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Gus, our lil baby.


murfchck

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Well my Lily pod is starting to damage her feathers now, barbering her wings. I also noticed that my Bongo has some missing on his chest. Not sure if we tipped the comfort scale of these guys bringing Albert in. Going to give some good baths tomorrow to them and am thinking of moving Albert full time into the kitchen cage he loves so much anyway and just see if that will help calm the nerves. My weekend time has disappeared and this week I am working full time so I hope things don't askew. I am stretching myself too thin right now, maybe those two are feeling it too.

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His form of stress control, Pookie does it when she feels to much is going on and I have read that is Gil birds way as well. as to the prior conversation I have often thought a large property with more than one abode kind of a Bird savvy compound would work for many of us. Some one to cover during illness or travel with out worry as the birds would know everyone and no strangers entering to provide care. Kind of like we interact on this site to boost each other up and share our joys and sorrows. A big organic garden and bulk purchasing could happen as well. Oh well I dream on.

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I know. It would be wonderful. I told Pat that i have already planted our garden and pecan trees and a almond tree in my mind so he needs to make it happen. Lol

As far as Bongo, i am even wondering if it may be sexual. He is regurgitating for me every time I am around him. Lily is also in season so who knows. I decked out his cage with lots of stuff for him to chew and shred. Even a rope boing which i banned him from about a year ago, lol. I also thought that since he is one of two that have feathers maybe he thinks he is the weirdo and is plucking to look like the rest.

Then to top things off, there were drops of blood in Gabby' s cage this morning. I didn't see anything so i have no clue what happened. Oh the joys of being a parront to so many.

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As far as Bongo, i am even wondering if it may be sexual. He is regurgitating for me every time I am around him. Lily is also in season so who knows. I decked out his cage with lots of stuff for him to chew and shred. Even a rope boing which i banned him from about a year ago, lol. I also thought that since he is one of two that have feathers maybe he thinks he is the weirdo and is plucking to look like the rest.

 

Sorry to hear about Bongo plucking, although I love your sense of humour about it. Dorian regurges for me every morning when I get him up. We 'hold hands' for a couple of seconds, then I tell him"you keep your food" and go about the morning chores. He does the same thing at bedtime, which makes me sad because we use to have prolonged scratching sessions at night and now I can't because I don't want to encourage the regurgitating. I'm curious to see if this calms down as the days get shorter. Maybe Bongo wlll calm down as well.

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Maybe it was one part seasonal, one part stress from the new flock member and one part boredom and your intervention will stop it from becoming habit. I wonder if it is really possible that he watches the other birds pulling out feathers and decided to see what all the fuss was about. We know how quickly they can pick up things from us human members of the flock.

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Koko can now get out of the double macaw cage that has the "unescapable" latches. Her answer to that was to remove the entire latch, not just the knob. Pat couldn't figure out how she was getting out, all 4 food doors were locked and by the 3rd time he had to put her back in the cage (he was home to brush his teeth and go to the dentist) he took a bite on the arm and then saw her very abruptly go to the breeder door and come right back out. She was pretty depressed the rest of the day because he had to wire it shut. She will get over being depressed when she notices that there are 4 more doors with the same latches!

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Yeah, this is the about time of year Kura starts messing w/her feathers, too. I have been collecting things for months so I can have as many new distractions as possible. Hopefully, one season soon, I'll get it right & she & her feathers will actually make it thru the winter in tact. Hell I'd even celebrate slightly moth eaten at this point.

 

Phenix sends kudos to Koko for being such a clever girl. He said to tell her he just takes the whole door off & is done w/it. :P But I thought it might be more better to suggest you Google "tamper resistant screws". I'm not sure what exactly she's doing from your description. But maybe you can find something to outsmart the little problem child.

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She has mastered all hardware. This was an enclosed latch system. Still not able to figure out how she did it. It is enclosed in the metal and just the little knob is visible and it is on the outside of the cage. She managed to get every last piece out of it, from the outside. Lol. We don't get it. If we had tried to take it apart we would still be working on it!

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On Wednesday, Pat was changing the waters and Bongo took his bowl out 3 times and dumped it, Pat put a crock in to try and beat him at his game. They didn't get to come out that day because we went out to dinner. Yesterday when I got home, Bongo was a little ruffled and there feathers on the bottom again. So I have narrowed it down to either he is afraid of crock bowls or was mad because he didn't get to come out. I put his metal bowl back in and gave him a good bath and brought him out, we will see how today goes.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh there must be something in the air ( something other than the flying cotton balls that is). My entire flock is acting up, Koko bit Pat last night, Gus bit him the day before that and Lily, well she doesn't bite but boy is she unsettled. The weather changed and over the weekend, they got to spend a lot of time outside, then it got rainy and cold so they came back in and they sure do want back out. We had Lily and Koko together in the flight cage Sunday and Lily tried to bully Koko like she did Gus but Koko held her own and came out the alpha bird, but now she has changed, she acts like she is alpha all the time, even with us now. :-) Gus won't stay on the stand with her now either, so he just stays in his room (out of the cage, free to come out anytime he wants to and join us in the living room area) but chooses to stay in there and scream.

Chacho has finally figured out that biting me when he sees Pat isn't working so he full on attacks Pat now. I have never seen a bird fly at someone with talons out, beak open going in for the kill. On the bright side, when he gets to high for me to get him down I just call Pat into the room and he flies down to attack him. Not the best idea but it works for now. lol We made the decision to clip him, had a big old brain fart when doing it though, we over thought it and our warped logic won. We trimmed him backwards, meaning we cut the back feathers, not the front so the little bugger still flies and still flies very well. It took me a day before the lightbulb went on and all I could do was say 'Doh!" Our logic was we could trim the back feathers and he wouldn't look trimmed when he had his wings closed and that it was the back feathers that gave him the flight upwards, where the heck that silly idea came from neither of us know. This isn't our first wing trim, so why we changed is beyond me. Now the poor guy has trimmed feathers and we can't trim him correctly until they come back in. Oh what a mess we made, poor little boy.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Lily is driving us crazy! She screams and cries all the flipping time unless she is on the floor or in her corner on the kitchen counter. We decided she needs Prozac and we need valium, will the vet do that??? hahahaha Gus "got" him some last night with Koko, maybe Lily is jealous?? Last time they were together though, she took the top of his head off so can't do that again.

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Ahh, the beautiful screams of the umbrella cockatoo. It is the sound that burns through your ears like a hot sword. The sound that even earplugs could not stop. The sound that makes your entire body twitch. No amount of distance could stop those beautiful screams from getting to every nerve in your body. Even if I did not have cockatoos anymore their beautiful screams will live on, both Bubba and Bongo have learned to copy them! Yeah for us!

 

That being said , we think we have figured out why Lily has been screaming so much the past few days. Cage placement. It was changed up and we swapped her and Gus. The night before last and all day yesterday were the worst! Couldn't figure out what was wrong until yesterday morning but couldn't fix it until i got home from work. WE ARE SO STUPID! We switched everything around but then when dinner time came, we put them in the wrong cages. It isn't that they look the same or anything, just out of habit, Gus goes here, Lily goes there. So not only was Lily in the same place in the room she hated, but now she was in a different cage. What a mess she was too. Pat still didn't notice when he got home that he had done that. I walked in and went right to work fixing the issues. Peace was had last night by all.

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I gotta get my head back in the game here. Gabby's blood feather, Bongo plucking, Cotay learning to fly and the Too's having sex with Lily screaming. I have just been on auto pilot going through the motions feeling overwhelmed. We have the toos under control again, as much as they will allow anyway. Gabby had her blood feather found and removed- this has been going on since Oct 21st- so i am down to just the two other issues and now today is Pats birthday. lol. Deep breath and moving forward!

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They sort of did. Gabby needed his expert doctoring ability last night. ( read thread in the heath room, What a sight to wake up to. ) All he wanted to do was come home from a home cooked meal his mom made for him and go to bed and watch tv. Well that didn't happen. lol Now he will want to relax today since he didn't get to last night and i got too much stuff for him to do!

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