duchess

Hi, Guitarists. Lyric gave some very valuable advice about the children. I would like to add that birds in general are very tuned in to their environment. If your household has a high energy level, i.e. lots of activity, noise, etc., the bird's energy level will match that of the household. If your household is clam and serene, you bird will soon adapt this same energy level. So, the calmer everyone is when they interact with the bird, the calmer th bird will be. Also, since the bird has a history of getting away with biting, be prepared to take some bites and try your absolute best not to let the bird know it can push you away with it's biting. When the bird begins to see that biting is no longer achieving his desired results, the biting will begin to lessen. Use very firm no, no bite, or some type of phrase to let him know you don't like his behavior. The biting will lessen as he learns that he can't intimidate his new people with his beak. One suggestion that I learned early in my birding experiences has been invaluable with biters. For as long as you need to do this, make a tight fist with your hand when you want him to step up and place your fist palm down in front of him and command him to step up. When he goes to do his usual biting, he will find he cannot get a good bite on the back of your tightened hand, thus neutralizing his bite and serious injury to yourself. You might still feel like you've been pinched very hard, but he will have a much harder time inflicting serious injury to you. When he stops trying to bite your tightened fist, then slowly turn your hand up and offer him two extended, steady fingers to step up on. Don't get discouraged if he doesn't step up on the first few times you do this exercise. Just do this for a couple of minutes each time you attempt to get him to step up as you don't want to make him feel threatened or become more aggressive by forcing the issue with prolonged attempts to step up. One thing to keep in mind is that birds also use their beaks to test how sturdy a perch is, so he may take your finger in his beak to test how steady the perch is. Many people fear they are about to be bitten and jerk their hand back. This will not only startle the bird, but will cause him to mistrust you as well. If he latches onto your fingers and really is biting, just try to calmly and gently push toward him with your hand so he has to let go to maintain his balance on his perch. This is a slow, gradual process of taking the effectiveness out of his biting while at the same time teaching him to step up. Each time you succeed in getting him to step up, praise him greatly and keep him on your hand for few minutes, then place him back on his cage. With each success, extend the length of time you keep him on your hand. Eventually, he will decide he likes this positive interaction with people and you will have a beloved family member. I would also recommend that until you succeed at breaking the biting behavior, only one person do this exercise with him. Everyone else should just approach the bird's cage and talk to him and get him interested in wanting to be a part of whatever the family is doing. By their very nature, birds are flock creatures and love interacting with members of their flock. Once you have gotten the biting under control, then you can work on handing him off to your spouse or children. Also, if you can get him off his cage and into a neutral area to work on the biting issue, it will help speed up the process. On his cage, he will be more territorial and more prone to continue the biting behavior. I hope this helps and good luck!

While no one can answer for the woman who believes in an all seed diet, it sounds like a lack of true knowledge and understanding of a parrot's nutritional needs. This varies even from species to species. African greys are prone to calcium deficiencies and all seed based diet will almost insure that your grey will end up calcium deficient, because they will most likely eat only the sunflower seeds out of any seed diet. The advantage of a pelleted diet is that each pellet contains the vitamins and minerals that your bird needs to stay healthy, even though it seems that a lot of the pellets are wasted since they seem to pick and choose their favorite pieces even out of a pelleted diet. But, still they are getting much of their nutritional needs met in the pellets they do eat and supplying them with fresh vegetables and fruits will only better their nutrition. Good job on standing your ground!

Thank you all for the warm welcome. My kids and I have been together for over twelve years. As I said I take in rescues and with that also comes sorrow at times as well. I have lost a military mccaw that was one of my great loves. I took him along with a grey named Dizzy from a judge whom I suspected was physically abusive to not only the birds, but his wife as well. Miller had a crippled foot which the judge refused to discuss how it came to be crippled and Dizzy had a strange bow to his back that the judge wouldn't discuss either. Both are now at the rainbow bridge, along with my 45-50 year old grey, Sailor. Miller, the mccaw passed from Proventricular Dilatation Syndrome, or commonly known as "macaw wasting disease". I have included a good site for more information for those of you who are interested in learning more about this awful disease. I will also share with anyone the things my vet and I did that prolonged his life and helped manage the symptoms to give him a better quality of life in his last months. It is a devastating disease and can occur in other species of parrots besides macaws. It is untreatable and always fatal. Dizzy passed in an unfortunate accident while he was being boarded at the vets office. Sailor was wild caught grey that had never been tamed before he came to me. His chest was plucked bare and he was missing a toe from the trap used to catch him in the wild with. He was almost blind with cataracts when I got him and was totally blind by the time he passed from an upper respiratory disease. Over time, he became a loving, gentle old soul who could find me anywhere in my 3200 sq. ft. house, even though he was totally blind the last year of his life. He had never been out of the cage the first owner had placed him in for 23 years and had only been handled with a stick or leather gloves. I immediately discarded the stick and leather gloves and allowed him out on his cage all day long. I took several nasty bites in the process, but that stopped as he learned to trust me. He loved his new found freedom. Kacee came to me with Sailor, but she is still alive an doing well. She has a hole in her chest that she keeps picked open and has no feathers on her chest. She had these problems when she came to me and the vet has determined that the problem had gone unattended so long before I got her, that it was now a habit that we haven't been able to break. But, we keep looking for new ways to help her. Jackie was a lovely little grey who got her bluff in on her owner from day one and became a biter and had several behavioral issues when she came to me. She wasn't able to get her biting bluff in on me and I worked with her daily on her behavioral issues. She also soon became a loving little chatter box with a hilarious sense of humor. Every time I would go to scold her for a bad behavior she would always try to counter the scold by telling me I was sooo pretty. She was a hoot. Sadly, she had broken a leg when she went to her first owner and though the owner took her to a vet, the vet missed diagnoising a broken leg and treated her for a sprain. The bone grew back misshapen and she always had problems with that leg after that. Since we were unable to get her vet records, my vet treated the leg for awhile with anti-inflamatory meds. One day she and I decided to put her to sleep and x-ray the bird to see if we could determine what was really going on with the leg. It turns out, the bone not only showed to be deformed, my vet saw what looked like a growth on the bone. We did a biopsy and it came back that she had a severe infection in the bone, so we treated her six weeks with a strong anti-biotic. We went back for another biopsy and as she woke up from being put to sleep, she gave a big ruffle and shake of her feather and fell over dead. A necropsy showed a blood clot from the biopsy hit her and she died instantly. I know when I take these birds in that it is very iffy because you don't always know what the lives have been like before they come to you. But, I do know that for whatever time they have with me, they have a very loving, healthy environment to spend their remaining time on this earth. I loved each and every one of these gentle souls and still miss them all very much. But, for those that I still have, the joy and love they give me helps ease the losses of my other beloved feathered friends. I know more loses will be inevitable, but I just cherish each day with every one of them. If I had a message that I wanted to get out it would be this....These beautiful, super intelligent creatures were meant to be free to fly, forage, reproduce and live their lives in freedom. They give all that up in order for us to have them in our lives as our pets, so for those who think they want a bird of any species, please do a lot of research and understand just what a task and responsibility you are taking on. When you tire of the cleaning, the noise, the cost, the inconvenience when you want to go out of town, etc., they didn't choose to come inconvenience you, you chose to be responsible for them. They deserve your best efforts and they will always be like having a two year old that never grows up and leaves the nest. I am involved with a sanctuary now that takes in a large number of birds each year and we are continually having to generate funds to care for the ever growing population of unwanted birds that come onto to us. Because we have a rigid adoption process, our birds don't get adopted out as fast as they come in to us. Now, I will get off my soap box and look forard to interacting with this wonderful group of bird lovers! And sorry for the long post. http://petcaretips.net/macaw-wasting-disease.html

Greetings everyone. What an awesome web site! I am delighted to find such a great bunch of people and their little feathered people. Shhhh....they don't know they aren't just a different species of humans, or at least my six don't. I have five greys ranging from 20years old to the youngest, who will be seven in June, and a Jenday conure who mothers one of the greys. All of mine talk, some more than others. The seven year old is like Tui, he never shuts up, he thinks he's president of the bird room, everyone should obey him. He thinks he is the Robin Williams of the bird world. He is hilarious and has a very large vocabulary. He talks to the others, but only one actually responds to him and talks back to him. Most of mine are rescues and some have health issues. For the most part though, they are healthy, and all are happy and well socialized. Any time I have visitors, the kids the visitors have come expressly to visit with them. I am Jodi, the mother bird, and my kids are Stormee, Kacee, Thunder, Shaylee, Booger, who named himself, and Baby P the conure. Baby P loves to tell you her name and wants to always be sure you get the P in there. Stormee, which is the grey she mothers named her Pebbles from the Flintstnes, and I called her Baby because she was the smallest of all my birds. Baby P renamed herself Baby P. If you just say Baby, she will reply with P! We look forward to visiting with you all and getting to know everyone. We will try to upload some pictures of the group soon.