Boom

no matter timneh or congo i wouldnt expect to let them near a child. we as adults have 2 responsibilities. one is to the child to make sure they stay safe and keep all their fingers eyes and avoid being bitten the second is to our pets to make sure they do not incurr the extra stress of being poked and prodded by children that annoy them enough to want to bite them.

yesterday was better. tina threw her long sleved bath robe on and let lilly out while i was at work. gave her a bit of oj where lilly tried to nip her once so tina told her no and put her on her perch. when she stepped on her perch she got a seed and told good girl. rest of the day non eventful till i got home and the lil bugger decided to take advantage of the treat when on the perch thing with me. she hopped over and got on my shoulder so i walked her to her perch and had her step onto it. told her good girl and treated her. turned to walk away and miraculously i had a parrot on my shoulder again. after the 3rd or 4th time of her little game i was getting a lil bit bored so i moved her to a diff perch which seemed to work out ok.

this one kinda comes out of left field a bit. daily routine here is kinda normal. wake up in the morning, wait for lilly to start chattering under her cover to let me know she is awake. i make lillys breakfast (veg and pulses with a wee bit of fruit) her diet is nutritionally sound. take cover off and let her out for an hour or so before me and tina put the pups n parrot in their cages and head to work. tina works 3-4 hours then comes home. lets the pups out then lilly and they all chill in the sitting room with lilly either on her play stand or the top of the door. if tina goes on her laptop lilly will come down and land on the lid at which point tina coaxes her off the lid with a few seeds so she either sits on her chest or the arm of the sofa. tina does basic step up training and other normal things during each day. lilly spends time in the kitchen on the window perch each day and gets quite a bit of flying time. when i get home from work she is normally waiting for me on top of the door frame to the sitting room. i walk by and she hops on my shoulder to hitch a ride. she spends alot of her time out when i am home either on my shoulder or on her playstand which is right near my seat in the sitting room. come 7-8 pm i collect her from wherever she is and put her in her cage. sometimes she dont wanna go but thats to be expected with any kid. put the cover on her cage and within 3-4 minutes she has found her way up to her sleep perch and is quiet till morning. this cycle repeats itself daily. or i should say it did, until about a week ago. everything seemed as normal in the morning other than the fact lilly decided since tina didnt do something fast enough she deserved a good bite. wasnt enough to break skin but did leave a hefty mark. tina didnt say anything, basicaly sat still while i came and collected lilly and put her in her cage for the morning. we figured maybe it was a one off occurance but it seems it wasnt. now lilly has taken to coming from the top of the door, to tinas arm, immediately down to her hand to bite her. tina has never even been forceful with her or anything to kick off aggression. lilly has yet to try to bite me. she does the mouthing thing and has tested once or twice seeing what her limits are with pressure i will allow before telling her its enough. but never to the extent she is doing with tina. i really need to find a way to get her to stop this behaviour. i dont expect the bird to be nice to everyone but considering tina does training and gives her treats i was hoping to avoid the biting the hand that feeds ya bit. her biting is really not acceptable as it will end up doing one of two things. either it will get lilly grounded because we are too afraid let her out because she flies right to tina to bite her. since thats not the proper life for a parrot i would have to consider rehoming her and i would really really rather not do that if i can help it but keeping my wife safe is a touch above keeping a pet bird no matter how much ya care about them. anyone have any suggestions or ideas to try???

been a while since i threw an update up here so i will try to make it a quick rundown. Lilly appears to be very content. we swap toys in and out of her cage every few days and always make sure to introduce her to new things atleast every other day. so far this has worked out good for us as she doesnt have any fear of new things being introduced into her cage. her appetite seems quite healthy getting her fill of greens,pulses,carrot,beet,peppers,broccoli,cauliflower,green beans,runner beans and peas. with treats of pomegranate or fresh fig and a daily palm nut she doesnt really seem to touch then a supply of the harrisons pellets available all the time which she loves. wifey seems to think lilly has a bit of an attitude, mind you she does spend more time at home with her during the day as i work a bit more so she does interact more with her. couple times so far tina has been nipped, not enough to draw blood but more than is comfortable, from reports its pretty much when Lilly decides she wants something(treats like seeds or whatnot) and tina decides she has had enough and puts them away. or lord forbid if she shares Lillys treats with any of the dogs ( yes it does look silly with a bordeaux, a bullmastiff, a boxer and a bulldog sitting on the floor while Lilly is on tinas leg or arm of the sofa all taking turns getting sunflower seeds) when she does nip tina picks her up and puts her in her cage and ignores her for a bit. fortunately she hasnt nipped me yet, dunno why but i am not gonna knock it. only thing she does try to do with me is when she is resting on my shoulder and wants a head scratch, if i ignore her for too long she grabs the arm of my glasses and wont let go till i am scratching her head..time to look into contacts i think lol. other than that she has been doing great, picking up and perfecting different little whistles although i have not heard her mumbling at all other than the one morning quite a while ago. her most vocal time is the mornings when she pulls down the front of her cage cover to let us know she is awake, she comes out, relieves herself and skips off to the top of the door for morning preening and vocal lessons while i make her breakfast. i will get some new pics in the next couple days and post em up. cya soon

lol apparently barb has special vision as i have checked this post from 3 different pc's and none of them show a picture. heres an idea. open a free photobucket acount and upload the pic there. once its there the image will have a "direct link" url underneath it for using in forums. when posting use the "insert image" button on top of the reply box and paste that link in the pop up box that appears and all will be sorted. good luck

the breeder we use never clipped her, dont think she likes seeing clipped birds to be honest because of all the different ones she had there (b&g, scarlets,amazons,conures,and greys) were all fully flighted. this breeder was actually recommended by a different breeder because he didnt have any greys left from this season but knew our breeder did. the separate cage isnt really an option, as we currently live in the UK house sizes are a bit more compact. the house we live in now is 3 bedroom and 720 sq foot living area. even when i used to live in the states the apartment i had was 760 sq feet lol. 2012 we head back to the states and plan on going to the georgia area, will end up with a larger place there for sure with some land so our pups can run a bit more. but until then i really dont think lilly is bothered when i get up, i make my coffee in the other room and then just plant myself on the couch near her cage with the lights still off and laptop on. the cover we use is thick enough that i know she cant see the glow and she normally waits till just about 6 when she knows i am supposed to be up to start chirping and bell ringing till i take off her cover. she has never shown any cage aggression so far aside from being a bit stubborn going in when its bed time lol.

hmm boy did i get a surprise this morning. i have lower back issues so normally dont make it through a full nights sleep. this morning i came downstairs at around 3, made a cop o coffee and grabbed my laptop to waste some time for a bit since i had about 3 more hrs till i had to actually be up for work. i left the cover on her cage and sat down on the sofa...everything was nice and quiet for another 30-45 mins then she chirped a few times and i heard her moving to a diff perch, few mins later with me still sitting as quiet as i can i hear her start to mumble quietly. few mins in and i definitely heard the the word hello, here i am sitting here gobsmacked and a few mins later it sounded like she was trying the word pretty. she has never said the words out loud and i didnt think they were supposed to actually start talking for another 6-9 mos. she is kinda pathetic when it comes to copying whistles so far. i am figuring it was prolly a fluke or something that sounds just so happened to come out as words but nonetheless i thought it was awesome. next time she is mumbling i am gonna try to record it lol.

whenever we go out we leave a tv on or atleast the radio, normally more the tv so lilly can associate words with actions in normal speech. hoping she picks up words and whatnot along the way without feeling so alone when we have to run errends

nah stay away from the blasting, easiest thing to do depending on the area you are located is find a firm that does powder coating. they normally have strip dip tanks for prepping parts before coating. here in the uk it would run between 60-80gbp to strip n coat a cage. if you can get an equivalent cage for the same price then i would say throw it away.

You should not be touching any birds that are 4 weeks old if you dont know what you are doing. They will end up dead

lilly seems to be quite settled in now. she is honing her flying skills. if we walk near her cage and hold our arm or hand up she is getting quite good at hopping over. max distance is about 3-4 feet so far but landings are getting much better. also the dogs are getting used to her, they still get a lil freaked every so often when she decides to fly but i think its jealousy cause they cant to it lol. we had treat time with the lot of them, lilly on shoulder and pups all sitting on the floor, each taking turns with treats tina tried to get a pic but i dunno if it came out. if it did i am sure she will post it up sometime today

Ok..... deal

Kasuku at this stage i would worry more about getting the little one more confident with the flying. Mines only 12 weeks old and i can see a clear difference in the way she does things daily because she is "gaining her wings" so to speak. When we first got her last saturday she was kinda clumsy and wobbly, sunday was her first attempted flight day, crash landed twice that day. Once in a dried flower pot and once in the passageway floor, few days and flights later ..last night i get in from work and she is on her cage, i walk over to grab her food bowl to give her some fresh veg, while i was walking away she launched and actually landed on my shoulder, so i took her in the kitchen and let her watch while i made her dinner. Wife is training her to come off the cage, across the room to land on her hand or arm. And she is tons less wobbly now. And yep ours does the one foot thing too while sleeping.

I wont tell ya i was a bills fan for 35 years then =o)

Lol barb must be a bengals fan.

great i need to get you a step ladder for the sitting room now lol

We bought it from Northern Parrots

after 2 days of using the misting bottle to shower Lilly we decided to see how she was in the actual shower. using an extra shower rail as a make shift perch we turned the shower head on with luke warm water so it hit the front part of the rail. put lilly on the "perch" near the dry part and moved my hands into the shower bit so they got wet. she wanted to see what i was doing so she came closer to my hands. she wasnt sure what to do as the water was misting her as she got closer from the bits bouncing off my hands. so i took my hands from under the water and let them drip on her a bit and she fluffed up. didnt try to run or anything so i did it a few more times all the while praising her for being a good girl then she decided to check out the spray on her own, walked over and kinda stuck one wing in to it and part of her body. i think she figured that was enough exploring for one morning cause after she sat for a lil bit she backed to the dry part of the perch and decided to launch up onto my shoulder. shut the water off n put her on her cage perch where she worked on drying off and then went over to hit the food bowls for breakfast. i feel like i am kinda lucky cause she doesnt seem like she will mind the showers once we do it a few times we go for round 2 tomorrow =o)

Heres Lilly on her other perch, she gave mummy loads of cuddles today.

Heres Lilly playing with one of her toys. http://s292.photobucket.com/albums/mm24/CobraMods/our%20pets/?action=view&current=IMG_0096.mp4

... so i wake up this morning , go make my cup of coffee and walk over to her cage. pull back the cover we put on in the evening and she is up at the front of the cage just waiting for me to take the cover off lol within about 10 seconds i get a chirp chirp and tell her good morning get her morning breakfast sorted and fresh water and she is still gabbin away like a trooper. she wasnt really interested in food, just wanted to come out n say hi you tell her cmere and tap the cage and she comes over for a treat gave her a spray shower and she didnt seem too bothered by it, just kinda fluffed up a bit but otherwise seemed happy. another few days and we will try a proper shower and see how she does

Morning of day 3, boom/wayne goes to work lilly is on top of her cage no sooner had he pulled off the drive lilly decided to fly, went around the room 3 times then crashed landed in my dry flowers, the pups all rushing to her to see whats happened, but they didnt touch her, ok so I gets her back on to her cage and told her shes a good girl thumbsup and gave her a treat. Five minutes later lilly decided she like flying but didnt go around the room this time she actually landed on the door frame and then lost her footing and ended up on the floor diesel and baby sniffed her luckly i have a safety gate between the living room and hallway so i closed that put the pups in there cage and then and sat with lilly telling her she was a good girl stroking down her back, got her to step up telling her how fantastic little girl she is and then i decided to put her in her cage for a while, she went bit quite then i asked her if she wanted a treat and she started chirpping again and coming up for treats, shes so clever i know im bias <3 So now i have three dogs all lying around the cage as shes forerging for all the bits she dropped all watching her to see what shes doing, I think diesel going to be protective as he makes sure the others dont get to close but its ok for him to lay his head on the cage.

thank you everyone she is great so far, starting to get a bit vocal which is good. heres a few more pics from today

Oh I'm so sorry I pasted pictures of Lilly in under a year thread she's so gorgeous http://www.greyforums.net/forums/showthread.php?191200-Say-Hello-to-Lilly-o)

cant stop smilin here :D:D went and picked up lil Lilly today and brought her home. after gettin associated a bit with the furrier part of the family she got down to the business of settling herself in. she started playin with a few of the cage toys and decided on a bit of a snack, seems a bit partial to brussel sprouts n brocolli and not bad on the Harrisons so far considering she was on a quality seed mix and she just so happened to find the big bell ..who's idea was the bell anyhow? lol not very vocal yet but i am thrilled with how well she is doing so far. i can see between me and tina this is gonna end up a long thread.. cya with updates tomorrow