Got some of my books out of storage

[IcyWolf]

I finally got some of my animal care books out of storage, I spread out some of the bird ones and took a picture, I've read all of them, some are better than others and some I am working on rereading. This was only one box worth, I'm pretty sure I still have another box of books and and probably 2 boxes worth of bird and reptile magazines I'm an information junkie

 

[Mitchell]

The way I see it, is that you can never have too much knowledge thats for sure! Keeping those books are good for reference as well. Time to get a good ol' book shelf now!

 

[IcyWolf]

Gotta love old parrot information, this is out of a book called "The proper care of parrots", the copyright is 1992 and it even has the aspca approval seal on it.

The caption under the first picture says, "A good rule of thumb to assess cage size: it should allow the parrot (here a yellow-naped amazon, amazona auropalliata) to extend it's wings fully."

I can't believe 20 years ago, people thought it was okay to keep a bird in a cage just big enough for it to spread it's wings! And no where in the book does it mention toys of any kind and there are no pictures of a single cage with a toy in it, and this book has a lot of pictures. It has a breeding section that seems just as horrific, and says that the best and most common way is by surgical sexing, does anyone actual do this anymore? It sounds very traumatic, I understand the bird is anesthetized and all but it says about making an incision in the abdomen and inserting an endoscope to view their sexual organs, just sounds very invasive. I'm glad parrot husbandry has come such a long way but it's still sad to think about all of the poor birds that had to suffer in the meantime

 

[Mitchell]

Its amazing how much changes in time as technology improves! I'm a nut for rereading old bird books and magazines. I can't get enough.

 

[amysaviary]

I have over 100 bird books here! I want to know as much as I can about my babies! The Heathy bird cookbook would be my fav in ur pic for sure!!!

 

[Remy]

Those look great! Any you recommend buying? I only have 2 bird books (my favorite is called Holistic Bird Care), plus stuff I've learned online, especially from this forum. I had a lot of birds growing up, but it turns out I didn't know a whole lot about their care. :-(

 

[kc_y0]

That's a nice collection you have there!

I'm so glad things have changed, poor birdy's from the past!

 

[lene1949]

Only about 10 years ago I went to a bird fair not far from me, and a stall there was doing surgical sexing... I couldn't believe it...

I got heaps of bird books as well...

 

[roxynoodle]

DNA sexing was still pretty new when I got Rowdy. If surgical sexing had been the only choice I guess I wouldn't have had it done.

Just the things I have learned in my lifetime about birds is pretty amazing. Our first budgies were in a tall, cylindrical cage and ate cheap Hartz seed from the grocery store. My mom flipped out when I told her I was feeding my birds things like spaghetti. We did at least give those long ago birds veggies and fruit. Good thing or they probably would have died really young. They toys they had back then, too, were cheap little plastic things that probably weren't all that interesting to the birds.

 

[IcyWolf]

The healthy bird cookbook is great! The only thing that bothered me about it was that in the beginning of the book the author specifically says that birds are lactose intolerant(which makes perfect sense) and says that you shouldn't feed dairy products to them, but a lot of the recipes call for milk, margarine and even cheese. Aside from that, it's a very helpful book, it has recipes for different mealtimes and my favorite part is that it has a lot of good nutritional information, including species specific nutrition. I also really like the books "the click that does the trick" and "birds off the perch". Right now I'm rereading the big book that's called "Parrots, an essential reference for keeping more than 200 parrot family species". It's not the newest book(1992), but it surprisingly has a lot of good information and A LOT of pictures, especially of budgie color mutations I'd recommend "Why does my bird do that?", "the parrot problem solver", and "guide to a well behaved parrot" as well. Oh, and Parrots for dummy's is a great one, I have that in with the rest of my books I haven't picked up yet

 

[amysaviary]

Yes that part bugged me too! But I love the front half of the book(nutritional guide) Also I will have to make a list of good books for u to get because the old books really r no good anymore. So much has changed. I have breeder books that r great, I will get u a list.