Hormonal behavior in parrots

Just like humans and other animals, hormones can have a profound impact on the health and behavior of birds. They are often overlooked even by vets as potential causes for problems such as feather plucking and aggressive behavior.

Coincidentally, one of my own vets has written a VERY long article on hormonal behavior in parrots that is a must read for anyone who wants to go to the next level of understanding their birds. Or perhaps you have a particularly intractable problem and are curious whether it might have a hormonal basis.

Here’s a link to the multi-part article. Below, I’ll quote some interesting bits.

Hormonal Behavior in Pet Birds

Caveat

I’ll add my own caveat that her conclusions about seed diets are based on a study in the 1980s that that was from the heyday of the low fat, high carb diet. Since then, we now know far more about both human and bird nutrition. Just to name a few things:

• We now know that Fatty Liver Disease is caused by a high carbohydrate diet, not a high fat diet.