LuvByrd
(?)Community Member
Offline
- Report Post
- Posted: Thu, 12 May 2011 03:35:56 +0000
Moth Feathers
LuvByrd
Oh congratulations! She is very cute!
They should be able to eat, safflower, sunflower, oats, and rice just fine - parrots, even small ones have much stronger beaks than finches. I dunno about dried rice though, that stuff is hard.
Budgies, and most other small parrots don't really play with foot toys, but boy will they shred! Paper, woven palm leaf (my lovebird loves that!), cardboard, lettuce/greens, and softer woods (depending on the bird). Funny someone should say their bird doesn't like a happy hut, mine sure does! You could also try a cozy corner - soft and fuzzy, but less intimidating.
It does seem weird that for how comfortable with you as she is, she's not going down to eat. Do you know what she was being fed before you got her? Maybe something happened to her that she has a fear of the bottom of the cage? I use millet spray as a treat for both of my birds, not as part of their "main menu", or it seems like that's all they'd eat. It did help my finch settle in, when he wasn't quite comfortable to go down to his dishes. You could try using rubber bands and binder clips to put the dishes higher up, and see if that'd help.
That is so awesome that she is so used to you all ready, The flight training should be fun! Once she is reliably stepping up, do you have a "plan of attack" on the training? I had some fun flight training Pearl today.
Nice cage! It's got lots of stuff, does she have room to fly back and forth? (That's a dumb question....you've got finches, you know their need to fly) wink
They should be able to eat, safflower, sunflower, oats, and rice just fine - parrots, even small ones have much stronger beaks than finches. I dunno about dried rice though, that stuff is hard.
Budgies, and most other small parrots don't really play with foot toys, but boy will they shred! Paper, woven palm leaf (my lovebird loves that!), cardboard, lettuce/greens, and softer woods (depending on the bird). Funny someone should say their bird doesn't like a happy hut, mine sure does! You could also try a cozy corner - soft and fuzzy, but less intimidating.
It does seem weird that for how comfortable with you as she is, she's not going down to eat. Do you know what she was being fed before you got her? Maybe something happened to her that she has a fear of the bottom of the cage? I use millet spray as a treat for both of my birds, not as part of their "main menu", or it seems like that's all they'd eat. It did help my finch settle in, when he wasn't quite comfortable to go down to his dishes. You could try using rubber bands and binder clips to put the dishes higher up, and see if that'd help.
That is so awesome that she is so used to you all ready, The flight training should be fun! Once she is reliably stepping up, do you have a "plan of attack" on the training? I had some fun flight training Pearl today.
Nice cage! It's got lots of stuff, does she have room to fly back and forth? (That's a dumb question....you've got finches, you know their need to fly) wink
Yep, she's eating the same food that was in her dish when I first got her. It's a 'parrot mix', with a bunch of sunflower and little colored bits (-eyeroll- I hate those mixes, but I figure it's only temporary. I have some better budgie seed for her, I just want to keep with the old food for now until it's used up).
The day after I got her, she liked to explore around the branches and such, but now whenever I have her dismount ('step down' I suppose you could call it) on one of them, she always rushes to the side of the cage where she can climb back up to her dowel. The only thing I could guess that happened so that she's afraid of being down near the bottom is perhaps one of the branches fell/moved when she was on it? I don't know. I checked them, and they're all pretty sturdy and set in well.
I was thinking of putting my finger a little bit further away than usual for step up, and then have her hop over there, get that down pat, then do a little bit further. Once she would be hopping far enough, I'd move her into my 'free flight room', and work on some longer distances. In the end, I'm hoping it'll be like having some falconry bird, and I could stand at one end of the house and be like "Parsley, come!" and she'd fly over and land on my hand. xD Dreaming.
Actually, she doesn't have much room to fly at all in that cage, which really irks me. I just don't know what to do. The cage is only 20 inches long, and budgies have a wingspan of like 10 inches, so already that doesn't leave much space- the most she could fly would be a couple of inches. But she also does have some toys I placed in there, so that cuts down on the space even more- all and all, her main mode of transportation in that cage is just climbing and sometimes wing-assisted hops.
She won't be in that cage for much longer, a month at best, but I'm not sure what to do right now in order to alleviate the situation. Do you have any tips? Definitely going to do a lot of free-flight with her, though, when she's ready to try to make up for it.
Also, when you free-fly your birds, is there an issue getting them back into the cage? Parsley will be allowed free-flight on the third floor of our house, and her cage is on the second, so it's not like I can leave the door open and just wait for her to come back in on her own time. I was thinking, after she was done flying, to simply call her back to me, put her in the travel cage, bring it downstairs and then move her into her regular cage. But I don't know if it would work or not- what if she doesn't want to come back to me, for example?
I have never had any problems getting my lovebird back into her cage. When I got her, she was all ready 5 years old and "attached" to her cage. Her travel/temporary cage has the little vertical lift doors, and she doesn't really care for it, but it's not hard to get her in it. (Parrots can be territorial of their cages, to some extent or another.) If Parsley likes her cage fine and her up & down commands are good, there shouldn't be an issue. You can always lure her with a treat. I sure wish I could let Pearl fly out and about, loose and all, but my dad smokes, so I can't take her out of my bedroom sometimes. Oh I dream of when I have my own place and the birds are in the living room...sigh
As far as training goes, you don't have to use verbal commands. Pearl's cue for 'up' and 'down' and 'go poop' is my hand position, and I point and tap for the 'go here' for flying.
So long as Parsley gets some flying in, she'll be ok for now. I leave room for Pearl to fly if she wants, but she doesn't. She does however, go berserk once a day or so and flaps and bounces all over - at least she has the room to do so. I have a ladder on the side and hang toys above it so she has access to all different lengths of toys, but they don't clutter the open area in the middle. If she doesn't fly, encourage her to flap her wings vigorously.