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- #61
kareninthesun:
Thank you for your post!
---I do recognize his need to be a part of a flock. On a mental and social developement level, that is VERY important.
"Outside", I should take a moment to define in my situation... I live in the city, and I don't keep my birds outside. Dinka is in the garage with windows for sunlight, plenty of room to move, toys and obstacles to hide under and around. I take them for a forrage session every evening while I weed the postage stamp size garden that is my entire backyard. They get about two hours at minimum to chase bugs, eat all my veggie plants and dust bathe wildly. I should also note that I am aware that he will crow and this may become a problem. That's another bridge for another day. Weeble in particular gets to go to my garden center and spend all day running around there.
As to getting him a companion, my hen Dinka hatched three eggs last night. With any luck, in a few months I can start to work on integrating him with a real flock.
The work that your friends do sounds fascinating! It must be infuriating to them that people get cute and cuddly baby animals and think that they can control them without any understanding of what their nature and needs are as they mature. Then apon reaching adulthood, can't handle them.
---A couple years ago a friend of mine met some people that had an umbrella crested cockatoo. They were clearly fed up with him, and slowly killing him with poor care. Not to mention the mental and physical torture that he was enduring because they weren't prepared to own an older male parrot. He had lost nearly all of his feathers from picking and poor diet. They were feeding him ice cream and cheerios, and leaving him outside in freezing, autumn nights, in Michigan.... My friend took him away from that house because she couldn't leave him there. She wasn't prepared to own a parrot either. She fed him, and was gentle with him. He got all his feathers back (Amazingly). His name was Harley, and he was 32+ years old. She was his third owner. But she wasn't home enough to provide any stimulation, and when she was home he would scream and act out. It got to where she would scream back at him, and was getting frustrated enough that she just wouldn't go home. After one particularly bad night where he escaped the house, flew up in a tree and wouldn't come down, she told me she yelled at him that "he was on his own with the coons and he'd be lucky is he made it to morning". She called me the next day frustrated and fed up. Asked me if I wanted to drive to Florida so she could turn him loose. I got on the phone, started calling vets that specialized in birds and got the name of a lady in our state that WAS a part of parrot rescue. She took pitty on us and said we could drive him up to her. When we got there, she had an amazing aviary in her house. There were 6 cockatoos that all had their own cages and they were all integrated as a flock. One broody girl who was living in her desk drawer with her dummy eggs(and not a speck of dust anywhere!!!) and some other smaller birds that all had their own cages and social group situations. Only one bird was isolated. That bird was a wild captured African Grey, apparently she is vicious to the other birds. Her cage was even locked with a padlock. She breaks out of her cage, then into the other birds cages and tries to kill them. Harley was the only rescue at the house, and after a looong goodbye we left him in CAPABLE hands. My friend heard from her later that he had been accepted into the flock, they were working on some of his problems with men, and eventually found him a forever home where his social and physical needs would be fulfilled.
At full size, even if Weeble turns into the pissiest of evil little pistols, he's still never going to be lethal to a human. And so far he is maturing nicely. Mike and I have been using many of the suggestions that people have given us on here. With the current exception of a lacking same species social life, he is progressing nicely. And there is peace and normalcy in the house.
Thank you for your post!
---I do recognize his need to be a part of a flock. On a mental and social developement level, that is VERY important.
"Outside", I should take a moment to define in my situation... I live in the city, and I don't keep my birds outside. Dinka is in the garage with windows for sunlight, plenty of room to move, toys and obstacles to hide under and around. I take them for a forrage session every evening while I weed the postage stamp size garden that is my entire backyard. They get about two hours at minimum to chase bugs, eat all my veggie plants and dust bathe wildly. I should also note that I am aware that he will crow and this may become a problem. That's another bridge for another day. Weeble in particular gets to go to my garden center and spend all day running around there.
As to getting him a companion, my hen Dinka hatched three eggs last night. With any luck, in a few months I can start to work on integrating him with a real flock.
The work that your friends do sounds fascinating! It must be infuriating to them that people get cute and cuddly baby animals and think that they can control them without any understanding of what their nature and needs are as they mature. Then apon reaching adulthood, can't handle them.
---A couple years ago a friend of mine met some people that had an umbrella crested cockatoo. They were clearly fed up with him, and slowly killing him with poor care. Not to mention the mental and physical torture that he was enduring because they weren't prepared to own an older male parrot. He had lost nearly all of his feathers from picking and poor diet. They were feeding him ice cream and cheerios, and leaving him outside in freezing, autumn nights, in Michigan.... My friend took him away from that house because she couldn't leave him there. She wasn't prepared to own a parrot either. She fed him, and was gentle with him. He got all his feathers back (Amazingly). His name was Harley, and he was 32+ years old. She was his third owner. But she wasn't home enough to provide any stimulation, and when she was home he would scream and act out. It got to where she would scream back at him, and was getting frustrated enough that she just wouldn't go home. After one particularly bad night where he escaped the house, flew up in a tree and wouldn't come down, she told me she yelled at him that "he was on his own with the coons and he'd be lucky is he made it to morning". She called me the next day frustrated and fed up. Asked me if I wanted to drive to Florida so she could turn him loose. I got on the phone, started calling vets that specialized in birds and got the name of a lady in our state that WAS a part of parrot rescue. She took pitty on us and said we could drive him up to her. When we got there, she had an amazing aviary in her house. There were 6 cockatoos that all had their own cages and they were all integrated as a flock. One broody girl who was living in her desk drawer with her dummy eggs(and not a speck of dust anywhere!!!) and some other smaller birds that all had their own cages and social group situations. Only one bird was isolated. That bird was a wild captured African Grey, apparently she is vicious to the other birds. Her cage was even locked with a padlock. She breaks out of her cage, then into the other birds cages and tries to kill them. Harley was the only rescue at the house, and after a looong goodbye we left him in CAPABLE hands. My friend heard from her later that he had been accepted into the flock, they were working on some of his problems with men, and eventually found him a forever home where his social and physical needs would be fulfilled.
At full size, even if Weeble turns into the pissiest of evil little pistols, he's still never going to be lethal to a human. And so far he is maturing nicely. Mike and I have been using many of the suggestions that people have given us on here. With the current exception of a lacking same species social life, he is progressing nicely. And there is peace and normalcy in the house.
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