murfchck

Hahaha, boredom is something that doesn't happen here. I can't remember the last time Pat and I wondered what we could do. Our day is full of what do we NEED to get accomplished today! Saturday use to be laundry and cleaning day, now if I do not put a load in at night and in the morning get it in the dryer, by Saturday we are out of undies! I will say yesterday I got a video of all the birds just on their stands playing, I actually was talking while taking it saying I am talking to myself because no one here will talk to me, not that I was complaining. Right when I finished saying that Gabby threw her box off the counter and scared everyone, Lily pulled Gus down, he hit the floor and took off flying to me while all the greys flew around the kitchen, Lily then decided she should fly after Gus, who was landing on my arm (my eyes were closed and I was ready for the landing bite) He landed perfectly and we had to take off running because Lily was hot on the trail of my feet. Koko just watched and then yelled something that stopped me in my tracks to try and figure it out, but then there was Lily again so we had to keep running. Koko then just laughed and said she likes broccoli and cheese. Bubba was saying No, stop and Oliver was just yelling Pat. So much for the peaceful moment I had. I knew better to say it outloud, I jinxed myself!

You did perfect with the egg thing! Chop up the good stuff he needs so it sticks to bad stuff he loves! Let him help you cook too! Bongo has a perch over the sink and is on it when I am cooking. (I keep a very close eye on him though because when he sees something he wants, he will fly to it. I keep something that he hates near the stove so he doesn't get tempted to taste test) Snap peas are a staple here, but only 3 eat them. Something weird I have noted with all my guys, with sweet potatoes if I buy just the normal ones they will not eat them at all but if I get the organic ones, they eat it every time. That doesn't happen with all their food, just those. Also, get a butternut squash and steam it ( skin and inners removed first, lol) Then mash it up like you would for mashed potatoes. That is a treat here and replaced the formula fixes for them. They all love their formula here too and I do still give it to them, but there is something about the butternut that they like even better. They don't/won't eat it from their bowls, we either spoon feed them that or in the feeding syringe. Holy cow, and I mean that, my flock loves their meat and they get it in small amounts. I can't read too much into what the internet tells us or our birds would starve. I stay away from the known bad foods, onions, chocolate, avocados etc. but everything else is fair game! He will snub everything at first, but that doesn't mean he doesn't like it, it means he knows you worked hard and by flinging it he is saying, Gee dad, you shouldn't have gone through so much trouble, sunflower seeds would have been just fine. lol Just keep offering it and one day when he flings it, he will get a taste of it on accident and find out he actually loves it!

To address another item you mentioned~ maybe I am a bad mom here but I do not rush to remove the bowls. When I give them their breakfast, it is when I am heading out the door, 9am, so the bowl will stay in the cage until I get home at 3 or 4, and they do pick at it during the day. Same with the dinner bowls, unless there is a meat in there or the fart smelling broccoli, they stay in until morning. Now don't get me wrong, if the food is a quick spoiler, I do remove them but most things don't spoil in a 7 hour span, worse thing I have encountered is some gnats around the fruits but I get gnats around the uncut fruit on my counter. (our guys don't like cold fruits) I guess I am saying to leave bowl so he can explore the food some while you are not there watching him! lol

Gee, somehow I just don't see that happening - for a while anyway... hahahaha

Thats it. I love it!

The best thing I did was get the parrot cookbook, Nourish to Flourish. Simple easy to follow and freeze. Pull stuff out of the freezer the night before and breakfast and dinner are ready the next day. Some of the ingredients are tuff to find but they give pictures and explain what they are to help you locate them in your store. Most though are so basic we forget about using them. Oh there is even a section for birds that pluck and what we should and shouldn't feed that could help them. After 3 years my bald macaw did get a body feather in. Not saying it was from the new diet but can't say it wasn't either.

Wow, hard to believe almost a month has come and gone and no update on these guys. It has been a busy month with the vet. Cotay and her toe, Bubba and his butt and Gus's with his head injury, I think we have finally built that second story on our vets house. lol. The scab has finally come off Gus's head and all looks good, it was about the size of a nickel, maybe a tad bigger. All the damaged crown feathers are starting to come out and his half a face has some new pins popping out, now if he will stop offering his face to Lily they may just come back in! He has figured out how to climb off his stand, this is bad news for us because he is a foot biter and we use to be able to hear him fly off, now it is silent until he gets us and we let out a scream. Also when he gets down, Lily feels she must join him on the floor so they can do their war dance together. Those two are my Bonnie and Clyde. I have to order new harnesses now, Lily has eaten all but one now and if she manages to finish out this one before the new ones arrive, we are not sure what we will do! We also have made a cockatoo room. We have a sound proofed garage conversion from hubby's band days (he is a drummer) that we made into a game room. We sold the pool table and put in laminate flooring and moved our screamers out there. It is has heat and ac, we upped the lighting for them, hung a 49" tv and ta-daa, a room just for them to scream their hearts out in! It still needs tweeks, but it has only been a week. They have it made though and the greys and macaws are happier and chatting it up again. I moved the office desk out there also and thought, gee that was dumb, with them screaming when would I be able to actually ever use that desk again but as it turns out, if I am at the desk working, they are so quiet and peaceful. Go figure! Cotay is getting around with her bad toe. We have decided no amputation, at least not yet. Sometimes it looks like she is curling it and using it so until we are 100% sure that it is getting in her way or hurting her, her toe stays put! Bubba had a butt roid flare up last week. It was huge and it took both of us to get it back up in him. I called the vet to be sure that is what we needed to do and he said yes, so. We are lucky that he is a gentle guy so we just wrapped him in his towel and Pat held his feet while I put the medicine on a q-tip and put it back in. Once we let him up, that boy poo-ed for a long time! The smell was awful. He went in the next morning and got a check up, clean bill of health other than the "roids", no infections in the poop or him. He just has smelly poo due to the roids backing him up at times. I had taken pictures of it for him and he just said that the next time it came out to bring him in right then and they would freeze it off. Oh what a fun filled few weeks we have had at Casa Murphy's! 3 birds at the vet in one weeks time, that will drain a pocketbook for sure! Sad but Oliver and Bongo need to go in for their beak and nail trim but their year has passed so they have to have their annual check up before he will do it, that means 130.00 per bird and I don't see being able to pull that off ay time soon! I had tried a different vet during the year that did their last trims, 30 bucks, and he did great but just our luck, he retired in April.

Way to go! Makes all the effort put into building it worth while!!!

Yeah, avian vets are high. For us it is 75 to walk in and be seen, then they nickel and dime you, 34 for the beak and nails, 18 more for a second person if it is a big bird, 7.50 more if you are dropping them off, etc. I however love our vet so, like you, I do what must be done for the health of my flock. I have a few pluckers also and our next step for 2 of them is a cone which I am not 100% sure of and the cone is almost 300 and they keep the bird a few days to make sure they adjust to it and don't injure their self. (He makes the leather cones.) I just can't bring myself to do that to them.

Oh my gosh. those little red butts!!!

Those are some huge steps! Go Dorian! Are we not supposed to run and rescue them every time? lol I do it, I just call it "bonding", haha!

Since bringing Bongo home, our lives have changed so much. 7 parrots later, and most for the reasons listed in this thread, our life is really for the birds. Going out, even just for dinner, is carefully planned. Our family gets their time out of the cage for a minimum of 4 hours and their dinner needs to be made before we have to put them back up so we can leave, but then we have to be home before 8 pm so we can play with them more and then put them to bed. Their needs always come before our own. Plucked chickens or not, they are our fids and the love we have for each will never change. Are they moody? Heavens yes, and with as many as we have their moods are rarely the same on any given day. PMS times 7... on steroids!! Peace and quiet are things of the past. This is our life now and people say we are crazy, all I can say to them is, "Yup, guess so and I have the shirts to prove it!" But I wouldn't change a thing! Any birds that need us are welcome into our home.

That is awesome! Congrats to the hubs indeed!

Yup, that is exactly what we are going to do. Those tabs are great, they can't be in two places at once.

I try to have plants in the house. However they only last about a month after I buy them. Do you think the dead sticks left over would be toxic as well, lol? (jk) That seems to be what I can grow, dead sticks! No farmer or anything even close to green in my bones!

So time to start thinking about how to keep that boy in his cage. Put them in for dinner last night and went to the kitchen and looked at the mess I made cooking for them and decided our dinner would be ordered out! While cleaning, Pat was on the phone with him mom and I kept hearing strange noises from the birds room and grey whistles that were new. I go to the door and listen by try to keep out of site, I sneak up and start to open the baby gate to get closer and am face to face with Bubba who got out again and was half way up our wooden louvered door, of course I screamed like a little girl cuz that wasn't something I expected. He screamed back and then everyone joined in. First thing we did was a blood check in all the cages but all was good, we were lucky so today starts the "how to rig a cage and make it escape proof" fun. Deep down both Pat and I were blaming ourselves about Bubba getting out and hurting Cotay, maybe, just maybe we left a door open but last night was proof that Bubba really did open his door and get out.

That looks just like what we used on ours. There are clips you can get to join the wire together also. How exciting!!

They are beautiful. I got to be around a few here and one that would let you hand him a nut, took it from the side of his mouth, its cute but sure is scary that way. He cocked his head like he was going to bite but then stuck out his tongue and took it so gently. They are awesome birds and you are so lucky!

The milky film was like a scab, it came off and now the toe is just like any other toe, except it doesn't work. :-( He took the nail down really short so she won't snag it on anything and we go back in 3 weeks. In a few days we start the hydro therapy again and then we wait to see what happens. He has suggested that if she doesn't start using it again, that we think about amputating it so she does not further injure herself with a floppy toe. I am trying not to think that right now, just that it will get better and that she isn't using it because it is sore. That is my plan and I am sticking to it!

I have to use the grates for my greys, they all play there since when they drop their toys, they go there to get them and just stay there and play. I started off not using them but the toys got so messy from the poop and we caught Gabby down there to get a peanut as she was holding it in her beak to eat and it had poo on it, that's the day the grates went back in.

I do see a little bit of a stinker in Miss Fifi, lol. Your hands will be full but your heart will be fuller! She is a cutie! Welcome to you both.

I appears to have only been the glue. She may have bit it when eating her nut and pulled causing the skin to rip some but all is good in Cotays world again. Her little toe looks better than it has in a while and she seems to able to move it some. Her toes were actually glued together and now they are not so she is free to move them around! She is a little sore but that would be expected.

Set back, her foot started bleeding again last night. Not sure what happened, if she bit it when she was opening her nut or if the glue just popped. We went right to the sink and washed it off then it looked like cloudy white film was coming off (glue?) We packed it and the bleeding stopped but then she started picking at it so we washed it off again and held her until we were sure there was no more bleeding. She actually wanted her mommy over daddy, yeah! Checked on her during the night and all was good but will be doing some drop ins today while working just to be sure during the active day time that it doesn't open up again. Pat is off early today so that will be good. Her follow up is Monday but we may go today just in case. I don't want anything happening over the weekend.

I take it the vet did blood work and made sure Levi was not sick? How old is Levi and how long have you had him? Has the furniture in the house changed, or his cage been moved? Diet changed? If he has a clean bill of health, it could even be something as simple as your hair style changing. I have one i must have my glasses on or he gets scared, but if my hasband wears his glasses around him, he gets scared. There are so many causes, it takes alot of thought on you and your husbands part to figure out what had changed when this started. If it has been a while with it going on, it could now be just to get your attention. It got your attention when the tail feathers were pulled, you spent extra time with him, took him to the vet. When he started on the wings, the same reaction from you, it got him more attention. Habits are started so easy with these guys when we give them the attention for good and bad behaviours. I have a naked grey and the only advice i can give to you is love them with or without the feathers. Again, if he has a clean bill of health with your avian vet then he is the same bird, just a few less feathers. Ours has worn a collar many times and once she was feathered again and it came off, she removed the feathers again. I do not like collars so she since she moved in with us, she has not worn one. I only think they should be used to protect themselves from harming theirself. One other thing, and i hope they will chime in, but another members little girl plucked when he got ill. And i think she started plucking before he knew he was even sick.

That was great!