kinma
New member
- Mar 12, 2018
- 1
- 0
- Parrots
- Jos - Male Eclectus || Pookie - Female pineapple green cheek conure
Hey there,
After enjoying our green cheek conure for the last few years, we had been looking into adopting something bigger. Friends that manage a parrot hotel gave us the opportunity to adopt a 3yo eclectus named Jos, who's previous owner was moving and sadly couldn't take the bird with him.
Jos has been with us now for four days and we are just getting to know each other and obviously testing boundaries. The people from the hotel said he was really quiet and loving and we can definitely confirm the second part...the first part, not so much. Jos has been talking non stop during the day and has a wonderful vocabulary, we've already been teaching him new words and we love how fast he learns. However, in the morning he makes quite a tantrum when he notices someone is awake. (high pitched squeal and squawking)
SCREAMING
The noises in the morning stop when he get's to come out of his cage. However, we don't want him to associate being loud with getting what he wants. So after saying goodmorning to both birds, we ignore him for a bit until he gets quiet for a second and then take him out. Is this the way to go?
DIET
In the hotel Jos was living on a diet of nutriberries. Since he moved in with us, we changed his diet to vegetables (corn, cherry tomatoes, chilli pepper, bell pepper, broccoli, carrots, some fruit topped with chia or sesame seeds) twice a day, supplemented with a few harrisons pellets. Nutriberrys are kept for treats only. After reading more thoroughly on eclectus diets, we will be changing this more towards chop and beans.
I read a couple of posts about giving seed during the day,... what seeds are we talking about?
BEHAVIOUR
From day 2, he started showing some weird behaviour and we are just wondering what he is trying to tell us? When he is not getting our full attention he does the following: he leans forward, bends a bit over, spreads his tail and wiggles his closed wings, all the while keeping them close to his body. He seems to do this to get attention, or is he just horny?
I checked the forum search function and found some posts describing this behaviour, but somehow those topics always turn into a discussion about diet/food. To us it looks more like he actively chooses to do this, rather than it being uncontrolled behaviour like the toe tapping and wing flinging we read about. (i'll try to get some video of him doing this and upload in a comment)
He's displaying mating behavior towards my girlfriend. He wants to masturbate ON her. When she's in the room he wants to be with her.
Luckily we recognised this right away and prevent him from doing "it" or immediately interrupt it. But we're worried that we might end up with a really frustrated bird. How can we distract him towards masturbating on a toy or object rather than an owner?
Jos is very clingy and doesnt know how toys work, so we are trying to teach him to play independently on his playstand and cage by teaching him to forage.
FLIGHT
His wings have been clipped his whole life, so he never learned to fly. We are seriously considering of letting his flight feathers grow out to see how he does when he can fly. Especially since our conure is a very good flyer and definitely enjoys flying around the house to get rid of her energy. We do need to consider that we live in an apartment and Jos is approximately 10X larger than Pookie :') Not to mention he will most likely be a terrible flyer in the beginning so this will be risky. Any thoughts?
Jos destroying some cardboard paper towel roll after finding the sunflower seed inside
After enjoying our green cheek conure for the last few years, we had been looking into adopting something bigger. Friends that manage a parrot hotel gave us the opportunity to adopt a 3yo eclectus named Jos, who's previous owner was moving and sadly couldn't take the bird with him.
Jos has been with us now for four days and we are just getting to know each other and obviously testing boundaries. The people from the hotel said he was really quiet and loving and we can definitely confirm the second part...the first part, not so much. Jos has been talking non stop during the day and has a wonderful vocabulary, we've already been teaching him new words and we love how fast he learns. However, in the morning he makes quite a tantrum when he notices someone is awake. (high pitched squeal and squawking)
SCREAMING
The noises in the morning stop when he get's to come out of his cage. However, we don't want him to associate being loud with getting what he wants. So after saying goodmorning to both birds, we ignore him for a bit until he gets quiet for a second and then take him out. Is this the way to go?
DIET
In the hotel Jos was living on a diet of nutriberries. Since he moved in with us, we changed his diet to vegetables (corn, cherry tomatoes, chilli pepper, bell pepper, broccoli, carrots, some fruit topped with chia or sesame seeds) twice a day, supplemented with a few harrisons pellets. Nutriberrys are kept for treats only. After reading more thoroughly on eclectus diets, we will be changing this more towards chop and beans.
I read a couple of posts about giving seed during the day,... what seeds are we talking about?
BEHAVIOUR
From day 2, he started showing some weird behaviour and we are just wondering what he is trying to tell us? When he is not getting our full attention he does the following: he leans forward, bends a bit over, spreads his tail and wiggles his closed wings, all the while keeping them close to his body. He seems to do this to get attention, or is he just horny?
I checked the forum search function and found some posts describing this behaviour, but somehow those topics always turn into a discussion about diet/food. To us it looks more like he actively chooses to do this, rather than it being uncontrolled behaviour like the toe tapping and wing flinging we read about. (i'll try to get some video of him doing this and upload in a comment)
He's displaying mating behavior towards my girlfriend. He wants to masturbate ON her. When she's in the room he wants to be with her.
Luckily we recognised this right away and prevent him from doing "it" or immediately interrupt it. But we're worried that we might end up with a really frustrated bird. How can we distract him towards masturbating on a toy or object rather than an owner?
Jos is very clingy and doesnt know how toys work, so we are trying to teach him to play independently on his playstand and cage by teaching him to forage.
FLIGHT
His wings have been clipped his whole life, so he never learned to fly. We are seriously considering of letting his flight feathers grow out to see how he does when he can fly. Especially since our conure is a very good flyer and definitely enjoys flying around the house to get rid of her energy. We do need to consider that we live in an apartment and Jos is approximately 10X larger than Pookie :') Not to mention he will most likely be a terrible flyer in the beginning so this will be risky. Any thoughts?
Jos destroying some cardboard paper towel roll after finding the sunflower seed inside