I just watched something horrible almost happen

[girly]

Oh my! You know when the birds are playing with their toys and getting extremely angry at them, and growling?

Well Jezebel does that a lot. I was just taking pictures of her doing that, while swinging upside down from the toy. She lost her grip and fell to the bottom of the cage, right on her back. And it made a horrible sound. I jumped up to see if anything happened but it didn't.

My question is this-Is there anything I can do to help her because she's not going to stop playing-I don't want her to.

What if I pad the bottom of the cage? Does anyone else do this?

[FiloBeddo]

Growing pains. No big deal.

[girly]

you mean they can't break their backs that way?

[kali]

The can definately hurt themselves. i have to give away my tall playstand bcoz i have a blind bird who fell off it too many times...

You can't stop her playing, but hopefully she'll learn from it and it won't happen again. it's like with kids, you can't wrap them in bubble wrap everytime you send them out to play!!!

[usamma]

I think that's why we lost Sunny. :( She had just had her wing clipped by the rescue people, and she fell a lot. She was frail and mentally disabled as far as I could tell. I was trying to adjust things for her and she woke up with a swollen wing and died shortly after. I didn't have time to call the vet and she just slipped away. They can definitely hurt themselves. Maybe lower the toys down.

[Flappuccino]

You could always put a nice cushy fluffy towel in the bottom of the cage...

Lots of folks do that when babies are learning to perch.

[dmiller91]

What happens in the wild???? poor birds!

[pippy]

Originally Posted by FiloBeddo

Growing pains. No big deal.

What a dangerously flippant remark that was.

Shinda hurt his leg by falling in the cage. It was swollen and hot and he couldn't put any weight on it until a few hours after the vet gave him an anti-inflammatory injection. He also gave me meds to give Shinda at home later.

This was Shinda when I first realised there was a problem.




He was lucky not to have broken his leg. Hardly 'no big deal'.


I now always have a thick towel under the newspaper (I don't use the metal grill) so if they fall they hopefully won't hurt themselves.

They don't have their wings clipped and when they're out playing are more than capable of saving themselves in the event of a fall but even in their huge cage there isn't really room for them to save themselves as to do so they need to be able to fly in a low swoop then up again.

[pippy]

Originally Posted by dmiller91

What happens in the wild???? poor birds!

They fly!

They're safely in the nesting area until ready to learn to fly.

[Lady Kakata]

And any bird that falls out and doesn't learn the power of flight sharpish is usually food. Or rescued by a human.

Doesn't every parrot have a small accident at some point when they forget that at least two grasps have to be on something? (or one, if you are those great show-off parrots in the wild I once saw on a documentary. They were hanging off bendy branches by one foot looking at everything upside down XD)

EDIT: I'm not saying this is a small accident, far from it, but I mean other parrots having minor learning-curve accidents, not as potentially serious as this one