Drekkyk

Thank you for the feedback! We really get mixed messages from him. He talks alot and sways, and interacts with us alot, giving us a sense that he is fairly comfortable. But, his demeanor can change quickly when we are close. I think the biggest challenge is that we doubt he has ever been taught to step up. So we are trying to find the best way to move him from his cage to his playstand. (Previous owner left him out of cage all day on stand, Mocha never left it while unattended). We are not comfortable with that, but we also do not want to keep him in cage all day due to his history. Long story short, it has only been a week, so we will keep encouraging him to interact with us at a distance he feels comfortable. We can work on step up in a couple of weeks when he is more used to us. Hopefully the feather chewing subsides as well. Thanks!

Hello everyone! We decided to join the ranks of those that are owned by parrots. We brought home Mocha last Monday, and he appears to be doing ok. We do have one issue to work through, but first let me give a little history. Mocha is 15 years old. From what we have been told is that he was kept in a cage for the first 10 years of his life. Then an older woman picked him up, and worked tirelessly with him for the next 4 years. Her health deteriorated and the parrot ended up with the previous owner. The previous owner had Mocha for about 6 months, but her McCaw picked on him and she decided to get rid of him. Mocha is missing his toes on his right foot, and all but one or two on his left foot. Mocha does not step-up, and whenever he was held by the previous owners, it was against their breast under their neck. Our household includes me, my wife, 11-year-old daughter, and a Yorkie and Akita. Since we picked up Mocha on Monday, we have noticed he started chewing his feathers. This is where I would like advice, but here is how we are currently addressing it: · His diet was mostly all seed. We have introduced pellets, fruit, and are working on the veggies (which he doesn’t seem to want.) · The cage we purchased is rather large, and tall, with a play area on top. I think this may have been stressing him out a bit, especially since he doesn’t have the ability to hang on to the dowel tightly. We moved the playset to a lower location, and are replacing all the dowels with smaller diameter to try and improve his grip and confidence. · We have been keeping him up too late. We are going to get him to bed earlier. · We haven’t misted him yet, we are going to try that today. · We are going to be more conscious of washing our hands before handling him. · He was at the vet last June and we have the results, so I don’t think a vet visit is in order yet. I’m hopeful his chewing is a result of the stress of moving, and that with time, along with the above-mentioned steps, it will subside. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions! We really do not handle him much yet. We only move him when we have to until we build more trust with him. For now, we hand him toys which he takes, feed him grapes and blueberries, etc. He likes to look at our rings on our fingers and we let him touch our hands, but he does like to bait us into petting him. If we try he nips lightly, which we just ignore and redirect with our rings. Basically, just trying to get him used to our presence. My wife is home all day for the next 6 months, so she has plenty of time to invest in training. We want to get him to step-up first. I’m sure more questions will pop-up, but we read a lot and are committed to becoming good flock mates! Thanks everyone!