fofaviary

My goodness! I don't talk to you for a week and everything under the sun happens! I'm glad your son is there and as another Cali Girl.. I know the area you're talking about and he's better off OUT of it! /hugs Kiss my babies for me!

My daughter Meg loved to play on the xbox in the living room, and the twins would fly from the manzanita playstand to her and back. They adored watching the video games being played (especially guitar hero!). Teenagers have AMAZING focus on things they want to focus on, don't they? LOL Of course, cleaning bedrooms, doing chores, doing homework... those are sadly not things they want to focus on. Alas! I'm so glad they're having fun, and I know that they'll be having fun for a good long time. You kinda have to think of Grey ownership akin to that of a human child. At first the novelty of the baby is exquisite - each little digit is counted, each little murmur or mutter is aww'd at. Then the testing period begins and ends, and the child and bird grows and before you know it, you've grown with them. It's a sweet journey full of love and happiness and sprinkled with frustration at times too. But, isn't that how it's supposed to be? Everyone knows that chocolate tastes that much sweeter with a bit of salty tang added to it. Enjoy life, my friend. Enjoy the love. Even enjoy the frustration. I know you will. You, who persevered through so much already, and always have a smile and a bright outlook. Cheers to you.

Ok, you're having far too much fun with the twins. I think an intervention is in order. I'll just have to step in and steal ...er rescue you, by taking them back. Yeah, rescue you.. that's it. *nods sagely* *grins* I'm glad you love them and I know you'll be the best mommy they can have! I wish all my owners were exactly like you. So, forget about me... Yay you!!!

Thankfully, most of the time foreign objects remain in the crop and can be retrieved pretty easily. Good thing you managed to get an appointment so quickly. Adult birds can swallow pretty big items, but the fact that plastic doesn't break down like food would worry me that she might impact her crop due to it. The first time I tube fed a bird, I lost the darn tube into the crop. Thankfully, I was supervised (never tube feed any bird without learning from a vet or qualified person first) and learned how to get the dang thing out also! It's scary though, regardless. Good luck to you and that gorgeous Adaya.

I thought I'd give Carol an eye-opener on today so far with her birds... 6am: They're clamouring to get out. Loudly, growly and whiny. Ahmani pokes Cinder in the butt until Cinder shrieks everytime Ahmani looks at him. Ahjari sits and wistfully stares at the food dish he's currently perched upon. 7am: After tossing giant fits while I feed the other babies in the nursery, they finally group up at the cage door. All rush out when it's opened ..except for Ahjari who begins to make whiny noises and nudge the empty food 'wet' food bowl. 7:10am: After a brief struggle to pry the empty bowl from a very worried Ahjari and collect 2 other flying birds off of walls, ceilings, windows, cages, light fixtures, shelves, out of boxes or anywhere else it would be absolutely impossible for a Grey to fit INTO, to which they reach that spot immediately... The first 2 bowls of wet foods are dished out. One dish for Ahmani and Cinder, one for Ahjari. 8am: Ahmani and Cinder are bored and 'Mani has decided to poke Cinder again. Cinder howls. Ahjari has fallen asleep on his food bowl. 8:20am: Finish cleaning food off trio. Re-clean Cinder who head butts Ahjari into poop. 8:30am: Clean the cage tray. ...reclean the cage tray. ...reclean... Stop and remove birds first. 8:40am: All three are let out onto the playstand 'jungle'. Ahmani nimbly traverses manzanita branches, swings down the ropes and frolics deftly over the cargo net and onto the wooden playstand. Ahjari simply flies there and looks into the treat cups. Cinder stays on the cargo net and falls asleep in a gravity defying position. 8:45am: Rescue self - run for morning coffee! 9am: All three birds sleeping so soundly, they look dead. 9:15am: Had to stop a fight between the trio over a toy. 9:27am: Collected all three as they flew into places that - all of a sudden - they can't extricate themselves from and need assistance. 9:30am: Rescue Cinder from Ahmani ...again. 9:45am: Stop Cinder and Ahmani from eating the comfy chair. Remove Ahjari from the box of cheerios he found. 9:50am: Rescue daughter's sandal from Cinder. ..HOW did he get that?! Rescue wall from 'Mani. 10am: All of them pause from destroying the clean and brand new swiffer duster I mistakenly laid out (on an upper shelf) to fly down and eat the air popped popcorn I bring. Popcorn scatters to every corner of nursery from the wing beats. Rush to office - attempt to write this post. 10:01am: Give Ahjari his own popcorn pile, to stop his caterwauling everytime the other birds touch the popcorn. Rush back to office - attempt to finish this post. 10:15am: Run back into nursery - all three look up innocently. Glare at them - rush to finish post. 10:25: (right now) Finish post, rush back to nursery!

That's why I said each bird is individual - some take longer and nothing we can do is going to change that if they're not ready! Well, we could, but refusing food is a terrible thing to do to a dependent baby! We each know our birds and know what their speed is, I think. I also have a bit of an advantage. I cheat! I use older birds as role models and that helps considerably. It's amazing how fast things click in their little brains when they watch another bird do things and they mimic it and go "Oh! That's what I'm supposed to do!". It's great - it only takes watching me have one of my adult Greys step up a few times before the babies are automatically doing it also. Nothing beats a good role model. So, I cheat. *grins* edit for typo demon<br><br>Post edited by: fofaviary, at: 2009/05/19 08:13

Tycos_mom wrote: Tycos_mom: I don't think you did anything wrong. Each baby is entirely different. That's just the average age for my Grey babies. In the case of my current trio, they've been refusing hand-feeds for well over 2 weeks in full, and have whittled down the amounts they've been fed until it was just a taste (10cc) before they'd push away from it. However, since they wanted that taste still, I didn't consider them 'finished'. Now, they're spitting it out when I manage to corner them (grins), and are gaining weight after the flight slim down. In fact, they never dropped an ounce during weaning at all. I introduce solids to my babies as soon as their eyes open, so they have weeks of using the food as toys, then tasting it, then by the time they're 5-6 weeks old, they're already eating the softer foods in a coarse pureed form. It doesn't take them long at all from that point to start stuffing their faces with solids and starting pushing the formula away. Each week of age gets a bit more coarser foods, until at about 7 weeks old, it's entirely the mix I feed adults. My big test is to remove the tasty 'wet' foods and leave them an entire day with just pellets. When they don't beg for any food and eat the pellets without a single peep of fuss, I know they're done. A lot of people won't agree with my personal philosophy on baby rearing, and if you don't, I respect that entirely and we'll agree to disagree. But, here it is: I don't rush to stuff formula into a begging baby, and that's a lot of what can keep a Grey baby on the formula track long after they shouldn't be on it - not that you did that, but it's a common thing to do. It's also a wrong thing to do if you want a baby that's going to be independent, have no food neurosis and are confident in themselves. Offering hand-feeds for comfort is just as detrimental to their adult psyches as under-feeding or refusing formula to them. I do not believe at all in 'comfort feeding' a weaned bird. There are other ways, more positive ways, to offer that comfort than to fill its belly. Formula is a very concentrated diet meant for a rapidly growing bird and it's not very good for juveniles that have passed their 90% growth mark, or for adults. A lot of times the begging is an indication that the baby needs physical or emotional reassurance rather than food - they just know how to demostrate their need only with the wing twitch, the slow head bob and the feed response which is usually misconstrued with food begging. I work with my babies from early on to come to my hand when they're needing reassurance. A touch, a gentle caress, or a full out cuddle and rock in a chair while humming soothes them far more efficiently than giving them food so their bodies shut down and they sleep because of digestion. So, I offer non-food reassurement first, and if the baby still begs with a strong hunger response and it's eating well on solids, I'll only feed a half feed, or a quarter feed of formula, until the baby is back solidly into its comfort zone. If the baby isn't eating well on solids, then it gets the full amount of formula needed for its weight, of course. I have had some babies take longer to wean, but it's not often and it's usually boys! They're usually the whinier of the two genders also. Then again, they're usually the sweetest as well - when babies. I kinda wish they did take longer... I'm so going to miss Carol's two! Anyway, thought you'd like to know my secret for early weaning Greys that are still abundance weaned. Cheers!

This is a tweedle: http://www.greyfeathertoys.com/cgi-bin/quikstore.cgi?store=&search=yes&detail=yes&product=84&category=Toy_Chest_-_Medium_Bird_Toys&keywords=&hits_seen=36&page=search.html&and=&affiliate_id= My Greys go crazy over it, so I stick one in with every Grey baby I raise.

Carol, I'll be sending you a well-baby package this month with the hatch certs and DNA and a food sampler of what I have the babies on. I'll enclose 5lbs of mixed sprout seeds for you to practice on. LOL Not to mention some toys and other goodies. And, a TWEEDLE. Every Grey needs a tweedle! *grins* If I can find one of my sprout jars I'm not using, I'll stick that in too. That way you can try it all out.

Let me clear a few things up about chinaprairie's sprout kit. Yes, it's 80.00 for a starter kit. Here's what it includes: 1 3 jar sprout tower. Not needed really, but it is very convenient as you can stack 3 jars in it at a time - 1 soaking, 2 draining. I have mine stationed over my sink and it works like a charm without taking up room. It's merely a convenience item. 3 sprouting jars. Simply mason jars with nice mesh type of plastic lids. 10lbs of sprouting mix. Two different types. 1 jar of herbal additives 1 jar of what's essentially GSE. Now for sprouts every single day, for all my pet birds (2 greys, 2 macaws, 2 conures, 2 caiques) and not my aviary ones (I sprout bulk for them), it took me 6 months to use up 10lbs of seed/grain. However, if you just buy the sprouting mix, you certainly don't have to buy the hardware! Most people have no inkling of sprouting and thus, I always suggest the sprout tower package for the convenience. What I like is the seed/grain blends themselves. One diet has this: Psittacine: Hulled Sunflower Seed, Whole Yellow Corn, Whole Oat, Brown Rice, Hi Pro Wheat Berry, Whole Green Pea, Garbanzo, Mung Bean, Buckwheat, Millet, Fenugreek, Pumpkin Seed, Sesame Seed, Quinoa, Radish Seed, Mustard Seed, Red Clover Seed. The other sprout diet has this: Triticale, Rice, Millet, Alfalfa, Fenugreek, Buckwheat, Fennel, Flax Seed, Dill Seed, Sesame Seed, Amaranth, Quinoa, Mung Bean, Radish Seed, and Red Clover Seed. I like to buy half and half and mix them, myself. But, there are other sprouting companies, methods and so forth. Use what you like best individually, in my opinion. Just use sprouts! The phytonutrients are SO important in our birds' diets! Hope that clears things up a bit. Yours, Tina<br><br>Post edited by: fofaviary, at: 2009/05/07 03:05

If I can't talk my clients out of it, I will clip wings. I'd rather I do it than have them butcher the baby. All my babies I sell are harness tolerent as well (I don't say trained, because that's a long-term committment into a bird's adult hood). That being said, my own birds are flighted and harness trained if possible. Unfortunately, my CAGS are currently trimmed because my vet got his wires crossed. He won't be doing that again. Sucks too, I had just been working on recall training with Lilly. Thankfully, feathers grow back quickly when they're trimmed close to a molt. The only pet bird that's trimmed and will remain so is my daughter's conure hybrid who is crazy possessive of her, and has injured other human members of the household by flying at their faces and raking his claws and beaks into flesh. It's for OUR health that they're trimmed or else he'd tear our collective eyes out. It was a difficult choice though, but the thought of him being flighted but locked away all day for our safety versus trimmed and allowed free range of his playstands kinda made me pick the trimming.

Being a breeder, I can give you a few tips. 1. Interview them. Find out everything there is to know about the way they raise, feed and socialize not only the babies, but also how the adults are fed and housed. A good breeder may not allow you into their aviary or nursery, but they should never have anything to hide. Edit: 1a: Make sure they have a GOOD website that's up to date! 2. Ask for pictures of the breeders. A lot of breeders won't give you an indepth photo album as our breeding birds usually think the camera spells their doom, but a general picture or two can let you know if the person is the actual breeder, or someone buying clutches of babies and hand-feeding them. 3. If you're REALLY feeling concerned, ask the breeder to write down your name and date, and snap a photo of it with the baby bird of your selected species upon it. Scammers won't normally do this. 4. Ask what forums the person belongs to. Most breeders are gun shy of forums because everyone on a bird forum is a prospective client and they don't want to offend someone or gain a bad reputation off their answers (or show their ignorance from their answers!). Then, visit that forum(s) and start PM'ing people on it. A lot of times you'll find good breeders who belong to forums have a lot of clients ON that forum - so a bit of reading posts can let you know a LOT about that breeder. 5. Don't just get references. USE THEM. I can go to a library, talk to my friends and family, and have them all send me wonderful references. But, are they real? On birdbreeders.com I can choose not to even SHOW my negative ratings! Wow, I'm always a 5 star breeder because I get to choose to be such! Not a good thing. At all. TALK TO REFERENCES. Having references does nothing for you if you don't use them. 6. Ask if they have videos. Just another way of seeing if someone's legit, or at least giving you a personal feel for them to add to your decision making. 7. Don't just wipe your hands of a breeder that has a bad review. You cannot please everyone all the time - even when you've done your very best for them. Example: I had a sweet fellow purchase a Sun from me. Less than a month later, the bird had died. By rights, I didn't have to do anything - the bird was healthy when I shipped it, healthy during its after sale vet check... I didn't owe him a thing. But, regardless, I replaced the bird with another Sun. Even though it went completely against nearly every bit of my health guarantee - no necropsy, no histology, etc. (we actually figured it had metal poisoning from his necklace) Then there was Mr. Nasty who purchased a Sun and 4 months after he had it, it died. He did vet check it when he bought it and it was squeaky clean. When it died, he had a necropsy done, and it along with his other birds were riddled with disease. He blamed me. Even though the bird was clean, even though I had zero psittacosis in my aviary, even though the pet shop where he bought his other birds had to be closed due to an outbreak of psittacosis.. he still blamed me. Needless to say, I pulled out my Miss Meany Hat and he did not get a replacement bird, nor would I sell him another baby. Thankfully, he didn't go around bad mouthing me (he really knew who's fault it was), but he could have! So, you or someone like you would come across someone who disliked me (or someone like me!) and you'd go "oh bad review!". Moral of this tale? Don't always believe good things OR bad things. In the end, go with your gut. Don't feel pressured into ANY baby. Also, don't feel so anxious to get one that you leap out to grab the first one either. The relationship you build with a breeder can be many things - it shouldn't just be the place you got your bird. It should be there always with advice, with interest and support you even when that baby is 20 years old. That's my two shekels worth of advice. Good luck! Post edited by: fofaviary, at: 2009/05/01 00:49<br><br>Post edited by: fofaviary, at: 2009/05/01 00:53

Carol: I know, I was sneaky. Caitb2007: Thanks for the welcome. I don't normally post on species specific forums, or many public forums, I'm too mouthy lol. I'm just here to sneak up on Carol a few times. Or Mommafawkes (she has one of my babies also). Then I slink away like a good ninja.

I must say ..this is my favorite Ahmani picture. And definitely this one of both Carol's babies.. because really, how many times have we sisters wanted to just shove our foot in big bro's face to shut 'm up? *grins* or this one

judygram wrote: Oh, I don't know about that! My Lilly is the very same now as she was when she was when she was a tiny girl. She's always very cute and precious. I'm blessed to be owned by her and her sweet, patient nature. Carol has been raving about the love in this community and the support you all have given her. I thought I'd peek and see the pics of my babies and to give a friendly wave and /hug to Carol (without making myself a nosy busybody!). Take care everyone! PS, here are my babies... and Lilly's b-day is today! This is Izzy: This is Lilly: <br><br>Post edited by: fofaviary, at: 2009/04/22 00:20