Weighing your Parrot

It is a great idea to weigh your parrot regularly and keep a record of his weight. People who know say that a loss of weight can be one of the best early warning of sickness (that birds hide so well). One source recommends weighing your bird daily for the first year, and then weekly after that. Whatever you do, keep a record or you will never notice the changes you are looking for.

I spent yesterday shopping around on the net for digital gram scales (you want a scale that will read out to the nearest gram), and found a number of very nice scales in the $80.00 or so range. But it was also mentioned that such scales can be found at office supply store and are used for weighing postal items.

This morning I dropped into Office Depot, and they had a digital postal scale that read out in grams or tenths of ounces. The price was $30.00, so it was hard to pass up. They told me I can return it for any reason in 30 days, so I can check it out. It is a "Sunbeam model SP5" made in China, all gray plastic. It has a round 6 inch diameter platform and a nice LCD readout, uses a 9 volt battery. It has a 2200 gram capacity, and reads out to the nearest gram.

First test is to get some items to weigh and see if this scale is fussy about where things go on the platform. A pipe fitting I have laying around weighs 306 grams in the center, and 306 grams at any edge ready to fall off. This is good. apparently

Next, I got several objects and checked how they compare to a fancier scale:

Pretty good, I think. The first column of numbers is the value indicated by my cheap little scale. The second column was obtained by hiking over to the U of A Chemistry department, and using a decent digital scale that reads to 0.1 grams (a Toledo College B3001 model, probably a $250.00 piece of equipment).

So, I think I will keep it, it has a 1 year warrantee, and if it breaks, then I can spend the $90.00 on an Ohaus or Acculab. The real issue is whether this little balance is consistent with itself over time. To this end, I will keep my 306 gram pipe fitting and the 977 gram aluminum block and check it from time to time, (assuming I don't loose them). Of course, I have only tested one of these scales, and it is possible it is just an exceptionally good unit. However, a Mr. D. Kwik from California recently sent me an email and indicates that he has tested four of these scales with a collection of calibration weights and finds them very good both in terms of accuracy and drift. So it would seem I stumbled onto something good here.

What I did is to purchase some 3/4 inch PCV pipe fittings and use some Silicone Caulk (RTV) to attach one that I sawed in half to the center of the platform. I used a short piece of 3/4 inch PVC, along with a chunk of Manzanita and part of another fitting to make a small T-stand that mounts onto the scale (when I get a digital camera, I will have to add a photo here), it works just fine and my bird doesn't object to stepping right onto the familiar manzanita wood. The tare feature of the scale allows it to start up reading zero even with this added paraphenalia which is just right.

Here are some typical bird's weights:

The above weights are from an article by Margaret A. Wissman, DVM, DABVP which you can look at here: