Enko_chan
09-29-2012, 09:27 AM
Its been a while since I've posted. I had a rough patch, followed by a busy patch. I've missed everyone here, and I'm sure there are a lot of new faces, beaks, feathers and such.
My birds are doing well. Kokoro's gotten through his horrendous molt without any plucking or picking. Prophylactic aloe baths seem to the trick. That and giving him the preen makes clean, pick makes sick mantra to chatter when the pins come. He lost and then regrew his ENTIRE tail all at once! Quakers have such thick feathers and he has the most sensitive skin I've ever seen. He's also the first and only parrot I've ever met that tells you verbally when something hurts. He's an exercise in contradictions, that one, but I'm mostly just pleased as pie that he didn't pluck and this molt is almost through. I think the most adorable thing he's done recently is his "phone calls." The other day I was making doctors appointments, and Kokoro was trying to "help". He's always been fascinated with the phone and phone voices and phone sounds. I had to go in the other room to finish my talk because the receptionist had to ask me to repeat everything which lead to Koko talking over me and confirming everything. Anyhow, when I came back, I lay down to nap and had the blankets pulled up to my face. After a few minutes, Koko starts talking in a muffled voice, sometimes in a regular voice with lots of squawks and bagocks mixed in. He's talking about how "Kristi's resting, she's laying down", "I can't come out, Kristi won't open the gate" and a lot of muffled and garbled and otherwise gibberish that I don't understand. After a while I asked him what he was doing. He says "On the phone with Benny Bird." Benny bird still won't talk to Koko, and Koko still tries talking to him, and still indignantly professes that "Benny Bird loves me" if anyone asks about it. I just thought this was very sweet and cute, and astonishingly imaginative. He also "pretends" to be me. He says "I'm Kristi, Hi Koko! I'm a girl! I'm a good girl!" He insists on having conversations with him as me and me as him. Ordinarily I would assume that a bird was just mimicking and didn't know better, but Kokoro has known perfectly well which name belongs to whom for a very long time, and as for the gender thing... Koko has a bee in his bonnet about gender, he's very aware of it, very interested in it, and he knows which is which. For a parrot, its pretty darned interesting! He sure keeps me on my toes.
Back to plucking... Koko did well this molt. Oriata on the other hand, one of the two parrotlet babies I raised who are still with me, plucks everything and isn't even molting. She plucked at her siblings in the incubator. I had to separate her from playing with Fili, despite the fact that they played well together and never fought because Fili would just sit there and allow Oriata to pluck her head bald. Fili now has all her head feathers and Oriata's chest is bald. I just ordered several "plucker" toys and have been giving aloe water to Oriata as well as Koko. I don't think she's unhappy, nor do I think she has skin problems, though. She's been plucking since the incubator, and her target seems not to matter. She's an overzealous preener. I gave her a MACAW size preen toy and she DESTROYED it in half a day and went back to plucking. I'm hoping the toys I ordered fare better... I um, hate to say this, but I cannot afford to buy her toys that look like they'd take a huge bird a month to destroy, on a daily basis. Going to order a bunch of inexpensive materials and go from there. Koko has a holee roller toy that he refused to allow back in his house after the first time, maybe if I stuff it with cheap shreddies it will be good. Its reusable, and she can't tear it down, nor is the base of the toy destroyable, presumably. Poor Oriata. Fili is doing well, though she misses playing with Oriata. The girls snuggle as close as they can get to each other a lot. I keep their houses side-by-side so they can talk. My instincts are very strong that Oriata's issue is not a physiological one, but if the problem is not remedied soon a vet visit will be in order so that it does not become one.
Their other siblings, Ruki and Midori are thriving in their forever home, too. They are well-loved, spoiled, really. They get a lot of attention and time out of their enormous palace of a cage. I brought them a present, a palm leaf star shred toy one day. They are more moderate shredders than their sisters. When they finally destroyed it and the star fell, Chris was visiting with his family. (We see the birds when we go to family outings and sometimes Chris takes care of them when their person is out of town every couple of months for a weekend.) Chris took the base away so I could use it to hang a home-made toy and ever since Ruki growls at him and hisses and attacks. We haven't been able to find any more of those palm leaf stars either. Benny and Sayuri are doing very well. Moving around perches and toys, and denying shred materials has kept them off breeding. They have mellowed out a lot. Chris still occasionally gets a nip off Benny while changing water but they don't even bother posturing at me anymore, aside from a little bit of stalking around to show me who the boss is when I take away his food dishes for cleaning.
Last but never least my sweet Lovies. Odinn All-Feather and Sweet Frey Frey. Never have their been lower maintenance parrots than this pair. They are ever a joy. They were the last I ever expected to be talkers, and they're not the way Koko and to a lesser extent Benny Bird are, but they have a lot more words than they did. Once they would talk once in a great while. Now they intersperse their flock calls with each others' names, with sounds, with very adorable body language. Always the lovie voices calling "Fwey-Fwey!" and returning "Odie!" or one say "Fwey!" and the other says "'n' Odie!" So many of the things they say are like that, words or phrases that they split between them. They call me "Kristi" and Chris "Daddy" and everything they say still has an exclamation point at the end of it. :lol When Chris calls, they hear his voice and Odie flaps his wings like crazy and yells "Daddy!" over and over. For a great long while, they refused to go to bed unless Chris and I were both in bed. I'm not really sure when that started but at some point we noticed that as soon as Chris and I were both in bed, the lovies made a bee-line for their sleep spot. One night a few months ago, I fell asleep in the living room reading, and when I came to bed it was 4 AM. I gave the lovies a "ride" to bed as an apology. Every since then, the lovies start chirping and calling to me when I head to bed, and make a racket if I get IN bed without giving them a "ride to bed." Tucking the lovies in has become a tradition. Aside from that little quirk, which is certainly no hassle and I think is pretty darn cute, these little guys have required nothing from me except the essentials, they're not loud, they're not messy, they are well behaved- they are surprisingly low-maintenance lovebirds, most importantly of all they are healthy and happy. To me, Frey and Odie are feathered blessings.
I'm happy to be back and able to do some posting. I've still go a lot on my plate but I will make a concerted effort to come around regularly. I have missed you all. Excuse this lengthy, unedited post. It takes me longer to write now and now that I've finished up, I've run out of time to proof-read. I hope to catch up with everyone soon.
My birds are doing well. Kokoro's gotten through his horrendous molt without any plucking or picking. Prophylactic aloe baths seem to the trick. That and giving him the preen makes clean, pick makes sick mantra to chatter when the pins come. He lost and then regrew his ENTIRE tail all at once! Quakers have such thick feathers and he has the most sensitive skin I've ever seen. He's also the first and only parrot I've ever met that tells you verbally when something hurts. He's an exercise in contradictions, that one, but I'm mostly just pleased as pie that he didn't pluck and this molt is almost through. I think the most adorable thing he's done recently is his "phone calls." The other day I was making doctors appointments, and Kokoro was trying to "help". He's always been fascinated with the phone and phone voices and phone sounds. I had to go in the other room to finish my talk because the receptionist had to ask me to repeat everything which lead to Koko talking over me and confirming everything. Anyhow, when I came back, I lay down to nap and had the blankets pulled up to my face. After a few minutes, Koko starts talking in a muffled voice, sometimes in a regular voice with lots of squawks and bagocks mixed in. He's talking about how "Kristi's resting, she's laying down", "I can't come out, Kristi won't open the gate" and a lot of muffled and garbled and otherwise gibberish that I don't understand. After a while I asked him what he was doing. He says "On the phone with Benny Bird." Benny bird still won't talk to Koko, and Koko still tries talking to him, and still indignantly professes that "Benny Bird loves me" if anyone asks about it. I just thought this was very sweet and cute, and astonishingly imaginative. He also "pretends" to be me. He says "I'm Kristi, Hi Koko! I'm a girl! I'm a good girl!" He insists on having conversations with him as me and me as him. Ordinarily I would assume that a bird was just mimicking and didn't know better, but Kokoro has known perfectly well which name belongs to whom for a very long time, and as for the gender thing... Koko has a bee in his bonnet about gender, he's very aware of it, very interested in it, and he knows which is which. For a parrot, its pretty darned interesting! He sure keeps me on my toes.
Back to plucking... Koko did well this molt. Oriata on the other hand, one of the two parrotlet babies I raised who are still with me, plucks everything and isn't even molting. She plucked at her siblings in the incubator. I had to separate her from playing with Fili, despite the fact that they played well together and never fought because Fili would just sit there and allow Oriata to pluck her head bald. Fili now has all her head feathers and Oriata's chest is bald. I just ordered several "plucker" toys and have been giving aloe water to Oriata as well as Koko. I don't think she's unhappy, nor do I think she has skin problems, though. She's been plucking since the incubator, and her target seems not to matter. She's an overzealous preener. I gave her a MACAW size preen toy and she DESTROYED it in half a day and went back to plucking. I'm hoping the toys I ordered fare better... I um, hate to say this, but I cannot afford to buy her toys that look like they'd take a huge bird a month to destroy, on a daily basis. Going to order a bunch of inexpensive materials and go from there. Koko has a holee roller toy that he refused to allow back in his house after the first time, maybe if I stuff it with cheap shreddies it will be good. Its reusable, and she can't tear it down, nor is the base of the toy destroyable, presumably. Poor Oriata. Fili is doing well, though she misses playing with Oriata. The girls snuggle as close as they can get to each other a lot. I keep their houses side-by-side so they can talk. My instincts are very strong that Oriata's issue is not a physiological one, but if the problem is not remedied soon a vet visit will be in order so that it does not become one.
Their other siblings, Ruki and Midori are thriving in their forever home, too. They are well-loved, spoiled, really. They get a lot of attention and time out of their enormous palace of a cage. I brought them a present, a palm leaf star shred toy one day. They are more moderate shredders than their sisters. When they finally destroyed it and the star fell, Chris was visiting with his family. (We see the birds when we go to family outings and sometimes Chris takes care of them when their person is out of town every couple of months for a weekend.) Chris took the base away so I could use it to hang a home-made toy and ever since Ruki growls at him and hisses and attacks. We haven't been able to find any more of those palm leaf stars either. Benny and Sayuri are doing very well. Moving around perches and toys, and denying shred materials has kept them off breeding. They have mellowed out a lot. Chris still occasionally gets a nip off Benny while changing water but they don't even bother posturing at me anymore, aside from a little bit of stalking around to show me who the boss is when I take away his food dishes for cleaning.
Last but never least my sweet Lovies. Odinn All-Feather and Sweet Frey Frey. Never have their been lower maintenance parrots than this pair. They are ever a joy. They were the last I ever expected to be talkers, and they're not the way Koko and to a lesser extent Benny Bird are, but they have a lot more words than they did. Once they would talk once in a great while. Now they intersperse their flock calls with each others' names, with sounds, with very adorable body language. Always the lovie voices calling "Fwey-Fwey!" and returning "Odie!" or one say "Fwey!" and the other says "'n' Odie!" So many of the things they say are like that, words or phrases that they split between them. They call me "Kristi" and Chris "Daddy" and everything they say still has an exclamation point at the end of it. :lol When Chris calls, they hear his voice and Odie flaps his wings like crazy and yells "Daddy!" over and over. For a great long while, they refused to go to bed unless Chris and I were both in bed. I'm not really sure when that started but at some point we noticed that as soon as Chris and I were both in bed, the lovies made a bee-line for their sleep spot. One night a few months ago, I fell asleep in the living room reading, and when I came to bed it was 4 AM. I gave the lovies a "ride" to bed as an apology. Every since then, the lovies start chirping and calling to me when I head to bed, and make a racket if I get IN bed without giving them a "ride to bed." Tucking the lovies in has become a tradition. Aside from that little quirk, which is certainly no hassle and I think is pretty darn cute, these little guys have required nothing from me except the essentials, they're not loud, they're not messy, they are well behaved- they are surprisingly low-maintenance lovebirds, most importantly of all they are healthy and happy. To me, Frey and Odie are feathered blessings.
I'm happy to be back and able to do some posting. I've still go a lot on my plate but I will make a concerted effort to come around regularly. I have missed you all. Excuse this lengthy, unedited post. It takes me longer to write now and now that I've finished up, I've run out of time to proof-read. I hope to catch up with everyone soon.