In the wild, birds spend many hours a day (often 50% of their day) looking for food.  This foraging behavior has essentially been eliminated from most of our pet birds' daily routines by offering food in bowls.  It is important to allow your bird to forage every day to mimic its instinctual behaviors.  By doing this, you will help reduce boredom and stress and those behavioral and medical problems that accompany stress (primarily reduce the chances or symptoms of feather plucking and other sterotypical behaviors). 

Your bird may need some encouragement to forage, especially if he or she is used to eating the same food from the same bowl at the same time each day.  But birds will become more excited to forage the more they are exposed to different ways of eating.  Below are some suggestions you may try with your bird to help encourage foraging activities:

• Place food inside brown paper bags or rolled up paper towels or newspaper.  You can also simply hide food under small pieces of paper towels or newspaper throughout the cage.
  
• Get bird-safe wood and drill different sized holes in various places in the wood.  Hide food within the holes.
• Offer a foraging tree as a play gym away from the cage - you can hide food and treats throughout the foraging tree in different toys or places
• Offer LaFeber Nutriberries and Avicakes which both offer a great source of well balanced nutrition and allow your bird to forage by breaking apart the seeds and pellets in different shaped balls and squares. 
  
• You can choose from a large variety of foraging toys - these range from simple to very complex and it can be quite fun to watch your bird figure out how to get the treat from the toy!  If trying to decide on toys to buy for your bird, foraging toys are always preferred over other toys because it serves a natural function.

If you are like most owners, you will spend the majority of the day at work, away from your bird.  This is the time that boredom can set in, and it is the perfect time to start implementing foraging opportunities.  If your bird is distracted by having to look for its food (which is more like playing when it comes to foraging toys which stimulate the birds' minds!) then he or she will have less time to spend on less ideal behaviors such as plucking, chewing the cage, or other repetitive motions.  Even if you are at home most of the day with your bird, offering foraging opportunities is an important part of keeping your bird happy and healthy. 


If you are interested in starting a foraging program for your bird but need some more guidance, there is an excellent DVD available from the link below that is a great resource for bird clients!  We are always available here at CCPH as well to talk with you about your bird!