Miko, my new family member

[dobytimothy]

Hello everyone! Greetings from Indonesia. I am a new member here. Allow me to introduce my new family member that joined me 2 weeks ago. His name is Miko, he is a male eclectus parrot, he is around 7months old (im not sure about this). I also don’t know which sub species he is. Maybe some of you guys can tell how old is he and what sub species is he by looking at some pictures that I will post

I have a lot of questions and a lot story to tell that makes me not sure where to start. I thought maybe I will start by telling how I treat and feed miko everyday.

These are some pictures of Miko :
Day 3 :

taken today:
he still got some black colour on his beak. He got a scar on his face, i hope his feather will re-grow on that part

his hair looks a bit grey

the tip of his wings feather looks a bit curly is this normal?

link to all the pictures, i doubt you can see it clear here bcause the picture is so small in the post :
http://www.parrotforums.com/members...t-album-picture19160-2018-01-16-20-18-55.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19164-left.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19165-tail.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19166-back.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19167-hair.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19168-another-left-side.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19169-front.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19170-front.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19171-shaking-feather.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19172-face.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19173-cage.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/members/dobytimothy-albums-1st-album-picture19174-under-tail.html

He is not tame I can tell you, I got nasty bite the first time trying to approach him, but only in a few days he has improved a lot. I got him from a previous owner, who doesn’t really like him, he is always chained in a small perch in the backyard. I don’t know whether the previous owner ever hit him or he is a wild caught or this is a behavioural issue because he never socialize, but one thing I am sure he is afraid of hands and he will bite! I will tell the story later how I can get him stop biting.

From the pictures if you can help me identify how old is he, what kind of subspecies, or maybe you can tell something is wrong with him from his feather, posture, or anything, please put a comment and let me know.

Food :
He will only eat banana at the moment. I tried some other fruit and vegetable and this is the list of the food he wont eat :
1. pear , peeled and whole
2. guava, peeled and whole
3. sweet potato, steamed
4. mung bean sprout, boiled and raw
5. papaya, peeled
6. watercress, raw and boiled
7. pok choy, raw and boiled and steamed
8. carrot, raw and boiled
9. brown rice, boiled
10. rice, boiled
11. green bean(Phaseolus Vulgaris), raw
12. sunflower seed, roasted

These are all I can remember trying to feed him but he always goes for banana, he took small bite of all that food and just throw it away. I always put banana in his food bowl because I don’t want to risk that he wont eat at all because he doesnt like all the other food

I feed him Saba banana everyday. I choose this kind of banana because it contains lower sugar than any other banana available here. It is available all season here in my country so I can buy fresh banana every day (but usually I buy in bulk and keep it in fridge for a week and buy fresh again the next week). I cut the banana in half and just put it in his food bowl, the other half I put in the fridge and give it to him after he eats all in his food bowl. And then the problem comes, Miko always eat the banana including the skin, I think that is really weird but I keep feeding him that way because I always wash the food before I serve to Miko anyway. But after around 5 days at my house, I saw him toe tapping at night, not just his toe actually but his entire left foot is tapping on his perch. I take him out of his cage and try to comfort him and handfeed him a banana but I immediately throw away the skin. His toe tapping suddenly not as intense as before, so from that time I always peel the banana before I serve to miko. And thank god he’s not toe tapping anymore since then.

After that incident I became so worried of his diet, and I start trying to find a way for him to get more variety of food. Untill this day the only way to make him eat another food is to grind the banana+sprout+watercress or another combination of fruits and vegetable until it becomes like a porridge, as far as it still smells like banana and its still yellow, miko will eat it anyway, but not as much as when he eats the banana only. I did this only on weekend because I don’t have time to grind his food everyday. But recently i tried something I read on the forum and I think it might work well. I sit with him, offer him watercress while I also eat it too, he start munching it, but not actually eating it. I think that’s a good start there, I will keep doing this and also try with other vegetable too,

Drink :
I only use bottled mineral water and I change everyday

Bathing :
I bath him once every 3 days with warm water in the morning. Although he seems like he doesn’t like it ( he stands still and not moving when i spray him) but I read on some articles that bathing is a must, so I keep doing it.

Handling :
Since day 3 i managed to handfeed him, so every morning I handfeed him and also every night after I come home from work. When Im at work, my mom fill his food bowl everytime its empty. At night I always hand feed him in my bedroom, which is now his favourite place to hangout. He walks around and perch on my sit up bench (he prefers this bench compared to a portable wooden perch that I made). Recently he even sleep in my bedroom after I feed him, he is always very calm when he is in my bedroom.

Housing :
I use aluminium frame cage with glass wall (sliding door) and aluminium bars at the top. The size is around 50cm x 100cm x 150cm (W x H x L). I use a glass side wall to minimize his feather and feather dust flying around my house because my mom is allergic to it. I put natural untreated wood from longan fruit tree inside his cage. At the moment miko is still in his temporary cage, smaller steel cage with plastic perch, I will move him to his big cage asap, because I need to re arrange my backyard and make sure that cage is safe. Recently I found a lot of fire ants around the cage, Im still figuring out how to keep them away.
This is a pic of his cage :

I guess that’s it for now. Im sorry if this is so boring for you guys or maybe it is difficult to understand what im trying to say because i don’t speak English here where I live. But thank you so much if you guys read and leave some comments or any advice for me.

Thank you

 

[Scott]

Welcome to the Eclectus sub-forum! Thanks for the images, he is beautiful. Miko's beak color suggests he is young, so 7 months is possible. His feathers do not look grossly abnormal, and it is common for the tips of wing/tail to be a bit messy if they play and rub against objects. Don't know enough of the sub-species to take a guess!

Diet is a huge challenge for Eclectus! You probably know the typical parrot diet is incorrect. Toe-tapping is a sure sign of deficiency and/or overabundance of nutrients. Some ideas from our members:
http://www.parrotforums.com/eclectus/72096-help-formulating-next-chop-batch.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/parrot-food-recipes-diet/49831-chop-day-recipe.html

Fear of hands is often a sign of poor past handling or worse. Biting is, of coure, his only defense besides flight. Some techniques to earn trust: http://www.parrotforums.com/general-parrot-information/49144-tips-bonding-building-trust.html

An enclosed glass cage (with bars on top) has some advantages but is hard to clean. Temperature control, especially in hot climates is critical. Eclectus are fairly clean birds, far less dander than cockatoos. You may find an air cleaner will help as well.

 

[dhraiden]

Selamat Datang to you and Miko! Please be welcome!

 

[GaleriaGila]

Welcome. Thank you for rescuing this beauty. You're on my hero-list! I'm glad you're here.

 

[Kentuckienne]

Welcome! The eclectus folks will have good ideas. I wonder, maybe bottled mineral water is not good for him? From what I read here, some eclectus parrots have experienced toe-tapping and wing-flipping and other odd behaviors which seem to be related to calcium and other mineral levels. Usually from not enough, but you don't know what is added to the mineral water. Could be high in sodium, especially. What do you drink yourself? I am guessing the tap water would be fine...

 

[dobytimothy]

Welcome to the Eclectus sub-forum! Thanks for the images, he is beautiful. Miko's beak color suggests he is young, so 7 months is possible. His feathers do not look grossly abnormal, and it is common for the tips of wing/tail to be a bit messy if they play and rub against objects. Don't know enough of the sub-species to take a guess!

Diet is a huge challenge for Eclectus! You probably know the typical parrot diet is incorrect. Toe-tapping is a sure sign of deficiency and/or overabundance of nutrients. Some ideas from our members:
http://www.parrotforums.com/eclectus/72096-help-formulating-next-chop-batch.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/parrot-food-recipes-diet/49831-chop-day-recipe.html

Fear of hands is often a sign of poor past handling or worse. Biting is, of coure, his only defense besides flight. Some techniques to earn trust: http://www.parrotforums.com/general-parrot-information/49144-tips-bonding-building-trust.html

An enclosed glass cage (with bars on top) has some advantages but is hard to clean. Temperature control, especially in hot climates is critical. Eclectus are fairly clean birds, far less dander than cockatoos. You may find an air cleaner will help as well.

Hi! first of all, thank you for the links, very helpful for me to get new ideas for serving food
is it really important to know the subspecies of my eclectus? because i read it somewhere that every subspecies has their specific personality.

I dont really have too much problem with handling, i think maybe miko has very good personality. he already step up to my hand only in a week! i feel lucky i have him because i read a lot of people need a few months even just to touch their eclectus without getting a bite.

i put the cage in my backyard, i think the weather is not too hot mostly it is around 28 celcius and i have a fish pond in my backyard which i think help with the cooling. I am more concerned about the amount of sun light that he should get. I use a milky white polycarbonate roof in my backyard to cover from heat and rain, so obviously he doesnt get that direct sun light everyday, maybe only on the weekend when i can play with him all day. Do they need basking regularly?

 

[dobytimothy]

Selamat Datang to you and Miko! Please be welcome!

Terimakasih!

 

[dobytimothy]

Welcome. Thank you for rescuing this beauty. You're on my hero-list! I'm glad you're here.

Thank you!! so happy to be in this forum, i hope in the future i can also share something useful from my experience

Welcome! The eclectus folks will have good ideas. I wonder, maybe bottled mineral water is not good for him? From what I read here, some eclectus parrots have experienced toe-tapping and wing-flipping and other odd behaviors which seem to be related to calcium and other mineral levels. Usually from not enough, but you don't know what is added to the mineral water. Could be high in sodium, especially. What do you drink yourself? I am guessing the tap water would be fine...

thank you
bottled mineral water is regular drinking water in my country, which is accepted and considered safe for human by the regulation. There are 2 kinds of bottled drinking water here.

Mineral drinking water is a natural spring water that has been treated specifically to eliminate the bacteria so it will be safe to drink.

Second is demineralized drinking water which has been treated the same as mineral drinking water to eliminate the bacteria and also a reverse osmosis treatment so it has zero mineral.

Tap water and soil water also available here, there are no regulations for this 2 and it is considered not safe to drink. the tap water known to quite high chlorine content and its only for showering, washing, etc. And soil water here is the lowest water quality, it usually has high iron, sodium, and calcium content, this is corrosive to metal and will cause lime scale if we use it for washing and cleaning household stuff. Soil water also contains a lot of bacteria therefore we only use this for watering our plants.

So for now i choose regular mineral drinking water for miko because i think its better??? but idk.. what do you think?

 

[Anansi]

Hello, and a belated welcome to the Parrot Forums family!

I'm just now seeing this, but it seems you've largely received some good advice already. Just to point out a few things that you may find helpful, though...

It's actually a good thing that he refused the beans raw. Beans for the most part should be either soaked and simmered or sprouted. Some of the larger beans especially can prove quite harmful if eaten raw.

Here is what I consider the quintessential link when it comes to the eclectic diet: fruitandveg Read every sub-section and it will set you in good stead as to what is best for a complete eclectic diet.

As for Miko's tendency to only eat bananas, this might be largely due to the sheer amount of banana that you are providing for him. I'm not saying to go cold turkey with the bananas and risk him starving himself, but you might want to give another option first and then provide bananas later. To illustrate my point, I'll share an example with one of my birds. Jolly has quite the taste for sweets. If I put enough fruits in his chop to fill him, he will eat all of that first and then leave the more nutritious contents of his bowl behind. This doesn't mean that he won't eat the other stuff, just that he'd rather eat the sweeter offerings. So I only give him enough fruits to sweeten the pot... but the majority of the food is composed of the more nutritionally sound veggies. Know what I mean?

As for the amount of sunlight they should get per day, it's actually good that he has some cover from direct sunlight. And yes, getting him out for some sun for even 20 or so minutes in a given day will offer great health benefits. but even the amount he is getting now from you sounds really good. Better than what I can offer my ekkies during these winter months here in New Jersey.

Glad to see that all is going well with him coming to trust your hands. Even for birds who are hand tame, some will take longer to develop trust once they have moved into a new home.