, you should be cautious enough in handling them both on a daily basis otherwise you would lose them…

Provide only 75 percent of feed in the cage and rest of the feed items should be provided during training session. Moreover tame your untamed lovebird in dimlight as they would be calmer as they are poorer in vision.

While taming your untamed lovebird, clip the wings. Keep in mind that clipping should be done only on flight feathers. Caution should be taken while trimming the quills. If you clip the end of the quills, there will be excessive bleeding.

Toys should be avoided during taming period. After getting tamed introduce their favorite toys to give them in-house training. Lovebirds need total enchanting from you…

Most of the lovebirds get scared for gloves. Try to avoid them while taming. Don't think taming an untamed lovebird is a Herculean task as they're hilarious to tame. And also funny pets…

Menu For Your Weaned Lovebird Chicks

The best time for weaning a baby lovebird is after 4 weeks age. Within this period, you should practice the young ones to take feed from your hand or on its own. In my opinion, a lovebird would be a best eater once it is exposed to foods at the earliest possible time.

Slowly introduce all types of food a lovebird eats. The common food items introduced initially might be crumbled Roudybush pellets, sunflower sprouts, and millets.

Lovebirds are chronic sufferers of food phobia. That is a lovebird will fly wildly inside the cage as such a snake entered into the cage once you introduce a new food item that it hasn't seen before. Hence it is strongly advised to provide a different type of food daily.

The sample menu for your newly weaned lovebird may be:

Monday: sunflower sprouts, seed mix, cooked sweet potato (mashed) with corn niblets mixed in.

Tuesday: Pellets, Cheerios, Cooked brown rice or quinoa with sprouted beans and seeds.

Wednesday: Exact pellets, Wheat grass

Thursday: Carrots (chopped to 1 cm size), cooked corn niblets, Roudybush pellets, and Seed mix.

Friday: Millet, Pea shoots, sunflower sprouts, Cheerios.

I think now you got an idea. Your feeding schedule and food items need not be the same as above. You can use the locally available items, but the main idea is you should provide different food items EVERY SINGLE DAY. Then, food won't be scary and strange for your lovebirds, but it would induce the eating habit…

Toys for Lovebirds

Do you know lovebirds are violent chewers? Hence this point should be kept in mind while selecting toys for your tiny thing. Lovebird toys are often filmsy and too small for the assiduous beak of the lovebird. Within no time, you can easily make sure that which toys are most preferred by your lovebird.

Toys for lovebirds should possess no small parts, which can be chewed off and swallowed. Make sure that the selected model contains no loose strings or clips that your lovebird could stick its feet or beak. Sometimes wide ring in a toy may cause head trapping.

Safe Toys

Safe models for lovebirds include ladders, bells, acrylic, rawhide, leather, sisal, or wood toys. Some of the pet owners prefer to go for converting their households into perfect toy for their lovebirds.

Dried pasta shapes, ink-free cardboard, paper cups, and paper towel rolls may be used to build nice dolls for the lovebirds. As lovebirds are very playful and agile, you can produce different toys daily for keeping them busy all the day.

For bottom play area (floor), you can build a teeter-totter for your lovebird using dowels. It would love to walk back and forth along it.

Toys painted with some dyes, lead and zinc paints, lacquers, adhesives and glues should be avoided as they are acting as health hazards for your lovebird. Although cotton ropes are good for playing, strict supervision is necessary since birds may get entangled in the loosened end of the ropes.

Toys will help your birds free from vices like feather plucking, eating unwanted things (Pica), etc. Happy moments!!!

How to Buy Lovebirds?

Most of the first time buyers are in the idea that it is essential to procure two lovebirds as they think that without a pair, lovebird will succumb to death. It's not true! It is not necessary to buy two lovebirds.

Lovebirds can live alone for years together. Moreover single lovebird would be more attached to the owner. If you don't get two lovebirds, you at least get a mirror for him/her. As they love affection, it wouldn't hurt for them to have something to smooch up when you're away from home.

Buy a lovebird based on the personality rather than its color. Lovebirds are great pets. If you buy lovebird of seven weeks old, she should be hand fed with seeds and she'd hide out in your shirts for warmth and comfort.

As parent raised birds are really hard to tame it is advisable to buy a hand-raised one. Don't be in a opinion that lovebirds are calm and quiet. They will make huge noisy as they can chat and chirp.

Some lovebirds do kind of whistle but mainly they chirp, LOUDLY, most of the time. The cost of seven weeks bird ranges from $50 to $75, but mutated ones would be little bit costlier. You should note that long-term commitment I really essential while buying lovebirds.

Before going to buy a lovebird, learn about the behaviour and feeding pattern of the same. Lovebirds require attention on a regular basis. You should feed your lovebird with beans, pasta, vegetables, fruits, pellets, seeds, etc. You should allow your lovebird to fly outside cage at least few minutes in a day.

It is not a bad idea to buy a pair of lovebirds from a breeder or pet store, which plays with baby lovebirds regularly.

Potty Train your Lovebirds...

As a prestigious owner of a tiny lovebird, you'll know that these birds are very intelligent. They can be 'potty' trained to poop on a paper or in a trash container instead of around the house.

How to train?

Dog books will help you a lot to learn the potty training your lovebird. Dog training involves showing a right spot every time after each meal, but lovebirds are also a lot like that, with one really BIG difference: they go as often as once every few minutes!

Uncover the birdcage in the morning after it poops. Wait till it completes. Immediately open the cage once it finishes her/his act, otherwise the lovebird has no reason to associate the action with the result.

Always open the cage immediately after pooping. After few days or weeks, the bird may call you immediately after pooping to let her out.

Potty training lovebird may take few days for some birds or it might take few weeks for others. Hence it always requires instructor's patience and persistence.

Some of my friend's lovebirds hesitate to poop on their favorite human perch as they're having some sort of instinctive desire.

Choosing suitable word for pooping is essential. The same word should be used for the act by all of your family members. For example- you can say- "Poopie, go poppie, poppie!" once you identified the act of defecation. The bird immediately respond and it will go to T-stand or newspaper to poop. Say- "good bird!" when he/she was done.

By means of this act you can build positive binding with performing the action of pooping on her own and the word poopie.

Potty training your lovebird will help your lovebird to enjoy freedom outside the cage without the constant clean up.