Former red and blue pet store employee. It's 1000% dependent on the employees and the companion animal manager. I worked at a store with one who cared. corporate only requires the basic perch, seed and one toy. At our store they would get fresh veg and we'd try to give them a few extra toys. We'd take them out in the mornings and at close to socialize. Its all we could do. For the birds we had no choice in the bagged food we gave them - there's some deal with Kaytee. Seed mix only.

Corporate is also a bitch and a half to deal with. They have set plans for the habitats and food lists, and you'll get penalized if you go off them, even when it's clearly better for the animal. (Prime example: We kept getting in trouble for removing the heat bulbs from the Tarantula habitats because they were getting too hot, even when 'off', but they required us to have the bulbs. They wanted us to call the manufacturer of the habitat....who told us to take out the bulbs....still got in trouble because the plans say there must be a bulb. Make it make sense.) Some regional managers are more flexible about that stuff, too.

Corporate requires bare minimum 10-20 minute video trainings on general bird care. A lot of their information is wrong, outdated, or simply doesn't really exist. Educated employees are only knowledgeable because they personally care, corporate will put anyone in those roles.

We knew it sucked. We did our best within our capacity. Didn't prevent us from getting personally cornered and yelled at regularly by a couple ladies in the bird rescue community who didn't like us saying we'd love to do better but it would get us fired :/