dollfish
Rollerblading along the road
Astro is an eight month old African Grey. At 3 months of age when I got him, I was going to be Astro's third home already when he was being given up on by a guy who had only had him for about two months. He had many stress bars on his feathers when I got him. He was taken off some of his feedings by this person, and naturally started refusing the last one before the evening feeding, as the guy told me. He came to me on one feeding per day. He had never been clipped, thankfully. I never put him back on more feedings. I feel so much shame. I thought he was doing fine. He is still far from weaning.
I am abundance weaning him. He eats chop in the mornings that I rotate. I plan the recipes carefully to include all kinds of things and he eats it all no problem. He gets additional things in foraging balls and skewers and other things like sage sticks, rosemary hidden between leaves, a small slice of lemon every now and then and other enriching and nutritious things. The only thing is that he eats Versele Laga pellets that do have sugar in them. It has been difficult to find proper pellets in Turkey but I have finally found what I think is very close to Harrisons in ingredients. I think they actually copied the recipe.
He has a variety of foraging toys, in fact, I hide little bits and seeds all over his cage and chewing toys. He gets a completely new cage setup every week which he gets very excited about. He plays a lot in his cage. He especially loves his puzzle toys where he spins and pulls and pushes to get the pellets out. He got so good at them so quickly that I keep trying to invent new ways to make those puzzles harder! He spends about 4 hours a day in his cage and we do maybe 5 training sessions a day. This has almost always been the case. I especially make time for recall practice to exercise him. He is so quick to pick up all the tricks. He already has words on cue.
He has climbing areas, ropes and trees in the house and seems to be occupied with these things most of the time. When I first noticed he was barbering his feathers on the lower right side of his body above his leg, I realised how stupid I was to let him hang out with us until 12 at night. He only got 8 hours of sleep every night. So we fixed that. He now goes to sleep at 20:30 and wakes up at 8:30. He sleeps in a small travel cage with a cover in complete darkness in the other room with the door closed. He goes in this cage and his main cage without any problem.
We don't smoke. Our house is bright although he doesn't get much direct sunlight unless we take him out once a week. He can be fussy about bathing, but I try to at least mist him once a week. We are working on this, and I was able to bathe him thoroughly, I literally soaked him with the hose this past week.
His cage is a large one but it is still a cage. I am planning to divide our large room to give him quite a bit of space. He has a couple of snipped feathers on his chest now too. 2 days ago my boyfriend found a single tiny feather at the bottom of his cage. It was the size of maybe half a pinky nail, teeny tiny but a real feather. I don't want to believe this but I think it is happening.
There was no way for this bird to not pluck. Being re-homed twice in the first 3 months of his life, taken off feedings without his choice, no real bird parents and even if for 5 hours a day, he is stuck in a cage. Not that he complains, but poor bird is not even weaned and he is turning 9 months. I feel so sad for him. I love him so much. I am taking him to the best vet in Istanbul this weekend and I will get everything checked from head to toe. I have just read about a parrot screaming every time it plucks a feather out and I bawled my eyes out. Is this true? Do parrots scream as they pluck their feathers? This gives me chills deep down. I can't get it out of my head. Last night I had a dream where I had a bird research centre in my garden. I don't even have a garden, all I have is a terrace. I will do everything I can for Astro to give him a happy life in captivity. I had made a checklist and I'm close to getting everything better, especially if I can do this aviary thing quickly before the problem escalates. So many of the birds I see on forums have feather destruction problems of some sort. No matter how diligent we are, we don't deserve these birds. They just don't thrive in captivity.
Look at this beauty. What an angel.
I am abundance weaning him. He eats chop in the mornings that I rotate. I plan the recipes carefully to include all kinds of things and he eats it all no problem. He gets additional things in foraging balls and skewers and other things like sage sticks, rosemary hidden between leaves, a small slice of lemon every now and then and other enriching and nutritious things. The only thing is that he eats Versele Laga pellets that do have sugar in them. It has been difficult to find proper pellets in Turkey but I have finally found what I think is very close to Harrisons in ingredients. I think they actually copied the recipe.
He has a variety of foraging toys, in fact, I hide little bits and seeds all over his cage and chewing toys. He gets a completely new cage setup every week which he gets very excited about. He plays a lot in his cage. He especially loves his puzzle toys where he spins and pulls and pushes to get the pellets out. He got so good at them so quickly that I keep trying to invent new ways to make those puzzles harder! He spends about 4 hours a day in his cage and we do maybe 5 training sessions a day. This has almost always been the case. I especially make time for recall practice to exercise him. He is so quick to pick up all the tricks. He already has words on cue.
He has climbing areas, ropes and trees in the house and seems to be occupied with these things most of the time. When I first noticed he was barbering his feathers on the lower right side of his body above his leg, I realised how stupid I was to let him hang out with us until 12 at night. He only got 8 hours of sleep every night. So we fixed that. He now goes to sleep at 20:30 and wakes up at 8:30. He sleeps in a small travel cage with a cover in complete darkness in the other room with the door closed. He goes in this cage and his main cage without any problem.
We don't smoke. Our house is bright although he doesn't get much direct sunlight unless we take him out once a week. He can be fussy about bathing, but I try to at least mist him once a week. We are working on this, and I was able to bathe him thoroughly, I literally soaked him with the hose this past week.
His cage is a large one but it is still a cage. I am planning to divide our large room to give him quite a bit of space. He has a couple of snipped feathers on his chest now too. 2 days ago my boyfriend found a single tiny feather at the bottom of his cage. It was the size of maybe half a pinky nail, teeny tiny but a real feather. I don't want to believe this but I think it is happening.
There was no way for this bird to not pluck. Being re-homed twice in the first 3 months of his life, taken off feedings without his choice, no real bird parents and even if for 5 hours a day, he is stuck in a cage. Not that he complains, but poor bird is not even weaned and he is turning 9 months. I feel so sad for him. I love him so much. I am taking him to the best vet in Istanbul this weekend and I will get everything checked from head to toe. I have just read about a parrot screaming every time it plucks a feather out and I bawled my eyes out. Is this true? Do parrots scream as they pluck their feathers? This gives me chills deep down. I can't get it out of my head. Last night I had a dream where I had a bird research centre in my garden. I don't even have a garden, all I have is a terrace. I will do everything I can for Astro to give him a happy life in captivity. I had made a checklist and I'm close to getting everything better, especially if I can do this aviary thing quickly before the problem escalates. So many of the birds I see on forums have feather destruction problems of some sort. No matter how diligent we are, we don't deserve these birds. They just don't thrive in captivity.
Look at this beauty. What an angel.
