Best Parrot Breed for Starters :) - Page 2

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Originally Posted by linkedsilas 

Thanks for thinking it through. So many people don't. Birds are a lot like 3 year olds

Yeah for 20-80 years... ;) good luck with the doves, the books say they live 10 years but the dove magician... (name later) ... has one that is 31 years old. I imagine that is very rare.

I am so happy to see some one not taking the parrot thing lighlty!  I have two, a cockatiel and an African Grey.  I have had my cockatiel for 18 years now and he's still as active as can be.  I raised him from hand feeding, that' right there is a LOT of work.  Generally now though we just let them out of their cages and they crawl from them to us and the kids.  The Grey can let himself out of the cage so we know when he wants attention.  They can be very demanding or just very happy to sit with you on a chair.  All they want is to be with people, their flock.

Personally, I would not recommend a green cheek conure (or any of the conures) to someone as a first bird. Conures are very loud (earsplittingly so). And green cheeks, even hand fed ones, go through a nippy teenage period that would be challenging to someone not experienced with how to handle parrots. They can bite hard enough to draw blood. A lot of people unfortunately end up rehoming their conures when they figure out what's really involved in owning one. 

I think a good beginner bird would be a lineolated parakeet. They're very quiet. If they bite, they can't break the skin. They stay tame even if you don't work with them every day, and even if you keep them in a flock with other linnies. I also would not recommend keeping just a single bird by itself. The one negative about linnies is that they do have very liquidy, squirty poops. 

I keep 16 birds in the garage all year long and they are doing great, I have transformed the garage into a living room and the birds are doing just fine .I even breed  2 clutches of baby parakeet in the garage the babies grew and are fine. So yes you can keep birds in the garage I have 6 years experience with birds.