SRSeedBurners

Murfchck - since you're running a bed and breakfast over there do you have room for: - three well-behaved parrots - two dogs - one cat - two Gambels quail - three Button quail - two fan-tails - two oriental frills - three llamas - two goats - eight silkies - oh about 35 assorted chickens We're going on vacation. The quail, chickens and pigeons aren't fussy, everyone else will need 3-squares a day and most of that will end up on the floor and the walls. If you do it right, the chickens will cleanup for you - well, sort of. They do have a bad habit of crapping everywhere but I'm sure you're used to that.

Maybe just zip the sharp point off but I wouldn't go any further as their nails contribute to their balance. You can always just simulate working with his nails too as it is nice to have a birdy that will let you maintain them.

Is this a possible case where you may suspect the lady may want her bird back sometime in the future? This is just my opinion on how I would deal with it: if her marriage proposal should go south, as they sometimes do, and she's missing her bird, I'd be happy to reunite them. I can't stand the thought of a bird with nowhere to go but if there's a loving home, I have no problems letting them go.

As one who has kids, I'd just let things roll. If they're both 'bird people' there are plenty of birds out there to accompany them through life. I didn't want to see my conure Stewart leave but he was so attached to Pickles the Parrotlet and Pickles is an external appendage of my daughter, I had no choice but to watch the three of them march out my door to life and beyond. Sounds like Sophie is going to end up with Ryan sometime in the future?

oh shoot...did I say 'FCT'? I hope this doesn't get me DQ'd. Felix is all-knowing so I'm sure this will get out. Timbersmom has it - Certified Felix Trained. GreycieMae has recieved a card from Felix in the past. Word got around about her new aviary, so at Felix's mom's request we sent pics and I was immediately certified as 'trained'. I must say it's nice knowing that I can do what I'm told and I get it right at least part of the time.

My opinion of vets and doctors are not very high. In know everyone screams to take the birds to the vet and once they get the all clear everything is supposed to be ok. We found out with Raven that with a LOT of researching on our own our knowledge of PDD far surpassed the many vets we had used. It was to the point we walked in and told them what we wanted done and what meds we wanted.

That Felix is a funny one! By the way I am FCT! My cert is coming in the mail soon I've been told. Did you all see Einstein's Scary Birdie Ghost Stories Halloween movie? That is REALLY good if you haven't.

Well, if you are like us, you'll wish you would have named them something else When I named Greycie, I quickly found out just how dang many people name their Greys a variant of Greycie or Greyson. I should have called her Princess Penelope or something like that..Penelope would have worked good because it fits her. With the amount of time she spends in trouble, I am usually always calling her GreycieMae and it has stuck. With our other two knuckleheads: Toby our Caique, I keep wanting to call him Elvis. He has that slick jet-black doo on the top of his head. Wife wouldn't let me Rio our Jardines - we all are now in agreement that he should have been named Romeo. He is such a sweettalker and smooth operator with my wife. He really knows how to pour on the sugar. He gets called Romeo Rio a lot now.

Bose makes a really nice set of noise-cancelling headphones. They worked perfectly until the cord was severed

space space space space space space <<----- GreycieMae

That's a stripper. I've seen those before.

GreycieMae has combined the dog whistle with "love you" when she wants us to come back whenever she sees us going out of her sight. It used to be dog whistle + "cm'on" which is what my wife does to call the dogs. She also says "TICKLE TICKLE WICKLE PICKLE". At first I thought she made that up from her standard "TICKLE TICKLE TICKLE" but then I caught my wife one day saying that to her. Mind you, she picks up nothing from me which is part of my problem with her not talking much. My wife won't cooperate on the training front. So i'm pretty much stuck with a non-talker or non-sense talker. Along that that same thread she did start doing a little giggle after I play stick-em-up with her. I approach her, give her the shifty eye, then point my pistolas into her wing pits and tell her to "STICK-EM-UP". Then I would tickle her side saying 'tickle tickle tickle'. One day she busted out with the cutest giggle and she's been doing it ever since. I guess I need to look into some professional methods to teach her some talking.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't try and extort you into slipping that lil baby into your pocket on the way out

Ok. You seriously have to stop posting photos of that widdle baby red tail. A. He/she is a direct sibling to GreycieMae. B. He/she is cuter than what I can withstand. C. CAGs talk directly to my soul. D. I don't need another bird. That picture is so cute. And he has food on his little face.

We have a Jardines with a serious foot fettish. He will do a slow dance around my wifes feet then swoop in with a serious Romeo "Oh! Heeellllooooooooo..."

They have a good video and come with good instructions on how to use their sprout mix. It's pretty simple: rinse the sprout mix in the container, fill with water and let soak 8-12 hrs. Then a cycle or two of rinse and let drain for 6hrs and they are ready for the birds to eat as is. The bean mixes I cook before serving. They don't actually split open, a tail starts to grow out of the pod which supposedly indicates the germination and higher food quality content. I'm going with it... Go to sproutpeople.org and look at the ingredients of the bird mixes, that will tell you what you can sprout.

I'll have to find time to watch that one. I love stuff like that. Hate sitcoms....

Bulkfood.com seems to be a parked domain. I've been looking for a source for sprouting material. Sproutpeople.org is to expensive once you get the setup going. We used to get our stuff out of the bulk bins at Sprouts but they've started catering to the crap junk food people: bulk chocolate pretzels, chocolate raisins, sugar coated papaya, you get the idea. All the stuff we used to buy there for sprouting is now in prepackaged containers and I don't need 5lbs of mung beans to go with my 5 pounds of adzuki beans etc... Any other local sources you may know of?

I've been sprouting for over a year. Sproutpeople.org makes a sprouter that anyone can use. I also buy their mid-bird sprout mix. My birdies love it. Bird Mix Sprout Kit. You get free shipping on over $60. I will sometimes go in with a couple local people because I can't use $60 worth of mix. Also freeze their mix as it is non-pesticide and does have larvae which will sprout on it's own! Their mixes are pretty expensive so once you're setup with their kit you can look into making your own mixes. We use soup bean mixes, Volkmans soak-n-serve makes a REALLY nice sprout mix which is cheaper.

Yep, Toby is the Caique. My wife had a painter here last week. 10ft tall and bullet proof Toby decides to launch off his orbit from the other side of the living room and flies through a barrage of arms trying to swat him down as he heads for his target: the guys head. We had a time pulling him off because he wouldn't let go and the guy was a little panicked. It's the first time we've seen him attack someone as he doesn't do that with us. Not sure if you saw the video in the 'Aviary' thread of Toby carrying a rock up the wire. He's doing it daily now with dirt clods. I come home and we see he's filled the corner of a feeding cage with little dirt clods. Industrious little fella

They sound a lot like Caiques. Very cute over-the-top little personalities.

It's definitely a risk but so is jumping in the car to go get something at the store. You can mitigate that risk by knowing your bird but then our Greys are not 100% readable either. I completely trust my Grey but there are times when I can tell she is bitey and I won't allow her on me until she straightens out her attitude. As for me, mine is a shoulder bird. I end up doing too much to have to balance a bird on one arm while doing all the stuff I get into. Mine are also cageless birds which means they go everywhere with me except out the door unless wearing a harness. If I end up with an extra notch in my nose or my ear or a hole in my lip, my bike racing habit has done a lot worse to me. My only real concern is my eye. I don't let her get near my eyes.

I'm a hand-feeder too. Except my 'baby' is two years old and we both know dang well she still doesn't need the baby food anymore. :) Every time I have to break out the baby food, she's right there to ask for some. We have a snowflake quail that isn't doing so good, so I broke out the baby food last week - here comes GreycieMae for her share. This went on for 3 days until the snowflake returned to good health. P.S. I don't cross-contaminate either. Greycie got hers first before I headed down to hand feed the quail and then sanitize myself like I had Ebola.

Bob is lucky he didn't show up in my backyard. My next thread on here would have been "Bobs Terrarium" made from some damn carport frame...

Murfchck - didn't most of your pluckers come to you that way? I'm not fully up-to-date how all your birds acquired you but I thought most of them adopted you as already fully funtional pluckers. I'm always trying to figure out why these birds pluck. My first Grey was a plucker. I put it down to her cage and the way we trimmed her way back then in the stone age. My manager at work is an interesting case. We both got our birds nearly the same day so they are almost the same age. His started plucking a few months ago. He came to me wanting to know why. My best guess "your bird is home alone all day". I kept after him to get a companion of some sort. His wife started coming home at lunch but unfortunately I think it's become a habit now. I'm just waiting for the day when I see GreycieMae start doing it. I have a whole parrot wardrobe picked out that she will be wearing. Some even have hoodies. I'm the same way, I see some of these rescue birds on FB with horrific stories and they look as healthy as can be. I also see the opposite in which they are plucked bald.