hellooo, i really like your blog and i genuinely feel that Newt is my spirit animal. Anyway ive been meaning to ask your opinion on heated perches. My reptile enthusiast brain goes straight to heat rocks which are pretty harmful since they get very hot and end up burning the animals but my bird brain goes wärm footsies. Plese give me your insight Oh Avian Knowing Goddess
Honestly I’m in the same boat as you, the product as a whole is very controversial and seems to contradict itself in a few cases.
I looked in to the KH pet thermo perch and found these on their website.
It does say it has a thermostat which I believe was a big issue with heat rocks, not having a thermostat meant there was no heat regulation and the rocks could get as hot as they wanted, fluctuating quite irregularly. I think someone also said they had fewer receptors in their bellies so they didn’t know they were getting burned? I’m not particularly knowledgeable on reptiles so someone please correct me there!
Temp isn’t adjustable, that seems like a big turn off to me because all birds will benefit from different temps. Yes birds do generally have a very high temperature but if you’ve been living in a 70F house for a while a suddenly 100F perch is going to be a MASSIVE jump with no way to gradually increase temp to build that tolerance. Odds are they’re flying to land on it, I imagine landing on a suddenly hot perch would be quite startling.
Saying that the bird will shift from one end to the next to get whatever temp they want is kind of unlikely in my experience. I’ve had to move both my birds away from the window because they were sitting there until they were “panting” and overheating. The heat feels good but they don’t always make the best choices for self preservation.
So this. In many cases this perch claims orthopaedic benefits, generally aiming towards birds who have preexisting joint conditions or other problems perching. Then make it out of plastic? With very faint indents for grip? That they state many birds struggle to grip at first? When Mia was learning how to perch with her sideways foot anything she couldn’t perch on easily was a huge confidence crusher. It would send her back where she’d just sit and sulk because moving made her fall off. Taking a bird who struggles with movement and putting something hard to perch on is just going to cause distress, let alone flopping down to the ground on sore joints. Just seems like a poor design choice.
I like the idea, I think it needs better execution. Reviews and forums don’t tend to have an issue with the perch though so I’d really put it as a “use your best judgement” situation. I would just microwave a bag of beans or rice and hook it to the cage or even put it on a platform perch? Still get the warmth for easing joints, you control the temp, no risk for chewing to something toxic/ hurtful, and it doesn’t cost $70.