Hello,
Thank you all for the kind welcome a few weeks ago, some of you may remember I posted asking advice about buying a parrot, and we were undecided between an Amazon and a Grey.
Well.....we have a lovely Blue Fronted Amazon called Jo(e).
She is adorable and I'm smitten. I have so many questions though, so I hope someone can help me out with a few things.
Firstly, we think she's a hen bird but she's not been DNA sexed, so obviously have no real idea. I'm thinking about having her sexed and have sent off for the feather kit from Avian Biotech but I'm a bit concerned about pulling feathers from here - am I just worried about nothing?
She's not rung, but the breeder has said she hatched June 25th this year. Her eyes are still brown rather than orange and she does seem young so I assume the dates are about right. Are there any other clues?
Food wise she is eating just fine, the breeder had her on Animalzone Fruit Chunks, so I'm still offering her those. She's also taken Harrisons High Potency quite happily, along with a little Amazon Versele Laga mix and various dried fruit and nuts, plus all kinds of fresh fruit and veg. So far her favourites seem to be green beans, fresh peas, apple, sweetcorn, pommegranate, broccoli and cauliflower. What do other people's Amazon's enjoy? I'm keen to give her as good a diet as possible and as much variety as I can. She didn't like fresh banana, only the dried chips.
We have her in the shop with us during the day and she's remarkably unpeturbed by the comings and goings, seems to enjoy the activity going on around her. Eventually we would love to have her free in the shop (she's currently in a cage in the shop and travels back and forth with each morning and night), has anyone else done this successfully? She is flighted and can fly pretty well. I don't want to clip her wings, but would like to train her to stay and not to fly unless allowed to. Is this realistic?
Training is going pretty well so far - she's only been with us for a week - and she will step up, fly to hand, fly to stick and fly back to cage. I'm teaching her to turn around 360 deg on her stick too. Are there any other useful things I can train her to do early on that will help with later training and safetly for both of us?
Sorry for the mammoth post, she's my first parrot, and although I've lots of other birds (which hopefully helps me a bit with understanding her body language), she's so much brighter and I really want to get things right!
Thanks
Cati
Thank you all for the kind welcome a few weeks ago, some of you may remember I posted asking advice about buying a parrot, and we were undecided between an Amazon and a Grey.
Well.....we have a lovely Blue Fronted Amazon called Jo(e).
She is adorable and I'm smitten. I have so many questions though, so I hope someone can help me out with a few things.Firstly, we think she's a hen bird but she's not been DNA sexed, so obviously have no real idea. I'm thinking about having her sexed and have sent off for the feather kit from Avian Biotech but I'm a bit concerned about pulling feathers from here - am I just worried about nothing?
She's not rung, but the breeder has said she hatched June 25th this year. Her eyes are still brown rather than orange and she does seem young so I assume the dates are about right. Are there any other clues?
Food wise she is eating just fine, the breeder had her on Animalzone Fruit Chunks, so I'm still offering her those. She's also taken Harrisons High Potency quite happily, along with a little Amazon Versele Laga mix and various dried fruit and nuts, plus all kinds of fresh fruit and veg. So far her favourites seem to be green beans, fresh peas, apple, sweetcorn, pommegranate, broccoli and cauliflower. What do other people's Amazon's enjoy? I'm keen to give her as good a diet as possible and as much variety as I can. She didn't like fresh banana, only the dried chips.
We have her in the shop with us during the day and she's remarkably unpeturbed by the comings and goings, seems to enjoy the activity going on around her. Eventually we would love to have her free in the shop (she's currently in a cage in the shop and travels back and forth with each morning and night), has anyone else done this successfully? She is flighted and can fly pretty well. I don't want to clip her wings, but would like to train her to stay and not to fly unless allowed to. Is this realistic?
Training is going pretty well so far - she's only been with us for a week - and she will step up, fly to hand, fly to stick and fly back to cage. I'm teaching her to turn around 360 deg on her stick too. Are there any other useful things I can train her to do early on that will help with later training and safetly for both of us?
Sorry for the mammoth post, she's my first parrot, and although I've lots of other birds (which hopefully helps me a bit with understanding her body language), she's so much brighter and I really want to get things right!
Thanks
Cati
