The Natural History of Cage Birds: Their Management, Habits, Food, Diseases, Treatment, Breeding, and the Methods of Catching Them.Bechstein, Johann Matthäus
Science
The Natural History of Cage Birds: Their Management, Habits, Food, Diseases, Treatment, Breeding, and the Methods of Catching Them.
Bechstein, Johann Matthäus
Cage birds
FOOD.--In its native country it lives on all kinds of fruit and grain;
it will also become quite fat on the seed of the safflower, which to
man is so violent a purgative. Here it eats any of our food; but
white bread soaked in boiled milk, and fruits, are what it likes
best. Meat, of which it is very fond, brings on diarrhoea, as in
other parrots, and that kind of green sickness which makes it peck
itself and tear out its feathers, &c.
There are some instances, when treated with care, of their having
lived for sixty years.
BREEDING.--In its native country this species builds in high trees.
This is the first of this group of birds which has bred in Europe.
"M. de la Pigeonnière," says Buffon, "had a male and female parrot in
the city of Marmanote, in Angenois, which used to breed regularly
every spring for five or six years; the young ones of each brood were
always reared by the parent birds. The female laid four eggs each
time, three of which were fruitful, and the other not so. In order
that they may breed at their ease, they must be placed in a room in
which there is nothing but a barrel, open at one end, and partly
filled with saw-dust; sticks must be placed inside and out of the
barrel, that the male may ascend them whenever he likes, and remain
near his companion. Before entering this room the precaution must be
taken to put on boots, that the legs may be guarded from the attacks
of the jealous parrot, which pecks at everything which approaches its
female." The P. Labat also gives an account of two parrots which had
"several broods in Paris."
DISEASES.--This parrot becomes more subject to the different diseases
in proportion as it is fed on choice food. Gout in the feet is the
most general, and the specifics used for the bird are not more
certain in their cure than those used for man. It is not difficult to
prevent this evil by great cleanliness, and giving it no meat or
other niceties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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