The most important principle or activity in keeping any animal in captivity is to reduce stress experienced by the captive. The sources of this stress can be categorized for the convenience of discussion as: Environmental, Dietary, Social, Genetic and Disease. Stress from any source is totally and completely cumulative on the well being of the captive and as such is only categorized for the convenience of discussion and resulting management options. The use of aviary techniques to reduce stress can actually prevent a disease organism that is latent in the flock, from developing by promoting or allowing natural resistance to prevail. This is a very powerful result beyond the reach of our antibiotic culture.

Most veterinary discussions about animal care focus on disease as the source of stress. This clinical discussion, while especially useful in individual pet care, is far too narrow to be completely useful to the animal keeper managing a large group of animals. The focus of this article will be on allaying problems whose source can be found in all areas of stress generation: Part three will cover some areas of Social Stress. Environmental Stress and Dietary Stresshas been at least partially covered in previous articles.

Genetic Stress and Disease Stress will be covered in later articles. The discussion of animal care and management from the perspective of cause not symptom has been very useful to me over the years, as it is far easier to manipulate potential sources of stress than second-guess symptoms caused by some cumulative group of stresses. This approach involves making management changes then listening to your flock for any change in chatter.

Implicit in the focus of this method is that veterinary care of individual birds, however effective, is not the procedure of choice in maintaining a large flock of breeding birds. Stated another way, any bird that succumbs to a major disease (chronic or catastrophic) is lost to the breeding program even if it survives, so prevention is the only effective path for the group.

Social Stress Defined:

If the company one keeps is not tolerant and kind, one’s well-being can be in jeopardy. Our personal solution may be to leave and take a trip (vacation, divorce) but if one is a caged captive, one must stay and take the consequences of the nagging, mental torture or out right violence.