Poll: What to do with your birds when you travel
This Sunday we’ll be traveling out to San Diego to visit family for a week and a friend’s wedding. Unfortunately we don’t know any other bird owners in the Denver area that could take our two guys in while we’re gone as we are new to the area. Even if we did, I’m not sure what we could do with Little Wing since it’s hard to take a big stainless steel cage to someone’s house. Most people don’t have extra bird cages laying around. We also wouldn’t feel comfortable having someone just stopping by twice a day – the birds would be stir crazy by the time we got back.
So, our only real option is to board them. Avian vets often offer boarding, and what could be better than being at the vet office should something happen? The problem with vet boarding is that it’s not their primary business and usually don’t have an ideal setup/space and most of the staff is busy working most of the day. This has been our experience, maybe not for everyone.
When we lived in San Diego, our avian vet owned a separate avian boarding and rescue facility with it’s own dedicated staff – FreeFlight. It was also nice to know that the income they made from boarding went to support their long time resident birds. It also had an outdoor area where each bird had it’s own big perch to hang out on and be in a flock of other birds. Our guys always learned something new to say after staying there for a few days.
Here in Denver we have the Gabriel Foundation – I believe one of the country’s biggest parrot rescue organizations. They have better indoor boarding facilities, just not quite as nice outdoors since half the year the birds can’t be outdoors anyway.
So what do you do with your birds when you have to go out of town?
Loading ...
Comments
When i go on vacation i bring all 4 of my parrots in their travel cages.I have a timneh african grey (Cricket), a rosebreasted cockatoo (Rosie) a hyacinth macaw (Bella) and a palm cockatoo (Sweet Pea). I put 2 toys in each travel cage and bring a bottle of water to fill their dishes, each of their harnessesand leashes, food (pellets and seeds), and dried fruits. They each have access to food and water at al, times, We take up the third row of seats in our explorer for them and my daughter always sits with them, but only because she wants to.
