Hi, everyone. As you may know from my other thread, I am a new owner of a Timmy, a 1 year 8 month old Timneh. This is my first experience with owning a parrot. I have done LOTS of reading and have come across MANY stories and articles about plucking and feather destruction in African greys. This has got me thinking about something. I lived for many years in a third world country and over the years I visited many pet shops with African greys and came across many African grey pets owned by various people (both Timnehs and congos). In this country the mentality towards birds in general including parrots is VERY different than ours in the US. There a bird is an animal kept its WHOLE life in a very small cage (By our standards) and usually living it's whole life on a seed only diet with no toys..etc... horrible conditions compared to the way birds are kept in the US. So all these African greys (some of which were 30 or 40 years old) were kept their whole life in a very small cage eating only sunflower seeds and an occasional peanut. No toys, no out of cage time, no hands on interaction with their human owners. But a lot of these greys were excellent talkers with huge vocabularies (words and phrases). But what strikes me most when I think back on these greys, I can't remember a single African grey that I saw that had ANY feather problems!!! No plucked feathers, no barbered feathers. Nothing!! I can remember making mental notes to myself how beautiful their feathers were. How can this be??? When here in the US we spend more money and more time on our parrots than many would spend on their child!!! We hear and read and experience numerous cases of parrots that pluck and mutilate their feathers, many of which are owned by the most experienced parrot owners and living in (what we consider) 'ideal' conditions and living like a family member in their homes. Even the most experienced bird owners many times do everything in their power to prevent and deal with feather destruction in their birds but still fail. I have read numerous accounts of parrots after for example 10 years of having very healthy feathers, starting to mutilate their feathers for the silliest of reasons (like they are unhappy about the channel that is on TV or they wanted the red you not the green one!) I know I am exaggerating here with my examples but I just wanted to illustrate my point. I'm sure you all know what I mean.
This really gets me thinking. Why the difference? Is more, sometimes not better? Those other parrots that I spoke of from my past got near nothing (tiny cages, bad diets, near zero real bonds with their owners) and yet they did great!!!! Maybe (and I'm just thinking out loud), maybe WE have it all wrong??!! Maybe the diets and living conditions and excessive bonding and daily human interactions with our pet parrots is actually causing them to 'suffer' ???
Again, I repeat that I am new to parrot ownership. So these are only thoughts based on observations I have made. But I can't get out of my mind the thought that those parrots living in (what we would consider terrible living conditions) were actually living LONG lives talking and mimicking and maintaining beautiful feathers. In other words it seems to me those parrots were living much more mentally and emotionally stable lives than many of our parrots who live in 'luxury' !!!
I really don't know what to think of this.
I'd be very interested in hearing your opinions.
P.s. I realize that many (If not all) those parrots were probably wild caught and that may be an important factor. But I also know that many of them had been owned since a very young age and lived many many years from a very young age in captivity.
This really gets me thinking. Why the difference? Is more, sometimes not better? Those other parrots that I spoke of from my past got near nothing (tiny cages, bad diets, near zero real bonds with their owners) and yet they did great!!!! Maybe (and I'm just thinking out loud), maybe WE have it all wrong??!! Maybe the diets and living conditions and excessive bonding and daily human interactions with our pet parrots is actually causing them to 'suffer' ???
Again, I repeat that I am new to parrot ownership. So these are only thoughts based on observations I have made. But I can't get out of my mind the thought that those parrots living in (what we would consider terrible living conditions) were actually living LONG lives talking and mimicking and maintaining beautiful feathers. In other words it seems to me those parrots were living much more mentally and emotionally stable lives than many of our parrots who live in 'luxury' !!!
I really don't know what to think of this.
I'd be very interested in hearing your opinions.
P.s. I realize that many (If not all) those parrots were probably wild caught and that may be an important factor. But I also know that many of them had been owned since a very young age and lived many many years from a very young age in captivity.