Meet Arco

[irowiki]

Hello, I recently (with my wife) adopted a 26+ year old Amazon.

Not sure of the gender yet, but we'll go with "he" for now. His name is Arco, and compared to the budgies and cockatiel we have, he is huge!

He was living with his 91 year owner who didn't care for him anymore. We suspect he was actually the wife's bird, (the wife had passed away some time ago). So Arco has been cage confined for years, and was very bitey, lungy towards the previous owner when drove three hours to check him out. The cage looked like it hadn't been cleaned for years, and he was dusty! He had no toys either. They seemed to yell at him a lot and ignore him otherwise. He has never been to the vet except for once when he got into Avacado.

On the drive home he immediately improved, whistling with us and wanting head scritches.

We had a cage waiting for him at home, but he wasn't interested in the cage, he was more interested in us! He randomly said hello when we were talking to him, and says other words we can't quite catch yet.

He's getting less bity as time goes on, but man he bites hard! He got my thumb and it felt like a vise grip had crunched it.

He is totally fascinated with our two year old, watches him intently and calls for him if he's crying in another room. If they are in the same room, Arco squawking will make the baby scream which will make Arco squawk more which will make the baby scream louder, and you get the gist.

The wife is home all day and is slowly working on him to hopefully get him tame enough to let out of the cage eventually. We're taking him to the vet tomorrow for a nail trimming and general checkup.

I'm sure I'll have lots of questions but for now I only have one:

Do we need to worry about Arco biting off tender toddler fingers? It is the only thing that scares me with the baby being around a big bird!

Will post a video later.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

Welcome to the forum

Yes, you would need to be worried about Arco seriously harming a toddlers fingers, I have a grey with a pretty good sized beak as well and my 5 & 7 year old nieces aren't even allowed to give him treats.

He is a beautiful bird! Do you know what his diet is? It's very important that he is on pellets, if he's on seed you'll want to slowly start transferring him. He'll also need a larger cage, the cage in the photo is very small. For a idea of cage size my galah and grey(similar sized birds to Arco) are both in a cage 37" wide, 27" deep cages. You can find great deals for cages on EBay, I bought Rosie's huge cage for $240

 

[Merlee]

Congrats! If he's really active, I suggest a larger cage too.

Yep, keep little children away unless you are supervising. Birds cannot be trusted.

 

[Fae]

Arco has apparently been on walmart brand seed for a long time now, I had mentioned prior to getting him to the hubby (irowiki) that we would need to transition him over but I'm taking it slow and not trying to make too many changes all to once on him since we just brought him home this past weekend.

He's a bit hard to read as far as if he'll eat fresh fruit or not. He LOVES unsalted crackers and cracking open peanuts though. I've been using them as his reward for good work and responding to my requests such as talking and singing with me.

I'm currently keeping an eye on craigslist for cages as well, I'd knew the one we have is pretty small for him but it was only meant as a temporary while we get a bigger one. We had expected to be bringing home his old cage but upon seeing the condition of it I was very sad to see how poorly up kept it was and we decided with that and the fact our car would have a hard time bringing it home we would just get him a big new cage as soon as we could.

As for the toddler, I've got arco in my sight all day as he sits in the livingroom with me and the toddler. So when the toddler gets too close I warn him to get away from the "big bird" or "leave Arco alone, hunny". He's pretty good about it unless he sees me working with arco then he gets a bit jealous, I may have to start enforcing the toddler into his own room for a bit when I'm working with Arco to ensure the kid doesn't get any ideas about giving him treats.

I don't mind when the toddler helps with the budgies, but big bird is a nono!

Also, the most disconcering behaviour I've found in him since working with him is he screams "NO, NO, NO!!!" randomly as if the old guy we got him from screamed at him a lot, this poor bird is going to need a lot of love.

On the bright side, he's singing to me today, he's remembering a song he used to sing to his old human mum and singing it to me, something his last family said he hasn't done in years.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

It sounds like your on the right track. it's so sad that he came from a bad environment

 

[henpecked]

Welcome to the forum , glad you both found us and are involved with him. Thanks for giving an older zon a second chance. Check out some of the older threads in this section and ask questions, we'd love to help out. BTW he's a Blue Front Amazon, BFA.

 

[irowiki]

Yeah, I've been reading through the back pages, and finding a lot of useful info! We have a Sun Conure and a Cockatiel I'll be posting about later. Not to forget our budgie flock of 12 little singy thugs!

 

[ShellyBorg]

I would recommend getting one of those plastic play pens, the type that look like plastic fences, or even a metal dog exercise pen, to put around the cage. My TAG was around when the kids where little and once my daughter fell walking by and grabbed the cage to save her self. Well she ended up with a nasty bruised finger and hates the birds to this day. It will not stop a determine child from getting to a cage, but it gives a nice safety space around the cage.
I also loved my kids nap time, that was when I got to do one on work with my guy.

 

[irowiki]

We have one of those toddlers who doesn't nap unless it is in a car!

I have been brainstorming and for now he may go into the dining room which is gated off most of the time, we'll see. I like the baby gate wall idea too!

 

[Fae]

I can not whistle for crap but I try enough to encourage him!


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw2JQ4lqAvo]Arco relearning La Cucaracha - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Fae]

Arco had his second ever vet trip, his first was his owner being a dumb dumb and giving him avocado...

The vet says he's a bit under weight, a seed crack addict (we know this and are working on fixing it by always offering fruit and soon pellets) and his nails and beak were in hard shape.

I knew his nails were really bad and his beak needed some work but had no idea just how bad they were. The previous owners have NEVER had his nails trimmed so his overgrown talons have blood vessels all the way to the ends. Our vet dremel trimmed the very tips of them and asked us to come back in about 6 weeks after the vessels in his claws had healed and receded a bit to trim them back a bit more.

His beak was nicely filed down and smoothed/rounded the tip and mineral oiled to help with his flaky bits.

He was so happy and exhausted after his trip he let me pet him for a bit then settled down for a nap.

(I know that cage is messy! we're getting him an awesome 3' x 3' x 6' octagonal cage today. Will have pics of his new home when we get him set up!)

 

[irowiki]

That's hardly messy, that's him playing dig dug in his food crock!

 

[Merlee]

This will be interesting. A husband and wife on the same forum. lol.

 

[ShellyBorg]

Everything is looking good! Thank you for taking this guy to the vet! Yearly visits are the best way to save money in the long run. Can't wait to see how he does in the future.

 

[Featheredsamurai]

Sounds like it went well, it sucks his talons were never maintained!

 

[irowiki]

This will be interesting. A husband and wife on the same forum. lol.

I've seen stranger

We got a new cage today, it's a 36x36x72 octagon, needless to say Arco is going to be spoiled

 

[irowiki]

He's quite happier in the new cage!

 

[henpecked]

Good job on the cage. I would suggest slightly larger diameter perches though. Some should be about 1 1/2 " or larger diameter. Ideally his feet/toes should only reach 1/2 -2/3s of the way around the perch. What did you find to make perches from?

 

[irowiki]

The Elm tree our neighbor has that encroaches on our driveway

There's plenty of larger branches to choose from.

There's larger perches towards the middle but he doesn't like the middle!

 

[Fae]

I was hacking away at the branches with a toddler in tow so it was a bit awkward to keep him in check while sawing away at a tree.

I have some really nice fatter perches I actually wanted to drill out and do a bolt with washers and wingnuts on the ends to secure them in easier, to make high area perches for him. The ones I did in the current condition I had to whittle down the ends to fit it through the 1 inch gaps on the lower ends near the food dish, so I'd guess they're about 1.25-1.5 inches fat on that end and narrow as they go up.

Arco likes to shred the bark off the branch so I left him some smaller offshoots to go with the fatter one on the bottom so he can rip and tear til his lil BFA heart is content.

The bottom of the cage also lacks the grates since the previous owner left it open for her cockatoos so we decided to thrown in some bird litter and let him forage around. Sometimes when I'm working with him he throws his treat on the ground and yells "NO" so I walk away and notice him later digging out a peanut hidden in the mess. So he enjoys it being as it is.

I also would like to restore the tops of a couple of our cages to have toys on top so I'm looking for some nice gnarled branches for cage-top perches. Our elderly neighbour has a peach tree in her yard she prunes down so I might ask her next time I see her about having some of her clippings. Peach is a "safe" wood right? I read most fruit trees are with a few exceptions.