newbie. coupla questions here

[mauijim]

ok, brand new at this, and we had no time to plan or research before we got these birds, a hyac and a gw.
first of all, what is this about spraying them with warm water daily.

is it really dangerous to let them have peanuts? the previous owner gave me half of a 50 lb bag and told me it was their favorite food.

can they have "too much" time out of the cage? they seem to love to sit on top of it.

i'd like to hear about any 'comprehensive' websites that could clue me in on things like clipping their wings, supplements, health issues to be aware of, etc.

 

[Bobby34231]

Baths or showers are both benificial to a birds feather health and to it's phycological well being, warm water is great, you really want to make sure that the air temperature is above 70 degrees and that their not exposed to darfts such as air conditioning while wet, as for peanuts, because they are grown in the soil they can sometimes have high concentrations of the fungus aspergillus which can be harmful to birds with weak or compromised imune systems, other factors include other illnesses, stress, poor nutrition, poor husbandry or unsanitary conditions, another injury to the respiratory system (smoke inhalation ect.), and prolonged use of certain medications such as antibiotics, as a rule the fungus does not cause illness in healthy birds, with all that being said, the aspergillus fungus is on just about everything we touch as well as the air we breath, you will also find it in most all seed feed for parrots whether it contains peanuts or not, so its a risk one must weigh in making that decision, macaws do need nuts as part of their diet, many recommend using other types of nuts such as almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans ect all in moderation, as long as thier supervised a lot of out of cage time is great, you just want to make sure that they either have food and water outside the cage or that you put them back in back in periodically if they don't go back inside themselves to eat and drink every so often, as for comprehensive websites for info, you can always google and see what turns up, but as with anything else you'll pretty much always get differing opinions, as busy as this forum is and with the informative members that we have I would consider this a pretty good comprehensive site for info, I hope some of this has helped

 

[wildheart]

Here are two websites that I constantly use:

Bird Information

AvianWeb: Home Page