Update on my birds…

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about my little angels..just thought I’d give a quick update on my life with my flock.  Where to begin..well, I’ve recently developed asthma (since April, and quite suddenly I might add). I saw an allergist after a couple of months of being convinced of my imminent death.  And it turns out that I do have a slight allergy to my parakeets.  I was convinced that it was my cockatiels, since allergies to cockatiels are as common as allergies to cats. They produce quite a bit of dander, but surprise of all surprises, it turns out that it’s my parakeets. No matter, I’ll never get rid of them.I came to this conclusion after much agonizing, and a reminder from my vet that there are too many birds out there who are emotionally devastated because folks seem to think that birds are just throw away pets who are emotionally devastated every time you just give them away.  It sometimes takes months or even a year before they come out of the depression that losing their family causes them.

I did move them out of my bedroom and into my son’s room, which took some getting used to for them. They don’t seem to care for change much. You’d think that I’d moved them into a new home as much as they pouted. It took them two weeks to come out of their cage. Now life is back to normal, my little fighter jets are back at it and flying around like mad again. And Oscar’s (my newest addition to my parakeets and only other male in our flock) wings have FINALLY grown out. He is becoming just as agile as the girls. Well, he’s doing his best to keep up anyway. At least they can’t knock him to the floor anymore while ganging up on him. Women, they sure can be cruel to the poor little guys in the flock.  But Oscar IS a chicken, not a parakeet. Of this I am convinced. Talk about species confusion..poor guy has spent his life as a chicken in a parakeets body.

Oh yeah, Carter built a birdhouse in shop last year and I put it on top of the flight cage to see how my babies would like it . Snowball has laid total claim to it. No one else had better mess with her bird house. Whenever i can’t find her, i have finally learned that she’s probably just hanging out in the birdhouse. I stopped panicking and started looking there first. And that is where I find her every time. I just hope that she isn’t trying to nest in there (as I said, owning these complex creatures is a learning experience and if I end up with babies I guess I’ll deal with it, and take the damned bird house away).

What else? My poor little Zeus got sick a couple of months ago. I took her to the vet and she had a sore throat, fever and was just feeling rotten in general. Ten days of antibiotics and $230 later, she was just fine. I’m figuring out just how expensive owning birds are, especially sick birds. Lets just hope that we don’t have anymore sick birds for awhile.

Last but not least , I can’t write this blog without giving an update on the famously spoiled, obnoxious and favorite scooter, can I? He still loves “Uptown Funk”, by Bruno Mars and makes me play it for him 3 or 4 times every day. He sings and dances to it (he also makes me sing and dance along with him). But once in awhile he decides that it’s his show and I’m stealing it and he’ll attack my face if he decides he wants to sing alone. I’ve finally (FINALLY) broken him of sleeping with my husband and have gotten my bed back. He now prefers to sleep in his cage, and you do not dare stick your hand into said cage once he is in bed for the night. Unless you want your finger taken off, of course. He still sits on my shoulder 8 hours out of the day, until my son gets home that is. And then when my husband gets home my son and I are both forgotten…and he has decided that my sister is part of the flock now. He actually associates her with his music. And so when he sees her “uptown funk” is a must. He has also become a bully with my female cockatiels..he can’t seem to decide if he wants to mate with them or terrorize them. sometimes he does both, simultaneously. Men! Right? If there is one thing that I’ve figured out, they are all the same in the animal kingdom. Big babies, bullies, demanding and genetically spoiled. And so this is my update…more later 🙂

New Flight Cage

This is the new flight cage that my husband bought for my birds. As you can see, I am not the only one who spoils them. He blames it all on me, of course, but secretly he buys them things and lets everyone believe that I am the “crazy bird lady” who goes overboard and buys them anything and everything.  This cage is big enough for 50 birds, and that is probably not an exaggeration. When I bought my poor little parakeets in the bird store there were probably 25 or 30 in a cage 1/10 this size.  And so I’ve moved my cage yet again…remember when i told you that my parakeets ran my cockatiels out of their cage? Well the moment they laid their eyes on this newer, bigger cage they ran them out of this one and decided that they could have their old one back.  I now let everyone hang out during the day in this cage, in my sons room. I put the cockatiels back in my room at night in their old/new cage because of frequent night frights. I don’t want them to have them and sleep through it. It’s happened several times now and it terrifies me. Scoot hurt a wing a few weeks ago during an episode in the middle of the night. Thank God it wasn’t a bad one. But anyway, just wanted to share with everyone my birds deluxe mansion of a bird cage 🙂

What’s new with my birds…

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about my babies.  My cockatiels have come such a long way since we first got them back in December. They are just starting to feel at home in their new home. It definitely takes lots of patience when you decide to adopt adult cockatiels who’ve lived in multiple homes.  But the journey has been well worth it.

Of course my baby, Scooter, whom I’ve had since he was seven weeks old, is as spoiled as ever.  He is becoming a hormonal teenager, however. The word bratty comes to mind… He still thinks that my shoulder is supposed to be his permanent perch, and he still sleeps with my husband most nights. My girls, however, have decided that they like to sleep in the bed on occasion as well. My beautiful lutino kept having night frights last week, and so I put her in the bed with us. She slept soundly on my pillow for the rest of the night.  They are so like children.

It has taken six months to even begin to gain their trust. I’ve only just begun to be allowed to hold them. They are such emotional creatures. I know that I tend to anthropomorphize my animals, but they really do experience a whole range of emotions. They can be moody, jealous, and just plain mean at times. They have good days and bad days, just like us. But most of the time they are very sweet.  Zeus, my pied cockatiel, was much easier than Crazy, my lutino. She was much more trusting right from the beginning. But it definitely took Crazy  longer to gain her trust. She was a very sad little bird, almost as if she grieved for her previous family. I never thought I’d see the day when she would want me to hold her. But that day has finally come, and some days I wish I hadn’t started that habit. Walking around with three jealous, fighting cockatiels on your shoulder can be quite daunting, especially when you are trying to do housework. When they decide that they don’t want to be put down, they will bite.  No one has drawn blood yet, thankfully. Well, not with me anyway. My poor mom is a different story for another day 🙂  Scooter loves her big cloud of white hair. He loves to sit on her head for some reason.

We did get a new male parakeet, Oscar.  Males are definitely different from females. He is much more vocal, and he wasn’t hand tamed. And he is definitely a little meaner. He can bite! Hard! Our breeder was going through a very stressful time in her life and just didn’t have the time to hand tame this clutch. And so here we go again. I bought my first two parakeets from a pet store, which i said I would never do again. I’ve had them since September, and they have only started to let me near them in the last few months. I can get within inches of them, and sometimes they’ll even flutter inches from my face as if they are deciding whether or not they want to perch on me as well, along with my cockatiels. I’m convinced it has nothing to do with me, however. They just like to torture my cockatiels, which have to be the biggest wimps ever.  Sometimes at night, when they are sleepy, they’ll let me rub their tummies. And so I know they aren’t frightened of me. They just don’t want to be touched, but I’m still holding out hope that someday they’ll allow us to handle them. And so back to Oscar…our breeder did clip his wings. I’ll never do that to another parakeet again. He occasionally tries to take off and fly with the other parakeets, only to land on the floor pretty hard. I think he sometimes forgets that he can’t fly. Poor little guy.  And did i mention that he bites? Really hard? Ouch.  Cockatiels aren’t agile flyers like parakeets. They fly into walls and everything else. Parakeets are very, very agile. I never worry about them flying into windows or walls. And so i really see no need to clip them. They stay in my bedroom and never go near an open door, so I don’t worry about them escaping. My cockatiels, on the other hand, do occasionally like to walk around the house perched on my shoulder.

And so this is my update….hopefully I’ll have something else to write about soon. They are such fascinating and intelligent animals. And entertaining. I can sit in my room and watch them for hours and just laugh. Oh, did i mention that Scooter has started to speak? He laughs at me, and he says “what are you doing”? He wolf whistles, and mimics my parakeets (which can be really hard on the ears) and a multitude of other birds outside. He makes these noises and I’m never quite sure if it’s a normal male cockatiel vocalization…and then i go outside and recognize the sounds that he makes coming from the wild birds outside. He’s definitely very vocal. And adorable, of course 🙂

Should I get a cockatiel that isn’t yet weaned?

Should I get a cockatiel that isn’t yet weaned?.

Should I get a cockatiel that isn’t yet weaned?

I can’t honestly say that I would raise a baby cockatiel all over again anymore than a brand new mother could say that she would gladly have another baby while she is still being awoken to screams in the night, sleeping very little,  in the throes of labor, or watching her two year old lying on the floor of the grocery store kicking and screaming because he’s been told no while your face must be at least 10 shades of red because you swore that your child would never behave like THAT! I look at my two adult cockatiels, and I know that one day my baby, Scooter, will get there. But in the meantime!

I think that cockatiels are among the sweetest, gentlest animals ever created. But they can behave like mischievous children, especially when they are young. I will never claim to be an expert on avian behavior, but I certainly did enough research before I decided to have birds in my home.  I thought that I would at least be prepared.  Let me tell you that no amount of reading can prepare you for these amazing, complex and at the same time simple creatures. They each have their own personalities, much like children. As I sit here writing this, for example, my little guy is running up and down my keyboard trying to help. I guess he wants to have some input on what I have to tell the world about his behavior 🙂

This morning I learned a thing or two. I’ve been trying to figure out for days why he keeps banging his beak on me and my belongings.  I’ve read that it is typically a male behavior, displayed to show ownership or dominance over something or someone. Not so with my baby. He does it out of frustration. We recently taught him how to wolf whistle.  I thought it would be cute. But he now uses that whistle to tell me when he wants something, constantly. And sometimes it can take quite awhile before I figure out what it is that he wants.  If I don’t figure it out quickly he starts banging that beak on my head or on whatever surface he may be sitting on when he can’t get to me. This morning he simply wanted a nap. It finally dawned on me what all of the screaming, wolf whistling, and beak banging was about when he couldn’t hold his eyes open any longer. And thanks in part to my husband, his naps are taken ON someone. Once I layed down with him he sprawled out on my chest and out he went! I’ve never seen my other birds sleep so deeply and so it actually startled me a little. I do have a sneaking suspicion that the bit o’ honey he got into this morning had something to do with his hysterics (we’ll be more careful with sugar in the future).

And so what would I tell someone if they asked me if they should get a cockatiel who isn’t yet weaned? I’d say that if you want a bird who is going to bond with you just as your own child would, then yes. The feeding experience is definitely a bonding one. IF you are prepared for having a child who only weighs a few ounces dictating your life in the same way that having an infant dictates your life. If you are prepared for such a tiny little thing to raise so much hell..The temper tantrums, the screaming, the getting into things…then by all means get a bird that isn’t yet weaned. But you will also have a bond of complete trust and love. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.  And so just like a new mom I don’t think I’m prepared to do it all over again! Not yet, anyway.

Yes, birds REALLY are lactose intolerant, lol

And last night my husband finally learned that lesson.

As he was eating his bowl of cereal, he kept letting Scooter have a  little. I kept telling him “don’t let him drink that milk”. Of course, he doesn’t listen to me. Ever. And so thirty minutes later,  he learned this valuable lesson.  He described it as “an explosion that covered him from head to toe”. It got in his hair and my son was eating a piece of fish lying next to him. I’ll say no more.

Please, when you are told that birds are lactose intolerant, do yourself a favor and just believe it! 🙂

But on a serious note, it’s OK to give your bird yogurt and cottage cheese. These are dairy products, but they contain a live organism that consumes the lactose.

The difference between cockatiels and parakeets..

This morning has been eventful..my parakeets are still in the cockatiels cage, and so my cockatiels are still hesitant to go in and out of it. This morning Zeus and Crazy managed to climb into the parakeet cage and now are afraid to come out. They perch on my finger, they WANT out, but when it comes time to come out of the small door, they panic and fly back up onto the perch. And so I’ll have to take the top off of the parakeet cage to get the poor things out 🙂

My baby cockatiel, Scooter, has twice now decided to ride my dog like a horse. The other day, for the second time,  I had to chase my petrified 70 pound dog all through the house while the bird was on her back.  It wasn’t easy catching her to get him off. Oh, the joys of bird ownership.  I’ve decided that the true difference between owning parakeets and cockatiels is this… If you want a bird that reminds you of the kid at school who was big and dumb but gentle, lovable and sweet, then a cockatiel is for you. If you want an extremely intelligent, crafty but very naughty  bird whose constant antics will keep you in stitches, then get a parakeet.  The trade off is that they aren’t as cuddly.  I know that this isn’t true off all cockatiels or parakeets, but it certainly is the case with mine.

And so my day begins….

My two adopted girls…

Meet Zeus and Crazy! I didn’t name them, but I figured out pretty quickly why they named the Lutino Crazy! This is their third home, unfortunately. I’ve been told that they are approximately 2 to 3 years old.  I’ve had them since the 10th of December, 2014. And so they are still getting used to us. Zeus has a huge crush on my husband. It took us awhile to figure out why she would make a strange chirping sound and stick her butt up in the air every time she saw him! I was a little shocked to find out that this is her “mating call”, and for some reason she thinks that my husband is her mate. Strange, right?  I mean, I’d never want to mate with a bird! So why would a bird think that they could possibly mate with a human? Another mystery of the bird world.

Crazy and Zeus are very bonded. Crazy (or Crazy Pants or Cray Cray, is what I call her) starts screaming this ear splitting scream if Zeus is out of her sight. She is getting better about it since she is getting used to us. But I’m  afraid that we’ll never be able to fully bond with her. She doesn’t like to be touched at all. I do have this picture of her on my shoulder. It is the one and only time that she has actually come to me and climbed on me. I was shocked when she flew down off of her perch and onto my bed and then onto my shoulder. I was also a little nervous, but she didn’t bite me, which I was almost expecting. That was about a month ago, and it hasn’t happened since. She’s not a very social bird. Zeus, on the other hand, loves having her head rubbed. Especially when my husband is doing the rubbing 😉  Zeus and my baby, Scooter seem to finally be bonding a bit. Or have at least finally excepted each other. He does on occasion like to sneak up on them and bite their tail feathers and then run. This morning he pulled Zeus’ crest as I was rubbing her head. He’s a little devil. I can’t wait until we get to experience his  hormonal years. I’m told that this is the time when he will turn into a little devil. This usually happens, so I’m told, between the ages of 1 year to 18 months.  They begin to act like crazy hormonal teenagers. And if you can get through that period of demonic behavior without killing your bird, then they return to their sweet loving selves. I can’t wait to experience that! I already have two teenage boys in my home, so my imagination is running wild with what to expect.  But I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I’m also told that he may decide to choose a family member as his mate. Yuck! Well, it is my husband that he insists on sleeping on every night. So maybe I’ll get lucky and just stay “Mom”. I’d rather not have my cockatiel doing all kinds of crazy, nasty things to me.

What to do with my crazy parakeets…

I have found myself in quite a dilemma. I think I mentioned that I bought my first two birds this past summer. Two beautiful, and hilarious parakeets. They provide hours and hours of entertainment for us. Just watching them is like watching a couple of clowns in a circus. But that has only become the case recently. When we first bought them, we really had a hard time earning their trust. I read tons of books, online forums, talked to other bird owners…but nothing really prepared me for what was to come. They are such delicate animals, that they can literally be scared to death! We bought them from a pet store and so they had never had any human contact. They were raised by their parents, not by a breeder.

And so we brought them home…we tried everything. We spent lots of time everyday by their cage talking to them and we even took them out of the cage a couple of times. One book that I bought suggested that we take them into a small room like the bathroom and take them out of the cage for 15 minutes at a time, holding them and talking to them. Well, it was obvious to me that this was causing them dangerous levels of anxiety. You could literally see their heart beating in their little chests. And so we abandoned that plan.

It wasn’t until we brought our cockatiels home that they started to show curiosity about the other birds. They witnessed the cockatiels bathing, and then they had their first bath! I was beginning to give up on ever taming these birds. And now I’m starting to see that  having these other birds around may be exactly what they needed. Birds mimic one another. They learn by watching other birds and then they copy them. Sometimes they will try new foods only because they see one of the other birds eating it.

So we moved all of the birds into my bedroom where I could keep the door shut and not cage them, and one day I decided that I would just leave the cage door open on the parakeet cage. Within a week Snowball came out just to terrorize Crazy (my lutino, and yes that was her name when i got her but it suits her well). She jumped on her back and poor Crazy couldn’t shake her off no matter what she did. This probably went on for a full minute, and then she went back into the cage. A few days later, she decided to come out again, this time to explore her surroundings. And to terrorize Crazy, of course. Our other two cockatiels are pied, but Crazy is a beautiful bright yellow lutino. This is the only reason that i can think of for their fixation on her. They never bother the other two cockatiels. There is nothing more amusing or fun for them (especially Snowball, she’s a real ham) than biting her tail and chasing her toes when Crazy is on top of their cage. Snowball is quite the acrobat, so she hangs upside down inside of the cage and chases her toes. This seems to be extremely fun for her.

Needless to say, once they came out of the parakeet cage, they decided to explore not only her surroundings, but the (what must have been huge to them) cockatiel cage. And now they refuse to leave it. They decided that they like this cage much better and haven’t been back in their cage since. Yep, the other cockatiels have been forced to pack their bags and move out! They’ve been officially evicted! I do have another cage for my baby cockatiel, which is quite large. But it’s not THEIR home, which they miss. Every once in awhile they will get brave and venture into their  home and say “to heck with you, this is MY house”, but then they quickly lose their nerve and leave again once they gang up on her. I hate putting my parakeets back into that little cage (which really isn’t that small for a parakeet cage). I have watched them blossom into these beautiful, funny, happy birds since they’ve been allowed the freedom to come and go from their cage. And the thought of putting them back into it really bothers me. I don’t want to take their freedom away from them. The changes I’ve seen in them have been amazing, even though they still won’t let me hold them, I’m holding out hope that it will lead to that one day. Bluebell will occasionally let me lighty rub her feet. But no other part of her body.

In the meantime, I will be brainstorming as to what to do to make everyone happy. Although I’m pretty certain it’s going to entail getting a much larger, expensive cage. The problem is that they suggest that the bars be much closer together for parakeet cages, which is why it’s hard to find these cages that are as large as the cockatiel cage. But so far I’ve had no issues with them getting wings caught in between bars or whatever the supposed dangers are. I’d love any suggestions!

Bird play gym

This is the play gym that we built for our birds for approximately $20 dollars. It is made of 1/2″ pvc, wrapped in coban in bright colors (self adhesive bandage used in doctors office). Coban is very expensive at the pharmacy and it’s hard to find the bright colors. At the pharmacy we payed almost 4 dollars for 5 yards per roll. I found colorful coban on amazon for approximately $1.67 a roll. It came with ten rolls. At the time, this was wrapped in flesh colored coban. I’ve since rewrapped it in purple, dark blue, light blue, bright pink, and lime green which has made it much more appealing. Birds do see in color and are attracted to bright colors. And the coban will need to be replaced often, as it gets droppings on it. The rope we had cut for us at home depot. It feels like plastic (not sure what it is made of) and it’s really easy to wipe clean. We found the design for this play gym on YouTube, and modified it some. We added the swing and a couple of other features.

Toys for birds are not a luxury, but a necessity. It’s imperative that we keep their minds busy. Boredom is not a good thing for a parrot to experience.  Parrot species are extremely intelligent, and pretty much need to be entertained at all times. If  your bird is bored and lonely, she may scream for attention. Your bird thrives on interaction with the ‘flock,’ and her flock is you! Having lots of toys to keep the bird busy is a must. I’ve found that buying a few new toys every week and rotating them regularly so that they don’t get bored with the same toys has worked well. Since we will be moving our parakeets back into our son’s room, we’ve decided to build a separate one for them. After five months, we were finally able to coax our parakeets out of their cage and now i’m really reluctant to put them back in the cage. Afterall, they think they are living in a mansion now! They just moved right into the cockatiel cage and have made themselves at home. They are so much more active and playful. They just seem so much more content!  But this time, I think I will try a hanging play gym made from natural wood that hasn’t been treated with pesticide. I’ve seen some amazing ones, and screwing toys into the wood seems like it will be a bit easier. For now we have to use panduit straps to hang the toys on the play gym, and whenever I need to take the toys down to clean them I have to cut the straps. And they are slightly expensive. Anyway, I just wanted to share the ways that we’ve found to keep our birds entertained (which really requires a lot of imagination). I’ll post the youtube video that we went by. Like I said, we got the general idea from this video, but modified it quite a bit. Thanks for reading!

On her video, she has posted another link to another video that gives exact measurements. It took me awhile to figure this out!