Moobu

Leia I sent you a Private Message with the general instructions on how to clip wings. As I said in the message I highly suggest you try and google a page dedicated to wing clipping as they usually contain incredibly helpful diagrams and picture aids to train you about where and what to snip.

I know it is a very weird question but I've heard stories of people who have done it. Personally I don't think I could bare to look at any of my birds in statue form. :dry: It would bring back way too many memories. On one hand I can respect the aspect of preserving your pets beauty eternally in its prime. On the other hand I can only picture somebody who has trouble letting things go in life doing such a desperate act to keep their pet with them in any way they can. Also I imagine a lot of people would regard this as a disrespectful way to lay your pet to rest. Anybody else care to give their opinion on the practice?

Very pretty baby bird you have there! You may want to consider moving that power cord in the background out of range before you have an electrical accident you'll never forgive yourself for.

Disgusting. He deserves a harsh punishment and they're letting him take the easy way out. He's probably going to sit and laugh about how easily he got off the hook next sunday drinking his beer.

My tiel is the exact same way. Absolutely refuses to bite ANYONE. He opens his beak and looks aggressive at times but has never even bitten a stranger. Very proud of him for that. =)

I read somewhere that you were not supposed to get sand perches for greys. I don't remember where but I was advised to stick strictly to cement perches. Be careful where you place the sandy perch. If they spend too much of their time on it they can develop sores and blisters on the bottoms of their feet!

I've also seen keets called budgies a lot. Maybe this is more of a European nickname?

Dan your post makes much more sense to me because it seems to have educated and structured reasoning behind it. Other posts I have read seemed to be more "bandwagon" style posts. I completely respect that people have grown to hate him. I myself am not 100% convinced either way about him. I just think that it is rather ignorant to call his training diet a starvation tactic when the details and workings are relatively unknown. I can't really explain why that particular topic bothers me. You may as well be saying you're starving your human children when you tell him he's not allowed that package of pop tarts 20 minutes before dinner.

This is pretty much the answer I expected. That low of an amount is so trivial I think I'll just eat the chips myself and maybe find another bird treat that is jalapeno flavored. Anyone know of any?

I've been showering with multiple birds from budgies to my greys for about 3 and a half years now and have never had an issue. Certain birds may not prefer the amount of water or be initially scared of the shower head. I would highly recommend looking into buying a shower perch that suction cups to the wall to keep him off the floor. God forbid you ever slip in the shower to begin with but if you do and your feather baby is on the floor in addition your day has then gotten a whole hell of a lot worse as you likely just seriously injured him. After reading the post about how important it is to bathe your birds to help them with how much they itch from dry skin I think you should definitely find a method that works on a regular basis. Edit: I also forgot to mention, Try to keep the shower before the night time so your bird has time to dry off before bed. Post edited by: Moobu, at: 2009/08/29 19:33<br><br>Post edited by: Moobu, at: 2009/08/29 19:34

I changed Onyx's name from Moses relatively easy because I felt they sounded similar and he caught on pretty quickly with me using it rather normally.

I'd like to know if there is any level of salt that wouldn't hurt the bird through reading the nutritional guide on the packaging. Maybe a DV%? Linus absolutely loves jalapeno flavored treats. So Hannah brought him back some jalapeno flavored chips. I'm fairly positive they're too salty for him to eat though.

As I said, I'm simply trying to lay out some unbiased facts. I have no affiliation with Chet Womach, I am just trying to get opinions that may be a little more educated than previous writings. Jill you know you can just unsubscribe and never hear from him again right? Open one of his emails and use the link at the VERY bottom of the page. The praise I was giving him was the show trick content of his package. I think he offers great bases to start teaching your bird many tricks. A lot of parrot owners want to teach their birds the eagle trick. It is a pretty simple process through the DVD. I said in my book of a post I wrote that his taming methods were sketchy but worked for enough people to at least merit being looked into. Is anybody here against clicker training? That is the method taught through the DVD.

Hoping to make many friends and become a active part of the community. My name is Brad. I'm 22 years old and happily engaged to my high school sweet heart of 5 years. Her name is Hannah and we have embarked together on the wondrous journey known as raising feather babies. We currently have a flock of 6 birds that we've owned ranging from 4 years to 3 months. Barney - Our 26 year old Congo African Grey. We have owned him for about 3 months now and just finished paying a whole 800 dollars for him, his cage, his brother Linus,(not by blood)as well as Linus's cage. He is a complete goofball who insists on blowing raspberries on your hand before stepping up. I would consider him aggressively affectionate as he seems to get easily wound up. He doesn't talk but I'm pretty sure he tries to make gargled robotic sounding attempts at words he heard from a broken speech toy. Linus - Our 21 year old Congo African Grey. He was purchased with Barney and has a very frightened and timid nature. He is very talkative and curious also. He absolutely HATES being touched anywhere but his beak which you are allowed to extensively rub. Hannah is one of the only people to ever give him a head scratch in at least 5 years. He has bonded with her on a level that is quite amazing. His chest only contains down feathers due to a plucking incident before I obtained him. He also has a unique scar on his beak I am told he received as a very young bird. He apparently got anxious to try out his new wings, fell off of his cage, and cracked his beak! 20 years later and all is well! =) He absolutely LOVES Jalapeno Yogurt Covered Peanuts! Onyx (Ony)- Our 2 year old Nanday Conure. He has an absolutely stunning color in his feathers. We consider him a rescue bird because we purchased him from a lady who inherited him, among about 12 other birds, through her father's passing. She had absolutely ZERO bird experience and we are certain he would have died from her lack of knowledge if we hadn't stepped in. He was hatched by this ladies father and raised having contact with 1 human most of his life. His hatch date is March 31st. He has a strong dislike for all women which I'm assuming developed from never seeing one for most of his life. He takes the award for the vocalist of the flock by a long shot. VERY active in his singing and squawking. ESPECIALLY if large objects are moving. Sunshine (Sunny) - Our 2 year old Lutino Cockatiel. Sunny has a disposition that is unbelievable. He absolutely refuses to bite. He opens his mouth and pecks people, but he has NEVER EVER bitten anybody. Not even total strangers. An absolute snuggle bug, he is a riot to have sitting on your chest. He never fails to come up with creative ways to ask for a head scratch. Speaking of.. he expects his head scratches to last at least 30 minutes straight. He is fully flighted and harness trained. I take him all over town with me from parades, to the mall, wal mart, walks in the park, and even out of town to neighboring cities. He has a dime sized bald spot right behind his plume that has never grown a signle feather and most likely never will. Daisy - Our 2 year old budgie that was originally my mothers bird. She is bright yellow covered in black speckles. She is a very scared bird that is not really sure she ever wants to interact with human contact despite many attempts. She lives in the same roomy cage as Cloe and we are guessing her strong bond she has formed with Cloe is a factor in her rejection toward us. She is a textbook tag along when Cloe is out of the cage with her. She has to follow her and do everything right after her sister! Clover (Cloe) - Ah yes. My little girl that started me off on this amazing path of companionship. She is about 4 years old now. She was purchased as a pair with her sweetheart Sky. Sky sadly departed this world early in a freak accident of human miss communication. =( She is completely hooked on millet and loves flying around to different perches throughout the house. She has a brilliant color of green and gold through most of her feathers, with her tail feathers blending in a lush and deep blue. She was always known to be sort of a clutz when flying but she recently has shown great improvement in her aerial prowess. I hope you enjoyed reading these mini biographies. I also hope to see many of you around the forums as I try to fit into the community! Post edited by: Moobu, at: 2009/08/29 22:01<br><br>Post edited by: Moobu, at: 2009/08/30 00:27

My best guess would be to clip both birds wings. Then start having "out of cage" sessions where both birds are allowed to perch at the same time on SEPARATE perches a safe distance away. This should help them identify each other as fellow flock members as well as get to know each other at a safe distance.

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to argue For or Against Chet Womach in this post. I'm simply trying to offer some factual statements of what is contained in these DVDs after extensively using his product for those that have requested to know. I recently purchased Chet's new material and can say that overall it is pretty impressive. Yes he makes some... exaggerated claims to sell his videos. (Make your parrot STOP biting forever!) or whatever.. but I feel he offers legitimate help to cut back on many undesired behaviors. His methods are not failproof, but I think he has a good enough success rate to at least merit a glance. From my personal experience so far I would say the movies provide great ideas for gimmick tricks as well as helpful ideas to help tame your bird that some may not have as much luck with. He seems to do a decent job describing why certain steps must be taken to help make the trick successful. They also have a number to call that is usually answered by Wendy. She has been very helpful the couple times I have called and is rarely unavailable. One thing I would like to touch on is what seems to be a very hot debate here on the forums. His "Training Diet". I've seen a couple people portray this method as a starvation tactic used to heartlessly coax the bird into working for its food. If you listen to his detailed description of this diet it is clearly not what Chet is instructing to do. He lays out very careful guidelines on how to safely and humanely break your birds eating habits into routines much like you yourself eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He is very specific of keeping a log of how much food is consumed per day as well as a weight log to monitor bird health. as an example lets say your bird consumes an average of 30g of food per day. You find this by weighing out 50g of food every morning, and weighing what is left before bed time for a week. He then suggests that you offer your bird 27g of food in the morning AFTER a training session, and remove the food when the bird is done eating. Repeat this during an afternoon time around 1 or 2 feeding your bird the remainder of the 27 grams from earlier. Finally, do a third training session in the evening and for dinner fill your birds dish and let it have access to an unlimited amount of food for a few hours before bed so he can fill up. Remove the food as you go through your birds bedtime routine. Here is the part that many probably miss. The amount of food you DO NOT give your bird throughout the day is supplemented in treats. In my example if you take 3g away from your birds average consumption of food per day, you need to replenish that using 3g in treats. In the end the bird gets the same amount of food it would normally eat in a day on its own. This training diet is intended to allow you to supplement a small amount of this food as treats for scheduled training sessions. His goal isn't to starve the bird into submission like some portray. It is to not have the bird 100% full at all times like he claims they like to keep themselves. Think of it as the classic ?is the glass half empty or half full" question. In this case is the bird 90% full (chet's view) or 10% starved (other views condoning chet's diet.) Basically in a summary of his words, he says that birds will constantly snack to keep themselves "topped off" at all times which makes training sessions for food a futile and unproductive time. I hope the wall of text up there can help people understand the intentions of the diet now that any misinformation has be cleared up. I would love to read any unbiased comments for or against the diet now that I have shed some light on its intricate design. On the negative side of the coin, the videos are also filled with a lot of fluff. Every video starts out with the same 5 minute segment of his brother Dave taking a vacation in what looks like the amazon, doing zip line riding, petting crocodiles, then a magic show. I have also found that, like many others report, he's very adamant about you purchasing other sections of his course. I have personally found that one trick in particular is pretty much ineffective in training my cockatiel though. Overall I would say the tricks contained were well worth the 30 dollars I spent for his guide alone. PS. It's 2 am, I'm tired.. I'm sure I can brainstorm a better list of negatives once I skim over his DVDs tomorrow.

Thanks for the tips about the choice about the wood. What I am using isn't actually a shaving as far as I know. At least not the finished product. It is a condensed wood pellet. The entire reason i changed from news paper to these wood pellets was because Barney and Onyx were reaching through their grates and chewing the paper to pieces. I changed to help eliminate the possibility of digesting their own droppings. Here is a link to the product, is this what you meant when you referred to wood shavings? http://www.greenpet.com/prodaspen.htm

Looking back at my 3 am post I can see it didn't quite convey the message I was intending. I meant to help clarify Dave's message a little with a small tip that I have been taught and found helpful. Obviously putting the bird in the cage is the correct thing to do. I just meant to help the OP by mentioning to take a precaution not to teach the bird that biting is a way to go back to his cage when he feels like it.

Everyone is in separate cages. I had the conure cultured by my local avian vet which is how we arrived to the conclusion he had an imbalance of negative bacteria in his stool. I'm fairly positive I transferred this to Barney from Onyx because I have a portable stand perch that I keep all birds on when they are out. (one at a time, or CAG pair and Conure/cockatiel pair) Barney and Onyx both have a history of chewing their droppings paper through their grates which is why I had to change over to aspen wood pellet bedding. I'm almost certain this is how Barney could have caught something from Onyx. Dave, is it normal for this excessive amount to occur frequently throughout the day? It seems to happen ever few hours if not sooner. In regards to my Conure's timing, its about twice as fast as my cockatiel's which I feel seems unnatural. I would also like to guesstimate Barney goes at least every 25-30. My main concern here is long term impacts on both of their health at this point.

I understand Dave007 is a very respected figure here and I don't mean to overstep any boundaries as the new member. But I'd like to point out that Dave's advice to put him in his cage every time he bites you is potentially a bad suggestion as it could train Zero to bite you whenever he feels like going back to his cage. I think it needs to be clarified that a few minutes time with the bird left alone need to pass between the bite and being put back in the cage so you do not reinforce the idea that "biting master's hand means i can go back to my room". Again, no disrespect to Dave. This is just something I have read multiple times as a thing not to do. (at least not instantaneously after the bite.)

Firstly I know he has some form of mild infection. He has been to the vet for this and is currently on an antibiotic. The story goes as follows: About 6 months ago I expanded my flock of 3 by answering an ad in the local paper for a Nanday Conure. The woman selling him had absolutely NO experience with birds in the past and inherited a love bird, a nanday conure, and about 10 budgies from her father's passing. Even though she meant well her lack of knowledge caused the conure, who I renamed Onyx upon rescuing him, to get sick by leaving fruit in his cage for DAYS at a time. (He has also since been seen by the local vet) The symptoms of this supposed sickness are simple. Extremely large excretes of droppings at one time. Its best described like he holds in a few hours worth just to let it all out at once as a few moments after you take him from his cage. The volume is enough where it isn't uncommon for a squirting kind of sound to accompany the excretion. I would say its consistency is 50/50% watery solid. Other than this excessive amount of droppings Onyx is very active, social, loving, playful, destructive (with his rope toys of course), loud, and every other word you can think to use for a textbook Conure. He had a fecal smear test conducted which revealed an imbalance of negative bacteria in his stool when taken to the vet. This led to him being on two different regiments of the antibiotic Baytril. This medication has drastically reduced the volume of droppings, but they seem to stay the same consistency and are slightly varying in terms of current volume. My vet told me maybe he needs time to heal but he isn't really sure. Now that the back story is presented.. Barney is my 26 year old Congo African Grey I just recently purchased about 3 months ago with his unofficial brother Linus(21 years old. Barney has now started excreting droppings in the same excessive fashion that Onyx originally was. He usually has 2 medium sized incidents about 3-5 seconds apart. He also wiggles his back end widely and crouches down when he goes. I'd like to point out that after the first time either bird releases a larger amount of droppings, they seem to have smaller, to normal sized droppings for about an hour. They also seem to go at an accelerated rate. The Conure was timed to be going about every 7-10 minutes. Finally, I'd like to point it out again that both birds show no other symptoms of being sick. Both are very energetic and eager to come out and train, play, socialize with the family, and neither have shown any differing characteristics in personality.