birdhouse

I kept thinking I wanted to check your blog & just never got around to it. Very nice! I think you should be very proud of your blog & your hard earned state of mind & the journey so far. Thanks for sharing it w/us.

So glad to hear Sunny's safe & home!!

Are you really going to make me say that a wild parrot has more sense than the average American consumer?? Really??

She does & maybe I'm just being a little paranoid. I wonder if the "newbies" (L/T 10 yr owners) realize that never quite goes away. Kind of like malaria. Unfortunately, it's getting worse. I did get Kura's cage & set it up yesterday. It looked a lot smaller in the driveway! Everyone else has great huge cages now . And there's poor Phenix, stuck in his corner (also a security thing) in his "little" cage. He just looks so like the redheaded step child!

It's exciting to hear Isaac's developing a vocabulary. I'm very curious to hear how this progresses. You two have such a tight bond & I'm thinking it's going to to be very interesting to find out how he learns to communicate w/you vocally. Can't wait to hear him start start speaking to you in context. lol

I think we need to find a place to post another forum rule. NO SUCH THING AS TOO MANY PICTURES OF OUR HAPPY FIDS!!! Capo looks like he's very well loved, happy & leading a great life. Glad you posted ALL those pics.

^^^ I really do appreciate your efforts here. But I guess I'm just a particularly tough sell because I still can't help but think it's a kind of crappy deal

^^^ Yeah, I've had a few annoyingly clever fids who've already rained on that parade. For them I've done well w/the twist lock plastic cups like thenabrd linked. Most often though I've gotten away w/the stainless ones which I like better because I think they're easier to use & clean.

Hi cacea18. Looks like this post got over looked probably because of where it is. Could you please re-post it? You could either start a new thread in the Nursery forum or include your questions in a Welcome & Introduction post. Sorry I can't really give you any advise because I'm sadly ignorant about babies. Congratulations on your new fid, though!!

Well crap, Dave! Who can expect you to keep up w/everything current in the world of agriculture, when you're so busy thinking up new innovations for our fids? Good luck w/your new product line, btw. I will have to get back about your very tempting promotion, though. lol

^^^ Health benefits of RPO are pretty easy because palm nut is a lot of a Grey's natural diet. I tried recently to get some feed back from the forum about comparing oils, but mostly heard from the RPO fans. http://www.greyforums.net/forums/showthread.php?193769-Red-Palm-v-Coconut-v-Hemp-oil

Wow, thanks. It looks like something I'd like to see & hadn't heard anything about this movie.

This is just sick & sad & heartbreaking! I really hope these fids are ok & get found, soon.

Oh, you're so not going to get away w/a one liner when you introduce yourself, here! lol So let's here some stories & see some pics soon, okay?

Our fids are far from wild birds. There's little or nothing in their totally artificial environment that they'd normally encounter in the wild. The only food they see is completely controlled so they aren't raised to forage safely. They're deliberately conditioned from birth that any food within reach is good eating. I initially made an honest effort to present the facts as neutrally as possible because I didn't want to freak anyone out. One fact happens to be that apples have proven to be to be a very adaptable crop & many countries where they aren't native (like the US) now include them as a staple food crop. This includes parts of Africa where cultivation has spread to some of the countries native to Grey's. The native wildlife has of course learned to take advantage of this foreign food source. This is one example of parrots, specifically, from a thread on Wikipedia about 'toos "... The Long-billed Black Cockatoo, also endemic to the south-west of Western Australia, can be a pest in apple and pear orchards where it destroys the fruit to extract the seeds." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatoo So the fact is there are examples in the wild of parrots eating fruit seeds which contain cyanide. But I've never found any facts, conclusive or otherwise that prove what quantity of these seeds may or may not be safe or for what species. When I was a kid, I learned to count to 20 in our little apple orchard. I loved to watch the birds eat, too. But as us farm girls know, those birdies were pooping little seedlings wherever they went. So, they weren't actually digesting much more than the fruit. When's the last time you saw a parrot poop w/a seed intact? I don't choose to feed any of my fids apple or other fruit seeds which contain cyanide since they have no nutritional value which can't be gotten elsewhere. I'm not at all comfortable knowing that the only way to find a fid's current tolerance is to exceed it, i.e. poison them. I'm even more uncomfortable knowing that tolerance might easily change when other factors, like health & metabolism, come into play. I'm just not willing to risk the possible consequences because I just don't see any upside. JMO

I don't think Mr. Asaah would agree. http://www.worldagroforestry.org/downloads/publications/PDFs/B16554.PDF THE FRUITS OF SUCCESS pg 14

Very interesting! I can't really imagine what about cooking hamburgers might have set Tule off. I've never seen my guys react like that while I was cooking hamburgers or anything else. I wonder if there might have been something else to this or if there was something from Tule's past that could have come into play here?

As far as I know, any type of walnut is fine food for a grey. In particular, they're a good source of Vit A, calcium, fiber, certain acids & oils. They are a little on the fattening side, though. So you might want to limit how much you feed. I'd think it would be beneficial to be able to feed them as is because aging & drying can destroy many good natural nutrients. However certain nut oils go rancid so they have a shorter shelf life. You might want to harvest, wash & refrigerate them. Or you could shell them & freeze the meat for longer term storage. They should also be good for foraging. See if they can open them by themselves. It will give them something to keep them busy & you might be surprised. Otherwise, just start them & let the fids do the rest. Walnut shells might be a fun toy part, too. If you can find a way to work w/them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans_nigra

Congratulations on your new fids! In case you haven't noticed, all types of fids are welcome, here. I can promise you'll have some great adventures w/your quaker as well. They're quite the little characters! So, I hope we'll see lots pics & other things about both of your new arrivals.

Greys & apple trees aren't native to the same countries. But apple trees are grown all over the world. So they would be available to Greys living in the wild for the past few hundred years. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100421142155AAZIAx3

Greys are kind of known to play favorites. But don't give up. They're also known to change their minds. lol It's still a little early for Shadow to have fully unpacked & settled in. But it is very good to hear that things are going so well, otherwise!!

It looks like a massacre around Phenix' cage right now. lol Little feathers everywhere! It is likely Rio is starting to molt. Just watch to see that he isn't developing any bald spots. Bath/mist him regularly & maybe add some aloe to the water. And don't be surprised if he's a little temperamental. Some birds do get a little twitchy when they molt.

I did, actually. I told him that lucky for him, I was someone w/a sense of humor because otherwise, he could have been in ve-ry deep yogurt! I also tried reminding him that I was the one w/the "keys" to his cage. But I didn't really feel like that made much of an impression, either. :rolleyes:

Thanks, Dee. Problem is, that melt down I described was from when he moved into his new cage earlier this year. And like I said, the new cage was right there for him to interact w/for months. If that helped, I don't want to think about the alternative. Kura's cage is about 20% more space. He'd have more room, just not back to gigantic. There are pro's & con's for keeping either cage, purely from my perspective. But it's not about me, of course. Thanks, Janet. Most people seem to say their birds don't go to the ground. All of my birds have all used all their cage & I wonder why that is. Even while Phenix was using part of the big cage, he was moving vertically, which is also odd for a typical grey. It was just that he'd only cross the cage if the food & water dishes were on opposite sides. So, I guess that's another reason why I'm concerned about how to decide what's best here. Phenix is just not normal! lol So, I've just got to go w/my best guess. But, of course I hate the trial & error thing whenever I guess wrong. And again, this one's long term

This is one of those really, really controversial areas. Many, maybe most people feel strongly that we should never give our fids particularly apple seeds because they're poisonous http://chemistry.about.com/b/2007/09/12/yes-apple-seeds-and-cherry-pits-are-poisonous.htm Other people don't agree because there's no one to stop them from eating them in the wild. So, it's the parront's choice to make a well informed decision, here.