Along with a high quality pellet and/or seed diet it's also very important to make sure your birds are getting fresh fruits and vegtables! There are a couple of tricks to getting your feathery friend to try new things. Some people like using frozen fruits or veggies, especially in the summer. Your bird will play with them frozen and chew on and eat them as they thaw out throughout the day. Another is to pretend like you want to eat the treat you've given them. Your bird is naturally curious and your interest in the food will normally make them interested in it as well. Typically speaking, smaller birds (like cockatiels) enjoy veggies while larger parrots enjoy more fruits. Remember to stay away from avacados, onions, garlic, tomatoes (especially raw tomatoes, cooked tomatoes in moderation seem to be okay), mushrooms, and celery (the strings in celery have been known to cause crop impaction).

We also have exciting news in the bird department! All of our parrots are talking! They say "Hi," "Hello," "Step Up," and some of them say more than that! Our babies are growing up so fast! We also currently have some sweet, hand raised doves. Doves make great first time bird pets since they're not as needy as some other birds, but are sweet as can be - especially with children!

Something else to keep your birds happy and healthy is giving them baths! Some birds like to be sprayed with a gentle mist from a spray bottle, some like to be given a shallow dish of water to bathe in, and some people even shower with their larger parrots! We have a few products at the store to help with moulting and feather condition that you can use as you bathe your bird. Enjoy this playlist of videos of birds (and a couple of chinchillas as a bonus) taking baths at Pet World.

Hey bird fans! Love is in the air a little earlier than Valentine's Day for us in our bird department. Two of our peach faced love birds have fallen for one another and started breeding behavior in the store! This definitely isn't the first time Pet World has been home to birds in love (we don't intentionally mate them but occasionally love birds breed and we raise their babies ourselves) but it's always interesting to watch these guys as they turn into little parents to be. Next time you're in the store stop by and see them and feel free to ask a Pet World employee about them.

BB Avian LightsKansas winters can be a bear of a thing to deal with for your pet birds (and for us)! Birds are stuck inside so they're not getting any access to healthy UVB/UVA rays. If your house is drafty it can get too cold for your feathered friend; plus, they can get a bit of cabin fever, too, if they're getting out and about from their cage less. And nobody wants a bird to get bored!

Luckily, there are definitely ways to combat these seasonal challenges. We sell avian UVB/UVA lights at Pet World. These lights are designed to output about the same amounts of UVB/UVA that your birds would naturally be getting if they were standing in the shade outdoors. Why is that important? As we know, staying directly in the sun can be harmful so the levels in these lights are adjusted so they're safe to keep on for 8-10 hours a day to create a nice, healthy photoperiod for your bird without too much UVB exposure. UVB rays help your bird to naturally produce vitamin D3 that allows your bird to absorb valuable calcium to keep bones strong and improve metabolic functions. UVA can help reduce stress related feather picking as well as some other descructive behaviors. UV lighting is important for birds. Lacking in UVA can essentially render your bird colorblind, very similar to the colorblindness in humans.

Snuggle huts are another awesome cold weather product for your pet bird. Even when we cover a bird's cage to keep it cozy and draft free, birds don't produce enough body heat to warm up their entire cage. For a way to easily help keep them warm, these cute, cozy hanging sacks really do the job! Your bird can cuddle up inside the warm, soft, fleece blanket nest where it can easily produce enough body heat to keep warm on cool winter evenings. We also have organic materal huts for smaller birds like finches that can help keep your smaller pet birds warm as well as enriching their enviroment with a little hay house for them to pick at, naturally satisfying their need to forage. Adding something new to your pet bird's cage can also help with the dangerous cabin fever effect of boredom!

Stay warm out there and we'll see you soon!

Welcome to our new zone blogs! We want to keep our customers updated on what's going on in every area of our store and this is where the managers will be posting about new products, sharing fun pictures and videos, and keeping you up to date on new products and sales!

This week our Bird department is expecting to get in new parakeets and cockatiels! Stop in this weekend to visit our new additions!

Baths are a healthy part of any birds lifestyle and ours are no different. One day Ande had picked up a spray bottle to start cleaning out a cage when our baby umbrella cockatoo saw the bottle in her hand. He immediately lost his mind with excitement, puffed up, and started dancing to get her attention so she'd spray him. Now, spraying him with cleaner wouldn't work so she went and got one of our water only, birdy bath spray bottles and right after she snapped the goofy picture of him to the left - our baby cockatoo got the bath he was begging for!

Javawood SALEWe're also excited to tell you we got in 30 new bird cages this week! If you've been looking to get your bird a new cage or add a new feathery friend to your family - we've got all kinds of new cages in stock right now!

On SALE this week in the Bird department are javawood trees! With a variety of sizes, these nearly indistructable "trees" are great enviroment enrichments and perches for all sorts of pet birds. Right now they're currently 20% off! Pictured is a smaller size, we also have very large ones for bigger parrots.

See you soon.