Kirby’s Capers

[ravvlet]

She’s settled down now (as long as I’m in the room). I put them to bed in 20 mins & cover their cages so she can spend the night

 

[ravvlet]

You could try covering the cage so they can't see each other.

I think if she throws a fit tomorrow morning when I leave the room, I will throw the cage covers on the bird tree… it would block her view of Kirby’s cage. To be honest though I can barely hear her from my kitchen or from outside LOL, so I just hope my neighbors don’t use their downstairs room much (most of us (cookie cutter townhouses) use them for guest bedrooms or offices).

They have my number if she’s bothering them though!

 

[ravvlet]

Haha, well, she keeps yelling “mom”, but I remain determined to finish my coffee at the kitchen table and sort out my plans for the day before going to see what she wants. It’s funny because she’ll yell MOOM even if I’m sitting in the room, if I’m being too quiet. I think she’s bored.

However, she also took some chunks out of her toys FINALLY!! There were pieces of wood blocks all over the floor of her cage last night. It’s been three weeks of her acting like they don’t exist so that was a relief.

Kirby’s behavior hasn’t really changed too much. If Sammy’s cage is uncovered he is too excited to pet or interact with much, so I made sure it weigh him and get my scritches in before I woke her up. He’s also not yelling when she yells and fusses - I think he thinks she’s being a bit silly. “The human always comes back, duh!” I am still a little worried about him because his previous owners rehomed him over him bonding to their parrot instead of them - but they also grossly mishandled him (grabbing him bodily etc) so I’m hoping that once he’s used to Sammy being around we can mostly go back to business as usual.

 

[ravvlet]

Oof. Afternoon of day 2.

Kirby keeps biting at the air (& at me) when I walk by him. He’s let me pet him a couple times but is clearly agitated and I am not comfortable asking him to step up, he’s way too - something, amped up? Not sure what. He’s on his little playstand eating his “dinner” now. Sammy is pretty snippy as well, I was not brave enough to stick my fingers in there the one time she asked, because it was right after she spent 15-20 secs biting and shredding her rope perch! She still calls and whistles to me if I am out of the room (and sometimes if I’m in the room).

Is this all normal for introducing two parrots/amazons? I don’t think Kirby was as saucy about Cricket (the cockatiel), but we had had Cricket first, and that was before I could really handle Kirby much with my hands. I don’t want to lose the progress we’ve had with Kirby!

I also have decided that if the eventual outcome is that I have two birds that cannot be handled, that won’t work for us, because we have kids and I’d be seriously worried about safety issues. Really hoping it won’t come to that and this is just my anxiety speaking.

 

[texsize]

With the Twins they liked each other from the beginning.

I have the feeling Luna harbors a great deal of hate towards Bingo, but Merlin is fascinated by Bingo. There is a chance that Bingo and Merlin would get along together but that would spoil my plans with the Twins.

Patcho and Plumas matchup was completely accidental and unplanned.
They were in separate cages next to each other. At some point the cages got shoved so close that the two birds were grooming each other between the bars of the cage.
So I opened up both cages and the got along well.
This matchup happened over time but I have no idea how long they were next to each other before I put them in the same cage.

 

[ravvlet]

Kirby grooming himself; Sammy is standing on the floor of her cage trying to get my preschooler’s attention (she’s sitting at a table out of frame). Actually thinking about swapping Kirby and Sammy’s cage positions because I’m a little nervous about letting Sammy out with her close to the kids play table. She is way too fascinated with them and I don’t want her climbing on them or their chairs.

Thanks for the info about your flock @texsize ! I guess it’s too early to tell how this will go. Sammy doesn’t really understand out time at the moment; she wasn’t let out much if at all at her old house. I am trying to decide if I want to let her have some in here now (with Kirby safely in his cage of course) or if I want to wait until my partner is home so there’s a second person in case she gets feisty.

 

[texsize]

Some Amazon parrots are drawn (in a positive way) to children.

There is a great YT vid of a verry small child (3YO) and a Mexican Red headed Amazon. they ply together like they were twins or something.

At the local pet shop they had a Lilac crowned Amazon that would get very excited when children would come in to the store.

Unfortunately I don't know of a safe way to test out child/parrot interaction.

 

[ravvlet]

I know! Me neither. She’s nailed me a few times so I’m hesitant. To be fair though, I felt the same way about Kirby (who similarly had a great reputation with children but not adults) when we first brought him home - I had fort-Knox style baby gates around his cage! But it turns out I needn’t have bothered. He only takes passes at me or my partner when he’s grumpy about something; he either ignores the kids or chats with them.

They’re fairly intelligent flock animals; I suspect especially in the larger species there is some understanding that human children are, well, children. Sammy for example likes both kids but markedly prefers the toddler.

She only shouted a little today when I had to leave to make dinner upstairs, which is progress! My neighbors are never home as usual so I don’t even know if they’ve noticed she’s moved into my office, heh.

 

[ravvlet]

It’s about 11am here, Sammy has not stopped yelling basically since I fed them this AM - if I’m in the room she doesn’t yell but she also doesn’t eat her food. Sigh. It’s going to be a long day…

I am about a week and a half late to deep clean cages this month because I had that nasty cold that I’m finally getting over. I’m going to pick up a new hose today (our old one dry rotted over the winter) and I’m hoping at some point while I’m running errands she will get tired of yelling. I even put some of the crappy seeds on top of her food in an attempt to get her to try them.

Kirby is not loving his new roommate, and I can’t blame him, heh. He is at least eating his breakfast today and he seemed to eat ok yesterday. He seems on edge, and last night when she got rowdy and loud he started grooming really aggressively and a tail feather fell out! I’m hoping this was one that was just loose since he’s still having his Big Bad Molt. He is on the verge of dropping another flight feather as well. I’ve pet him and tried to be reassuring with him but he’s so out of sorts half the time he tries to bite me when I walk by, and I have to talk to him and work up to pets - normally this guy is a total ham so that’s really abnormal.

My mom is in town to help with the kids as my partner is out of the country, and the noise Sammy makes doesn’t bother her - it’s just me! I don’t know what it is about it, but it really gets to me bad. She will yell sometimes randomly even if I’m in the room, loud enough to startle me, if I’m not staring directly at her or I’m being too quiet. Needless to say I haven’t gotten any work done in there. Thankfully I don’t have any deadlines this week, but still. I don’t want to be avoiding the room since they need my attention but I have to steel myself a bit to go in there.

She didn’t do this to my partner when she was in her office - I’m not sure if this is because she likes me more, or if the other parrot is making her nervous? She actually DID do it to me when I would visit her in there, come to think of it.

I need to figure out how to let her out of her cage and see if she’ll go on the playstand safely, but I’m not sure how to do that either. She’s technically flighted but hasn’t flown in years - but my office is small and it wouldn’t take much for her to get onto Kirby’s cage, which would be really upsetting for him. She does NOT step up well, on perches or hands, but I don’t want to leave her locked up all day.

This is a real pickle. I think a big part of the problem is me. I’m a little scared of her, if I’m being honest. She’s really big and really fast and excitable. I have yelped involuntarily a couple times because she’d ask for pets through the cage bars and then try to nip my when I started petting her. I am, on top of everything else, real worried I’m going to make her have behavior problems she didn’t have before because I am not feeling confident and I don’t know how to fix that. I’m fairly confident she likes me - she gets almost as excited when I come into the room as she does for the kids- so I feel like a jerk for not reciprocating that. I guess it’s just been a big, long weird week with people out of town and my schedule all shook up, and getting over an illness.

Sorry for the rant! Really hoping things settle down (especially my anxiety!) and we can work something out for everyone here. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss when it was just me and Kirby. I really didn’t fully appreciate what a laidback and relaxed parrot he is.

 

[ravvlet]

You know you’ve got a great partner when you tell them you’re in over your head a bit & worried about the birds, and their suggestion is we buy a third playstand for their office so that the new parrot can “go to work” with them so Kirby can have breaks from her (and her yelling)!

I mean, to be fair, we had put aside a lot more for vet bills than we ended up needing…

Meanwhile, today was playstand cleaning catch up! I checked to be sure there were not bird flu cases in my area and also sprayed everything down with F10SC before rinsing and toweling it off. Cages won’t be until Sunday due to rain & because I’d like another adult comfortable with the birds to be with them while they’re cage-less. (Of course, I will be doing them one at a time so they aren’t both loose simultaneously!)

 

[ravvlet]

Busy week with family visiting. Sammy is back in my partner’s office as she was overwhelmed I think with another parrot AND the kids being around all the time; and we don’t have good recall/step up/etc on her so I don’t want her hanging out with the kids until we establish with her that we are safe, and she doesn’t have to be defensive!

Also have a trainer coming to do a consult & work w/ us to formulate a gameplan toward getting her to that point. For now though we ordered a second small playstand for my partner’s office, that I plan on modifying by zip-tying more size appropriate perches to so she has extra space to explore out of cage. Would have liked to let her play on the gym in my office, but I am not comfortable with her climbing on the four year old.

 

[SailBoat]

Note, if the trainer recommends cutting feeding prior to training: RUN!!

 

[ravvlet]

I ended up getting the same metal playstand I have for Kirby - I know it’s intended for smaller birds, but their larger version has cheap dowels on everything, and even Kirby could chew through those in one sitting. So, opted for the smaller one, but expanded the dowel width up top with vet wrap, and on the bottom I just used a 20-in natural wood perch and vet-wrapped it to the existing dowels.

She is not impressed, lol.

 

[Cottonoid]

Well I'm impressed! That looks great!

 

[Laurasea]

love how the queen observing her view. Smart shower curtain protector

 

[ravvlet]

Sammy gets to work with a trainer next Tuesday; really looking forward to it. She’s so gosh darn SMART. Today my preschooler snuck into my partners office while Sammy was out, and she climbed to the end of the sofa (kiddo was sitting on the floor) and she performed little tricks when we cheered for her. It wasn’t intentional at first - she spread her wings up and my kids both went “WOW!” And I could see the wheels in her head turning, so she did it again and again on demand!

I know there is no use in comparing apples to bananas, but it’s interesting to me that the little “attention bow” she and Kirby both do mean slightly different things. When Kirby does it, he wants pets. When Sammy does it - she isn’t sure. She’ll let me get close to petting then changes her mind. Maybe it’s a trust issue.


On other news, Kirby had another nasal clean today! He also got follow up X-rays. The good news is the atherosclerosis has not worsened and his heart is still a normal size. The bad news is he’s still got a rapid heart rate and a murmur. The vet said however otherwise he’s very healthy, but did note that his grip is poor, so we are starting him on enalapril. Additionally they’re modifying his supplement to include a joint compound for arthritis. She said if we are lucky, and he doesn’t have any heart events caused by the build up breaking away and causing a blockage, we can have him around for another 20-30 years! She also said his feathers look great and he probably is just having a big molt now that his liver is sorted and he’s gaining weight again!

 

[SailBoat]

Aaa, an Amazon surveying their World!
It is so common for an Amazon to secretly love our hard work, but avoid letting us know it, less we get overly confident and slack-off!!
Amazons, just love screwing with their caretakers heads!!

Happy to see the health issues continue to move to the Good!

 

[ravvlet]

Parrot lady came yesterday! Sammy did great. She did bite the crap out of me, and after that I was real nervous and had trouble not getting anxious, but by the end we had a list of exercises to work on with her, and established what her boundaries were and I feel better about understanding her body language. By the end of it she was stepping up for perches and such pretty willingly and was a lot less reactive about hands! And I have homework just for me to get me used to interacting with her and staying calm/not being nervous. Because I get so nervous around her she was the most reactive to me, but she isn’t aggressive, just confused.

Sammy’s weight however is still up. We are hoping since she’s stepping up better now that we can start weighing her regularly in the AM before food daily like Kirby so we can adjust feeding times etc to see what will work so she’s at least not gaining anymore. The trainer did comment that she looked a bit overweight to her too.

 

[SailBoat]

The trainer should know that 'Looks' does not define weight, i.e. too heavy or too light.

It requires the direct contact with the chest to determine whether the structure is covered with fat, muscle or neither and is just fluffing.

Our DYH Amazon is a light weight 500+/_ grams, which is on the light side for his species. But, commonly have people comment that he looks fat. Surprise, that is not fat it is strong flight muscles.

It's the early morning weighing prior to eating and after the major morning movement, which defines where your Parrots weight is that day or week.

 

[ravvlet]