crossfit

You will love the goodbirdinc videos. I just ordered the one on vet visits. I have the other two. I have trained dogs for years and Barbara really puts things succinctly and makes them easy to understand. I haven't seen the other ones but have heard that other link isn't worth looking at. I have actually heard things that imply they are to be avoided.

I have a cal cage and there is about 6 inches or more of room at the bottom. However they have gone out of business and at least one person had trouble with their powder coating containing too much zinc so I can't recommend without reservations. On the other hand, most owners don't have that trouble and you might find a used one on ebay for a good price.

Oh they are so cute. I am finding I adore this stage when they have just enough feathers to make them look more bird than dinosaur cousin. Then again, I love them at all other stages too.

This is awesome. I appreciate the updates.

Thats really cute!

Let me know how this goes over time. I have a friend with a grey and we are hoping that after my baby comes home and settles in, they can be friends. Hers is a ten year old female and mine is at 2 month old male. I don't plan to introduce them until he is confident here at my house. But I am hoping that with him being a juvenile, and the opposite sex, that she will tolerate him. I will probably introduce them over at my house since she would probably be less happy about it at her house (the parrot, not my friend, she would be fine either way.)â™

Hawkins is a response to all those named Einstein. It is after Stephen Hawkings, the physicist. LOL. Hawkins is just easier to say. I bet I end up calling him things like "my lil hawk" and such as we tend to have all sorts of name variants for our other pets.

and the last one: It seems he is starting to look like a tiny African Grey now rather than the little dinosaur of a short time ago.

hit send too soon. The other photos:

Woot! got the DNA tests today and some more pictures from the breeder. He is a boy. We are calling him Hawkins right now. I will see how that sticks once he comes and lives with us. Here are the newest photos:

on my trip this last week, my hip (I use the front pocket so not my butt) and later my purse, both turned my phone on during the flight. Didn't get me in any trouble though - didn't actually make a call.

Well, the article says they weren't her kids. The parents had pawned the kids off to her about a year previously. That doesn't excuse it but makes it slightly more palatable, at least to me. I hope the kids are now going to find a good home. And my bet is that she intended to sell the parrot as she first asked for money and took the parrot instead. So lets hope the parrot also gets a good home.

wow. I really think the emotional intelligence of these birds is way more than their intellectual intelligence - which is already pretty high. But I keep hearing stories this like. Its awesome.

from what I understand, and have experienced, the ion machine types will mostly make the dust drop out of the air. The hepa filters the air. When used together you get the best bet. What the ion machines do is help the positive and negative electron charges in the air molecules to have a higher ratio of negative charges (which is better for us and our pets).

LOL. there are three in there but the other two must have been out of camera range.

Also I think if it does turn out to be a boy, as the breeder thinks, his name will be Hawkins.

The video cam is turned on at the breeders for a little while if anyone wants to go peek at my baby and his siblings. Enterprise Video Content Management Mine is the smallest. The other two are just barely getting red tips at their tails.

Oh, also, jooles - you can get an electronic clicker that has more than one type of click to it. It doesn't cost much more than the normal clicker either. You may have to mail order it from online somewhere though. But that way each bird could have their own personal click and problem solved.

HI, See you on the clicker forum. I lurk there at the moment as my baby hasn't come home to roost yet. But I also have dog clicker experience. You might want to check out goodbirdinc.com. Barbara doesn't use the clicker because she finds it hard to hold bird, treats, and clicker. But her methods are otherwise identical. I have two of her videos and they are great. Even if you choose to use the clicker she is a valuable parrot training resource.

Hi all, My baby won't be coming home until end of March or even April but I have already been planning and thinking. I have a nice large cage already and just bought a smaller cage for sleeping. I stay up very late so the room the main cage is in would not give our baby enough sleep time if she/he stayed in there all the time. So the sleep cage will go in my bedroom. The plan is that the baby can go to bed when my husband does as all the animals go to bed except me at that time. Then baby can wake up when I wake up and that will provide between 10-12 hours of sleep cage time. My question is how to introduce this. Should I start baby in the sleep cage on the first day, giving him/her a few days to get used to it then introduce the big cage? Or the other way around? Or just introduce baby to both cages on the first day providing enough time to explore both of them before bed? I know it is hard to know until I meet him/her and know her temperment a bit but if you all could share your experiences with cages on the first days it would help me to think through my options and also to know what to do when she/he comes. Thanks

I wanted to clarify a bit here. Clicker training can be used with any animal (even humans). However, to do it well you first need to teach the creature that the click means something - in this case that a treat will be on its way very soon. You can certainly use the clicker to train the bird to leave the cage. However only once the bird knows what the clicker means. I am unclear if you have already trained your bird to know that the click=treat. It sounded in the first post as if you are trying to teach your parrot that the click means treat at the same time as you are teaching it that the click/treat is a response to coming out of its cage when requested. If your bird already knows that a click means treat - ignore the rest of this. If not, you need to back up a few steps. That is what Dave is trying to say (I think). To effectively use clicker training, you first need to have the bird out of the cage and just click and give it a treat immediately. Only that. Or even do it in the cage. But there should not be another behaviour "paired" with it initially. I have only used this for dogs and cats (and my kids without the actually clicker - don't tell). My baby parrot has not yet come home to live. I am told that parrots can learn in a single session that the treat comes immediately after the click. Other species can learn fast as well but generally a bit slower. Basically what you are doing is teaching your bird that "click" means "good job". You can use other reinforcers besides a click but clicker trainers feel that the click is much easier to time right at the hoped for behaviour later on, when you move to using it as a training tool. There are excellent parrot trainers who don't use clickers but use the same concepts just as a side note. So, how do you get the bird out of the cage to clean it? I don't know right now. But once the click/treat response has been established, then you only click and treat at certain times. I would assume you would want to approximate the behaviour at first by which I mean, you might click/treat when your bird walks near the door. Then when that is consistant, only click when the bird perches in the open door, finally usually after a few sessions, you would click/treat only when the bird comes through the door and steps up. Dave's comment is right on but not really fully an explanation. I think what he is pointing out is that you are really using a treat to lure the bird out right now and just adding a click. That isn't the same as clicker training. With clicker, you would wait to show the treat until the bird stepped towards the entrance, then click, then treat. By offering the treat first, you are confusing the click then treat response for your bird. I hope this helps clarify. Again, if I misunderstood, sorry for the long post.

Prayers to both sick birds. And happy Hatch Day Spock. Its especially worth a celebration if your not feeling well. Enjoy all that you can.

I love the name Ana Grey. I thought of Dorian Grey but he wasn't someone I would want to name something after.

the only one that has come to mind is Griffon. But I think we will come up with others in the next weeks. I hope to know if its a boy or a girl in about a month. The mom at the egg shell so Tina can't do the dna test for a bit longer just to be safe.

Tina at Flights Of Fancy Aviary just sent me baby pics of my lil fella: