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If I remember right, a budgie's poops are about BB sized or smaller. Assuming a green cheek is similar enough to a Sun/Jenday conure that I can use my sibling's bird for comparison: about the size of a cashew, or a little smaller than a marble. It's a mix of green solids and white runny uric acid and other stuff, and will generally clean up similarly to budgie poo though it leaves more of a stain than the tiny budgie turds. You have to be careful to not smear it or rub it in, though. It's much easier to get it to stick to a paper towel or tissue and lift it off that way, or roll it onto another piece. Occasionally there will be a runny poo, and you should be resigned to those always being a mess. Thankfully, conures are usually really easy to potty train.
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Oct 27, 2012 04:13
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 15:45 |
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I would definitely recommend a conure, probably a green cheek, from what you describe. They can be such clowns and are generally adorable little assholes. To add to biting chat: a lot of it can be corrected with training, both the bird as well as the owner. Birds react extremely poorly to positive punishment (by which I mean adding a bad thing) but will respond to negative punishment (removing fun things). As an example, you should never ever use pain to correct behavior, but putting the bird on the floor or in a boring room for a few minutes can be used to correct behavior. A much better way is a positive reward for when the bird is behaving well if you can manage it. In all cases it's important to read the bird's body language and respect their moods. They are very intelligent creatures with good memories, and smart things hate sensory deprivation. More important, though, is training the owners and the people that interact with the bird. Parrots only have two grasping "hands" that double as feet, so when they climb they almost always have to use their beak as well. They will use it to test how sturdy a new support is (like your hand) before committing their weight to it, so you should be prepared for that. In addition, if they do bite, it's important that you do not react (if you can help it) and to not pull away from the bird. Depending on it's mentality, it might have learned that biting people makes them make funny noises (and making loud noises is FUN!  LET'S SHOUT SOME MORE!). Alternatively, if it's just an innocent mistake, yelling can startle the bird and get it to clamp harder. Also, consider a bird that is partially supported by a hand and clamped down: pulling your bitten hand away will pull on the bird, and it will have to hold on harder to keep its balance. It's better to gently push towards the bird and try to get it to release.With conures you're most likely to get a nasty ding and maybe a small amount of blood, more like an oozing spot than a torrent. It will hurt for a day or two, but most birds that size will not do serious damage unless they are really, really traumatized. DarkHorse fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Nov 1, 2012 |
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Nov 1, 2012 01:11
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That's a very good point, thanks for making it. Since I cannot responsibly own a bird right now I function most often as a birdy ambassador, so sometimes I forget about established relationships. It's definitely good to let them know when they might have inadvertently caused you pain. Once you've built a bond of trust, your bird is not going to deliberately hurt you. Much. Unless it's really, really funny. Basically I'm saying that birds are assholes. 
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Nov 1, 2012 02:32
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My dad's cockatiel just likes nibbling on earrings and glasses, it can be a weirdly pleasant feeling. The only time it hurts is when the bird pinches some skin against the metal. My sister's conure is much the same. He'll beak things, but he hasn't really tried to yank anything out.
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Nov 2, 2012 16:16
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SaNChEzZ posted:It could just be a noise, or an attempt at imitating speech/a noise. Whenever Ritz tries to shove his beak up my nose to get at my septum piercing I blow out of my nose, which kind of makes a noise.. like someone exhaling out of their nose with a little umph. Now he makes that noise when he's preening something other than himself. If he's preening our fingers, he'll make the noise. At first I thought it was weird, but then we kinda put two and two together and realized he was just doing what mom and dad do. fft fft fft
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Nov 6, 2012 14:47
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wtftastic posted:If birds are anything like dogs, now you've taught him that if he bitches and moans he'll get his way, especially with the hut. EDIT: Longer periods of darkness cause hormonal changes that cause the bird's body to think it's winter, i.e. a bad time to mate, lay eggs, and try to raise chicks. It's what I've heard as one of the best ways to cut down on horny behavior. DarkHorse fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Nov 8, 2012 |
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Nov 8, 2012 17:13
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Yeah, you want to trip the genetic switches that tell the bird's body "This is not a good time to have babies." The light cycle is a big part of that, since circadian rhythms can signal that winter is approaching, and an unstable environment will make the bird cautious about trying to raise young. Moving things around a lot seems to help, as might Scary Ned's suggestion.
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Nov 13, 2012 02:00
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As long as it isn't sealed with elastic or something it should be fine. Have you never slept with your head under a blanket when it's cold? That's a much smaller space:required air volume, so with an entire cage full of air and plenty of gaps at the bottom it shouldn't be a problem.
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Nov 13, 2012 13:27
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RaspberryCommie posted:So I've got a pair of Quakers/Monks, named Amigo and Ozzie.
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Nov 15, 2012 20:20
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Yeah, if everything is hunky-dory the only reason to do clicker training is if you want to do crazy complicated tricks. If there are problems, though, clicker training is great because you can reward specific actions precisely (and it also trains the trainer). Check out the dog training thread by a life less to get an idea of the proper way to do it. I'm sure there are bird-specific examples you can find online but the principles will be mostly the same. I think she goes into operant conditioning too.
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Nov 16, 2012 01:02
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SaNChEzZ posted:I dunno.. he's sneezed twice today, but both times he was mid preen and figured it'd be a good idea to pick his nose with his toe. Birds. 
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Nov 18, 2012 02:16
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I hope they go out of business, or at least decide that birds are not worth the effort and stop keeping them, and end up giving that bird away to someone at the end of it. (If I sound bitter, I just had to resist an adorable pineapple mutation green cheek that I desperately want, and who was apparently super sweet. I didn't even want to go into the store, lest I end up buying her)
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Nov 26, 2012 01:37
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Amaya posted:Thanks for the compliments guys 
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Nov 29, 2012 21:30
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Amaya posted:It doesn't work like that, unfortunately 
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Nov 30, 2012 21:46
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I can't just swap out the colors. When you start you begin carving away bits of the picture and eventually nothing's left, I have a set of ten and that's all. There are two options though! I could most certainly do the print again with jenday/sun colors but that would be expensive for you. BUT. I could do one black and white and then water color it to jenday/sun colors? Significantly cheaper!
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Great to hear Sanchezz! I love hearing about Ritz's antics. This just popped up in the gifs thread 
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Dec 5, 2012 21:27
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Pip pip pip posted:I toss him into the air towards things he seems to want to go to: his cage, the playstand we have in the living room, or the couch. I feel like a terrible person, throwing my pets across the room, but it seems to be helping a little. It's really funny how slow he flies though, it seems like he is just hovering and only has forward motion because I toss him. With time, and as they get stronger muscles from all that work, they'll start moving fast enough that their wings will actually work. At least, if they have enough space; it takes a bit of forward speed before wings start generating enough lift, but then they become little fighter planes zooming around 
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Dec 12, 2012 15:54
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I'm gonna get one first! 
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Dec 14, 2012 21:12
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Amaya posted:I'm very angry. Zomo offered to get us another bird for Christmas if I found one I liked. Of course I hopped right on this, but I really wanted to adopt instead of buying one from a store or breeder. We were fine with driving a few hours if need be so I started looking... I'd see if you can talk to them and interact with them and see how reasonable they are. I have no experience with this, but I would hope a lot of communication and the understanding that you're deliberately jumping through more hoops to prevent contributing to the "disposable" pet industry and also making space for another bird at their sanctuary would get them to relax some of the requirements. You might have to agree to send Christmas cards of the bird every year or home visits. It's also pretty standard to agree to return the bird to them if you ever can't take care of them.
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Dec 26, 2012 23:59
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There's actually a lot you can do with clicker training, but the crucial idea is that the click is associated with the treat, and that the click is used because it's much more precise than shoving the treat in their face or saying the praise: you want to click the exact moment the pet does what you want, and the bird knows that is what is being rewarded while you're fumbling for the treat. If you have PMs, talk to a life less for a lot of good tips and resources. If you want to look up terms yourself, look for "operant conditioning," "shaping," and "treat fading".
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Dec 27, 2012 23:24
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I'd save nutriberries for a treat if you can, I don't know how adequate they are as a complete nutrition source.
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Dec 31, 2012 01:56
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YarPirate posted:Good to know! Crop burn sounds like a terrible, terrible way to go. Proper training and socialization goes a long way to preventing that, however. The bird is still going to have its favorites, but absent that person in the room it should end up tolerating or even loving other people. It sounds like you're approaching this the right way, and doing a good job considering the bird. Good luck, I hope you find a good birdy buddy! I had to pass up a "Fallow" GCC. It's one that my SO noticed and convinced her that maybe birds could be pretty cool; it would chirp curiously and nibble on fingers. Today when she showed it to me though it looked like it was bad tempered and tried to bite my finger some. I hope it was just tired and cranky, and not a victim of being in a pet shop all alone. If I could responsibly have a parrot I probably would have snatched her up. 
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Jan 5, 2013 03:27
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See if you can get in the habit of playing with her feet, pretend-clipping her nails, and then you can make it not as traumatic for her, too. Eclectus are really different as far as parrots go, but it seems like you're on the right track with their different diet. I love them so much, they're some of my favorite parrots, but I know nothing about how to care for their particular needs.
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Jan 7, 2013 05:27
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Frozenfries posted:What's a good way to keep your parrots cool? Sydney is currently going through a death/heat wave, as it's currently 45 degrees with very little humidity, and Ruby was dry after a bath in 10 minutes. She's walking around my room playing which I gues is a good sign, but if I need to cool her off what's a good method of doing so? It'd be different if you had high humidity, because then it's much harder to cool off. The water evaporating quickly is a good sign since it will take all the heat away; just be careful not to overdo it. Are Eclectus unusually susceptible to chills?
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Jan 18, 2013 16:50
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My dad's lady(?) tiel is the same way. WANT SCRATCH! DON'T TOUCH ME! Wait... SCRATCH!
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Jan 20, 2013 02:54
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Frozenfries posted:In some brighter news, Ruby was chowing down on the newspapers on the ground today, then decided that it was a great idea to hop into the house plant we have and hide in it, while at the same time destroying the entire plant. She seemed pretty happy, but that poor, poor plant. I'm so jealous of Ruby, though. My sister always wanted a female eclectus. She wanted to call her Cammie
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Jan 22, 2013 17:07
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Amaya posted:Guys, I think I'm buying another bird. This is like a sickness. On a whim we stopped at a pet store that was called like "Wet pets and friends" or something. I saw some bird cages in the window and figured it was worth a shot. Well, this guy is AWESOME. He buys from local breeders and all the babies are hand raised and sweet as hell. They have a pineapple conure that's two months old and sweet as pie. I was holding it for a really long time and it kept cooing and fluffing up its feathers for head scratches. Hey, you said to try and convince you!  (If you do decide to get a bird you'd better post a bazillion pictures, I love Finn and Marceline)
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Jan 23, 2013 17:00
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That blue jay is just so loving jazzed to be a tattoo
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Jan 30, 2013 02:21
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Ohtori is the best bird, I'm always happy to see the little Froot Loop (I may or may not have shared your pictures with my sister)
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Jan 30, 2013 22:13
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Never not post bird pictures. My current living situation doesn't allow for them, so I need to live vicariously through you all
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Jan 31, 2013 17:47
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Fart Puzzle posted:I've been trying to get the (broken petstore) budgies to eat pellets for awhile now and I finally figured it out! The conure eats her pellets on the landing pad on her cage which has newspaper underneath to catch pellet dust and droppings. She eats on one side, poops on the other. Anyway, I put the budgies on the pellet dust paper and they actually ate them! I haven't been able to get them to touch anything but seed, not even fresh fruit/veg, so this is a huge deal to me! I'm birdcycling and it's awesome, the budgies won't die of fatty fat fat disease.
DarkHorse fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Feb 6, 2013 |
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Feb 5, 2013 17:38
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I feel you should be warned my sister has threatened to steal your bird, as Eclectuses are her favorite parrot and neither of us has seen one in ages. You should post more pictures so I can placate her. Totally not out of self interest It's so satisfying to see a female in such great shape, kudos to you for taking such good care of her!
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Feb 7, 2013 06:17
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The Doctor posted:e: Also Cirrus is learning to wolf-whistle. For some reason (the dryness I guess) my whistling is terrible in the winter but I have been trying for ages to get him to do it and I have started hearing him make a sound in the same pitch which sounds like it could be the same whistle. It's understandable that he might butcher it given how lovely I do it but he seems to be into repeating it.
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Feb 17, 2013 01:52
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That's probably the funniest sequence of images I've seen in a while
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Feb 28, 2013 20:16
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Battle Pigeon posted:If he's pissed off enough, yes. Often it will start as him putting a foot up to stop us from making him step up, then if we pressure him (because he's trying to eat something he shouldn't, get in the way, etc) he'll lift further and just roll over and start kicking to keep us away. Sometimes he'll just roll over and throw a birdy tantrum straight away. In the photo examples, the first day he kept trying to step down on to the keyboard but I kept getting him to step up again to try to take a non-blurry photo. It didn't take long before he just rolled over to stop being picked up and started kicking and rrrrrrrarking. The second day, I guess he remembered what happened before or something because he pretty much just rolled over and started bitching. Ohtori
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Mar 2, 2013 22:24
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Wizard of Smart posted:
 Alternatively: "Oh we're talking now? OK WE'RE TALKING NOW!"
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Mar 5, 2013 14:22
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Just about every member of Cacatuidae I've met, regardless of species, has been super cuddly as a baby. The hell comes after they've passed through adolescence and turn from silent cuddle sluts into shrieking (dear god are they loud) and biting terrors, though they still tend to require a lot of attention and affection. It's at this point which point ignorant owners who weren't expecting it and are unprepared for it leave the bird locked in the cage. The bird then becomes neurotic from being ignored and becomes even more of a noise and aggression problem, perpetuating the cycle, and may begin plucking feathers which can lead owners to hide them away (the absolute worst thing for them). In cases with owners that do know what they're getting themselves into and can handle and socialize the bird through the difficult period, the animal usually comes out a little noisier, a little bitier, but still absolutely in love with cuddling and scratches, and will usually hang out with other people well. To bring this back to your question, pet store cockatoos are often (but not always) the prepubescent birds of a year or two old, when they're at their most cuddly and adorable. But yes, in general all of the cockatoo species love being scratched, cuddled, and loved on, to the point that some people call them "velcro birds". This extends to cockatiels, which are genus Nymphicus but in the same family. EDIT: Sorry if it sounds like I was aggressive or attacking you, that wasn't my intent. I just love Cockatoos so much, a love I share with my dad. He nearly got one when we were first looking at birds, and it would have ended in disaster and bitterness, and ruined a lovely, helpless animal, were it not for some random person giving a warning not dissimilar from the above. For that reason I tend to put the terror in anyone that expresses interest in them just so they don't make the mistake we almost made out of ignorance, and pay it forward. DarkHorse fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Mar 9, 2013 |
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Mar 9, 2013 22:27
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My dad's cockatiel does that. It's like they get really relaxed and comfortable, and the slightest thing that disturbs that calm results in terrible beaky fury.
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Mar 9, 2013 22:57
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Pip pip pip posted:Also my budgie tries to start fights with him even though he is twice her size and his beak is way bigger
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Mar 13, 2013 15:52
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Sprite has some sort of Napoleon complex or something.
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Yeah, you should be using operant conditioning to get the bird comfortable with and then excited around the harness before you even try putting it on. By the time you do start putting it on, going outside with people becomes the reward and it gets easier, but until then you have to be very slow and careful to keep it from being traumatic and hated. Caveat: I have not harness trained a bird before. But I've read about it on the internet!
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Mar 13, 2013 23:17
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 15:45 |
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I don't know how familiar you are with allergies, but that doesn't sound like them at all. Allergies will generally respond very well to Benadryl and such, because it's a histamine reaction and your body goes haywire on innocuous stuff, the pathway for which antihistamines block. If it's still happening then that indicates it's not a histamine reaction causing your sneezing. While it's possible you've just developed a delayed sensitivity to it, if you didn't feel anything hanging out with a bunch of cockatoos or your first visit and the antihistamines are having no effect that points to it being something other than an allergy problem. You probably just got a cold bug of some kind. If you want to be doubly sure, wait until your symptoms subside and return for another visit and see if you get the same reaction. Source: I was allergic to everything except trees, and I'm still explosively allergic to rabbits.
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Mar 21, 2013 18:28
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