Loco11

My bird Felony is now just over a year and a half old. Recently she has been showing some behavior that seems somewhat like the "mating" behavior we saw in our first bid, Oprah...who was much older. She has a clear preference for my husband and has been doing what I call the "come hither" dance with the lowered, fluttering wings. She hasn't been trying to feed him, so far...but when I tried to get her to step up on me this afternoon when she was flirting with him, she bit me quite hard. We learned the hard way with Oprah about this mating behavior with resulting egg laying...egg binding, actually...and some big vet bills. So we now know not to encourage the behavior...but at 18 months isn't Felony too young for this? I hate to discourage behaviour that is just being playful. What do you guys think?

We just had our first appointment with the vet for Felony...all good news...she healthy as can be, weight is good. But she sat on my shoulder while we were talking(Felony..not the vet, lol) and the vet was like "you REALLY shouldn't allow her to be on your shoulder like that. The potential for severe injury is just too great." I don't know what to think. Has anyone else heard of birds causing severe facial injuries?

Thanks Timbersmom!!

What do you use?

I wasn't thinking of using it as a breathing treatment for Felony! Early in this thread danmcq stated he uses a bactericide in his humidifier...and I read somewhere(not necessarily on this forum) that citricidal can be used for that purpose.

Does anyone use citricidal in their humidifiers?

Planning on getting a humidifier for this winter since our other " humidifier" our reef tank, is now gone in preparation for the move to Colorado. Pretty sure I will need to add some kind of antibacterial/anti fungal preparation but I need to know of some that are bird safe! I looked up citricidal but I'm not convinced with the efficacy of that stuff. Any thoughts?

Felony and I were relaxing on the back porch...her on her playhouse and me in my adirondack chair. She flew down to me and landed on the back of the chair...except instead of actually landing on the back of the chair she slipped down so that her head was caught between the slats...and the spaces get gradually smaller as they go down toward the seat. She was stuck and probably would have choked had I not been right there.

Thanks Dave...call me reassured!!

Hi all! I have a question...is it necessary to monitor how much birds eat? Felony was born May 1st and she weighs 402 grams. She seems to be eating a lot! I made my own food for her with beans, whole grain rice, chopped kale and carrots, quinoa, buckwheat and lots of different seeds, nuts and some dried cranberrie s and a little red palm oil. I froze it in snack size baggies...thinking one Baggie would last two days. She eats it one. She also gets a few nutriberries and a palmful of pellets...she always eats the nutriberries but just nibbles on the pellets. That's about three times what Oprah (my other bird that we recently lost)would have been able to eat. Now Oprah was a Timneh..so she was smaller, plus she was 14... But it still seems like Felony is eating an awful lot. Maybe because she's still young and growing? I just don't want to overdo it!

I just gave Felony a bath...and I noticed she's not really preening her feathers like Oprah always did...she's just sort of drip drying. Is this something it takes them time to learn?

Thanks guys...all good info. I guess it's just a learning process and we will get it(or make it up) as we go..lol! Right now she seems to want to spend all her time with us and we're basically letting her...my thinking is that it's still all new to her, she's just a baby and hopefully will get a bit more independent as she gets older. One funny thing she does, actually she's doing it right now as I type...she sits on the arm of my recliner right next to me, making funny little "purring" noises and goes right to sleep!

So, so very sorry...wish I could do more. I recently lost a bird too.

Thanks Inara! I did get the book by Ms Heidenreich and it made a lot of sense to me. Not that we were ever aggressive with Oprah...but I can see now how we unintentionally rewarded some of her " less than stellar" behaviors..lol! But we had her for so many years, we had all come to an agreement about our arrangements...she thought my husband was HER husband...but she tolerated me and never bit anyone hard unless she was pushed beyond her limits (which my son was liable to do). We would have happily kept Oprah forever...but you know the rest of that tale! So with this new baby I'm just trying to figure out the new ground rules. I'd love for her to EVENTUALLY be able to sit on a play stand or her cage top without constantly flying to me, as she does now. We are giving her a lot of attention in the way of cuddling and scratching...but I don't want to turn this into my whole day! Right now...just to prove me wrong...she is happily sitting on a play house on our screened in porch that my husband made for Oprah...preening and just being happy...yay! So I need some guidance...should we encourage her need to be seeking us out constantly because she's just a baby? Should we set some limits? It's confusing because we've never had a baby before!

My bad, then.