harmonicaman68

A quick update. Lily is now flying :-) She definitely has a different mental tether than Olive does. Olive free flights around the guests at the Baby Cage at Hartman Aviary at the Saturday Open Houses. Lily can free fly, but stays out and away from me MUCH longer as she explores. I may have to keep her on the Aviator Harness when we go to parks. Otherwise it is about 2hrs of exploring before Lily is ready to come back and sit in my lap to get preened :-)

You can always get one in any color directly from Steve Hartman, the inventor of the Aviator Harness. His website for direct purchase is http://www.theparrotuniversity.com

I agree ... taking the bird on vacation is good. A harness will help so you can take your fid outside with you. Last summer a lady and her husband had been trying to get their U2 (Lilly) to quit feather mutilation. It had actually chewed off 12 primaries and secondaries on each wing, effectively clipping itself. It was a reaction to having lost a Sun Conure buddy and then having the family go on vacation and leave the bird home with their college age kids who "had better things to do than play with the bird". The poor bird had nothing to keep it busy. They then could not keep the bird from mutilating. In desperation, the previous owner, after a year of using vet prescribed tranquilizers on Lilly to stop the mutilation, bought Lilly a buddy. A Green Cheek Conure (Olive). That helped some, but not completely. Then about 6 months later, they gave both Lilly and Olive to me with cage. They said it was because they were moving to a smaller place. That may be true, but I think it was also because they had lost heart (or interest) or both. The change in environment seems to have done the trick. Lilly gets MUCH more attention now. I keep her and Olive at work. They live at the warehouse just outside of my office door where all of my co-workers can come by an talk with them on the way to the break room. Olive has bonded with me so strongly that I free flight her outdoors with no harness. I'm working on the same with Lilly. In order to get Lilly to fly again, we sedated her and pulled the mutilated primaries to force a molt, similar to what is done with racing pigeons when they break a flight feather. Otherwise it would have been a year before she got new feathers. She is SO proud of her new feathers, and is getting so much attention that she has left them alone so they could grow in and is learning to fly again. I always touch her feathers and tell her how beautiful they are and she opens her wings and is SO proud of them now. Fortunately, she was fully flighted for about two years before she started mutilating, so the neural pathways in her brain were well established and flight is coming back. She just has to unlearn the failures and crash landings she had while her flight feathers were damaged. That is hard ... but it is coming along. She also has to rebuild her muscle strength and get her cardiovascular in shape through flying further and further distance. We're working on that too. It helps to train outside where she has to relearn flight with crosswinds and up/down drafts. Her furthest flight to date has been about 40 yards (meters), but inside, she is flying all around my office and it is causing her to come out of her shell as she gains confidence again. She was very gregarious when fully flighted before she began mutilating. With flight, her personality is re-emerging.

Ziva likes a toy that is made by Patsy ... one of the volunteers at Hartman Aviary. She gave Ziva one as a homecoming toy when we first brought Ziva home. It is a long white athletic tube sock that can be purchased in any athletic clothing shop (or that can be gotten very inexpensively at any used clothing store). Patsy hand sews some buttons on the outside. She then fills the socks with lego pieces, unshelled almonds, plastic buttons, ball point pen caps, plastic straws, sunflower seeds, flax seed, beans, paper that is cut into strips, and anything else that a Grey may want to forage for. She then sews the open end of the sock closed and also runs the sewing machine across the sock in a couple of other places so the sock is divided into three equal compartments. I hang the sock in Ziva's cage and she climbs it and hangs on it to pick the buttons off the outside. As she climbs on it, she hears the almonds and other things inside rattle against each other and she becomes curious. After awhile she chews her way into one of the compartments and pulls the goodies out that were hidden there. She will work on an almond or play with a button ... or pull out some paper. Eventually she empties all of the compartments and begins a slow process of shredding the sock. If she loses interest in the sock, I eventually replace it with a new one. The stuffed socks have been good toys.

Wallace sounds like he is doing well:-) By the way ... Ziva didn't eat grapes at first either ... now she holds the grape, scoops out the soft sweet center and throws away the skin. Go figure :-)

We understand the picky eater syndrome. Patience and persistence :-) I've found that birds seem to have a built in "food testing" program. They may only touch something with their tongue or eat a small amount or what seems like none. Eventually as they identify the taste and that it had no negative results, they sometimes "come around" and begin to eat what you have introduced them to in the past. I've wondered if God designed them that way so they would not inadvertently eat something that was poisonous to them by mistake. Even new seeds may be "mouthed" to check taste and then dropped. Later they become better accepted.

Hi and welcome :-) Wallace looks healthy in the photo of him. You could try making the Circus Diet for Wallace. A recipe for it is at http://theparrotuniversity.com/circusdiet.php My wife makes it and freezes it into ice cube trays. Then we store it in the freezer. Each day we take about 2 ice cubes of it and mix it with Ziva's pellet food. You could do the same with Wallace's food. Eventually, they get used to the mixture being "on" all of their other food and it even becomes easier to change to different brands of pellets or other food, because the Circus Diet touches and somewhat flavors all of the other food. Just a thought :-) Again ... welcome !!!

Sunny is looking great !!! Good choice of color for your Aviator as well. For those of us who are Ohio State University fans, scarlet is always a good choice with Grey :-)

It is always a blessing when our Greys fly. Thanks for posting this encouraging note :-)

I noticed that my daughter's green cheek conure had an awful smell when she brought some cooked veggies for it to eat over a couple of days and didn't keep the food refrigerated properly. Naema ate the food fine, but we all noticed her smell and changed her diet while my daughter was visiting. As soon as we got Naema on fresher food, the smell went away.

Hi All, No pictures this time, but I'll definitely take a camera along next time :-)

It was a great time. The best part was that Ziva seemed to enjoy herself. Fluffed up, preening, being handled by about half the guys including the 8 year old without complaint. She even sat on the boy's arm long enough that she eventually climbed up the sleeve of his shirt and sat on his shoulder, fluffed up again and sat like a queen. She had never met even one of the others who were with us, but she has been being introduced to strangers on a regular basis. The pattern of "normal introductions" seems to be paying off :-)

I don't know if anyone posts here who likes to go camping. I have camped out over the years and had thought of going camping with Ziva since she first decided to adopt me. I picked out a nice autumn weekend here in Ohio, US and took a few basic pieces of equipment to make life easier with a Grey. First, I didn't try to make our first outing overly long. There were nine of us (guys) going on this campout. We had decided to do one night at a nearby campground that has some fishing and hiking available. We arrived at the campgrounds about 5pm after work on a Friday and only stayed until 3pm on Saturday. This allowed Ziva to experience an overnight, hanging out with strangers, but a limited number, and one stranger was an 8 year old grandson of one of the other participants. So Ziva had adults and children as a part of this experience. I took my usual camp gear including a small (4 person) tent which is really only large enough for 2 people if they keep their gear inside. That gave me a place to zipper the mosquito netting closed and either let Ziva out to stretch her wings a bit without an Aviator harness on. It also gave a place for me to zipper closed to place her Aviator harness on safely. At night, I placed her in a small travel cage that she is "at home" in and she slept in it inside the zippered tent with me. I put her in her travel cage at dark and later, after sitting around the campfire for a few hours, when I entered the tent, I said a few words so Ziva would know it was me. Not even a worried growl did she make. Just a couple of familiar sounds to say "I know it is you" and she was back to sleep. I mentioned that I took a couple of items along to make life easy for me. They also made life easy for Ziva. I took the Aviator Yard Perch to have something for Ziva to sit on at our campsite and be comfortably near me,but off to the side, since we were cooking and doing other activities that she didn't need to be in the middle of. I also took the Aviator Harness so I could keep her safe, yet a part of activities. That was connected to my wrist, or safely anchored to the Aviator Yard Perch at all times. I also took the Aviator Flight Line to allow Ziva to fly and it worked beautifully. The 8 year old grandson of one of the guys helped me give Ziva some exercise on the Flight Line. Since this was our first campout together, I also took an extra Aviator Harness in the same color as the one Ziva is used to. (just in case she got nervous and chewed through one). No worries, she did fine, but there was peace of mind in knowing I had an extra along. I enjoy hiking and the Yard Perch had an unexpected benefit. It worked as a walking stick for me and as we stopped to rest from time to time, I could push it into the ground so Ziva had a perch. I could also take the tether extender from the Flight Line and attach it to the Aviator Harness and it worked well to extend Ziva's range when attached to the Aviator Yard Perch. This extended range was MUCH appreciated by Ziva. :-) Ziva did well. She is usually gregarious, but for this trip there were enough new experiences that she stayed close to me. I'm hoping that as campouts become more frequent in Ziva's life that she becomes more adventurous when she is on them. There were lots of new taste treats, long walks, new friends, cool weather at night, listening to campfire music, listening to talking and laughter after dark, new foraging experiences (on our walks) and just life being TOTALLY different than the normal state of affairs around our home. She and I were both tired out when we returned. Lots of fresh air and beautiful sunshine with cool breezes. Maybe even a bit of a suntan for me and the right color and intensity of lighting for Ziva's health. All in all and good trip. I hope some of you have the opportunity to experience the same with your fids :-)

So what words has your ring neck been saying? .... are they truthful? Telling lies can cause tail growth :-) .... or was that beak growth ... hmmmmmmmm ... Then again ... maybe it is just that the ringneck no linger has an impish cockatiel to help nip the tail feathers :-)