By nature a bird is not meant to stay put within certain boundaries.

A great many people conveniently seem to forget that birds are made for flying. They want a pet parrot and they want it to be like a cat or a dog, earth bound. And so they clip the birds flight feathers.

For the parrot this boils down to having a vital part of the body amputated, basically having to go through life as an invalid.
And who knows – it may suffer from the same symptoms a human amputee suffers from – feeling the ”limb” that’s no longer there – yet it’s unable to convey those feelings to humans.

People can’t understand why their pet parrot starts acting aggressively or even starts feather plucking. It can no longer preen the flight feathers like normal but feels they are still there and should be preened. This frustrates the bird no end, like an itching toe on an amputated foot frustrates and angers a human amputee.

Wing clipping has another serious drawback – it makes the bird vulnerable.
It can no longer escape danger by taking off into the air. So it may fall prey to a sudden attack of a pet dog or cat or trodden upon by a thoughtless child or visitor.

Should the bird per chance escape its confined space, this vulnerability will certainly lead to its death. An unclipped bird can still survive in sudden freedom, even if it may struggle to find food and water.

In the light of above arguments, can one keep a bird as pet at all?

It definitely is not the ideal thing, but yes, it can be done – if you are prepared to consider and accommodate the birds needs.
Do not clip flight feathers, rather supply a safe environment.
That means going to the expense of making windows and doors bird proof with bird mesh.
It further includes properly training the parrot plus accepting and pardoning bad behavior as you would with a child.

The pleasure derived from a really free parrot in the house more than compensates for any inconvenience incurred.

An alternative is building a large enough aviary to house the bird outside, but then you’ll miss the direct interaction with your pet.

While there should be no doubt about the fact that organic food promotes health, it seems that many people no longer trust the “certified organic” seal on products in shops.

Well, I don’t blame them. With so much underhand dealing and wheeling amongst organizations and groups, who can be sure these days about seals?

Truly organic does not contain any harmful substances. Truly organic food is not treated with synthetic insecticides, growth hormones and commercial fertilizers.

The problem is, since farmers who grow their crops organically are surrounded by big commercial land tracts, where all the harmful substances are used liberally and we as humans have no control over the natural elements like wind and rain, there can no longer be a 100% percent guarantee that organic plots won’t somehow be affected by what’s used on the commercial land.

So, in a way, all consumers have to bear the detrimental consequences of our present industrialized system.

What worsens the situation, however, is the fact that non-organic food is cheaper than organic. Especially in tight economic times like the present, more and more people reckon they don’t have a choice between organic and non-organic if they need to save on expenses.

Thus consumers have become the puppets of those who are in control of food production and distribution.

Why?
We have grown lazy and indolent.
It’s so much easier to just run to the next shop to quickly buy a bread and some veggies than to bake your own bread or grow your own vegetables.

For our comfort’s sake we rather accept poor quality. For ease’s sake we are willing to offer our health.

Even if some of us may still know how to bake a bread, or how to grow vegetables, we don’t do it, so our children won’t ever learn to do it.

What will be the end result?
They, the next generations, will become complete puppets of those in control of the economy. They’ll be completely unable to ever even think that it could be different.

Society will be back where it was two centuries ago – a few rich landlords with vassals under them, who would have no say over their own lives.

Do we really want that for our children?

Well, I don’t. So I started doing something about it. Check out my Food Garden for Parrots page.

The present economic situation forces everybody to cut back on expenses.

Slashing pet food expenses with 40 parrots to feed on a daily basis calls for creativity, since they eat a lot of food. Parrot pellets are far too expensive, since all of those are imported.

While many parrot owners in Southern Africa feed their parrots mainly dry sunflower seeds and maize, I prefer to keep mine on a balanced organic diet. This ensures that my parrots are healthy, resilient and much larger than average, invariably drawing forth highly positive comments from visitors.

Since I’m neither willing to reduce my flock nor prepared to sacrifice their health in order to cut expenses, I am pushed to get creative for the sake of my birds.

I used to buy all the necessary organic fruit and vegetables to add to their sprouted seeds and boiled legume mix.

Now, with ever rising food prices, all fruit and veggies are becoming unaffordable, never mind organic or not. Even sunflower seeds have doubled in price just this year.

Ok, so I decided to produce my own organic food. First of all I planted shrubs and trees that produce fruit for my parrots, many of them indigenous. These, however, need time to grow before they bear any or enough fruit. In the meantime I collect whatever I find in public places.

Then I went looking for the best method to grow my own organic vegetables. To my dismay horticulture concentrates on problems and problem solving. No more problems for me, thank you, have enough of them as it is; one being the fact that at my age strenuous, backbreaking work is no longer as achievable as it used to be.

Eventually luck came to may aid. In my constant search I opened a website which had the exact thing I was looking for: an embarrassingly easy, no-sweat method to grow my own organic food.

Imagine, within just four hours my first organic vegetable plot was implemented, planted and set to grow, no joking. If one sales pitch proves to be true like this, I trust the rest too.
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