Rico is a beautiful Moluccan cockatoo. He lives with me… and with 3 other different types of cockatoos (none of whom having plucking issues) and two Blue Gold macaws in Southern California. My name is Karin. I was born and raised in Southern California; I have a beautiful backyard where my creatures hang out during the day (with supervision), I love birds, my husband and daughter, gardening and art.
I created this blog to show other people how they can probably help their plucking, self-mutilating birds. I think that my vest idea can help other plucking parrots besides cockatoos. Let me know if you have another type of bird like a Macaw or African grey who can wear one of these vests! My mission is to help these birds, who should actually probably never be “pets” in the first place, live a better life in captivity. For general information, here is a link to U.C. Davis’ article on feather picking…scroll down to the bottom of their page and select the last link to their .pdf
You will get to use your own creativity and design sweater vests to your own liking…for the low cost of polar fleece fabric, some thread and a needle. It takes very little stitching (I am NOT someone who sews, btw); the fleece doesn’t fray and makes an excellent and comfortable vest!
I will show you how to make these sweater vests out of the polar fleece, demonstrate how to tie a vest onto the bird (not as bad as you think) and show my various vest failures…so you can learn what I learned the hard way! Stay tuned. And while you’re waiting for my instructional posts, purchase some polar fleece on ebay (type polar fleece samples in the search window), a fabric store like JoAnn’s or buy a cheap polar fleece blanket at your local drug store. You might even have one around the house. The cheaper, the better. Don’t use an expensive blanket for this project!
Rico’s friend, Baby, sharing breakfast.
ricobird 
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