Abandonment Issues

Hello,
I joined this forum when I was thinking about adopting a older Amazon Mealy, that was around 2 years ago I then went a head with it and this is my first post.
I like to read what other people have to say and I'm not much of a poster myself.

I live in an apartment building and my girl tends to start screaming when I
leave the house for work, I am away for 6 hours. I've been taking the
,,easy" way out and bribing her with something delicious before I leave the house,
if she is busy with the treats she ,,doesn't care" that I'm leaving. In her annual vet check
the vet mentioned she is very overweight so my solution with the treats isn't a very smart one...

This means I will actually have to put some work into this *blushes* and I was
hoping someone could point me on a good step by step thing or help me out in
some other way.

I can list her history here to if that is helpful and behaviours but in short
she has been abandoned by her previous owners (and in sort by me)
to many times for any parrot to suffer so her issues are very understandable,
you could say she's a ,,rescue" or something like it.

Thanks
Vicky

Well, I really don't have a solution to your problem. Parrots are very noisy and they are not good apartment pets even if you did not work outside the house. I have several (I rescue) that were given up because of excessive screaming but they are all perfectly fine now... well, there is the occasional loud call early in the morning or late in the evening (foraging time), especially by the cockatoos but that's about it. My Amazon is one of my quietest birds actually, and they are usually like that. The problem with yours is that nature created parrots to live surrounded by their family all their lives and she just cannot cope with been alone. It's not only scary and stressful to her, it's completely unnatural as far as she's concerned. There is also the issue of betrayal because you (her family) is not supposed to leave her behind. Not ever. Personally, I think the only solution is to get a companion bird (preferably same species but opposite gender) and put them cage-free in a room fitted for them. If you do this, you will have two very contented and quiet parrots.

Thank you for your post Beatriz Cazeneuve , I'm just going to go on talking about her and put in a bit more explaining, maybe you'll see something I'm missing

A companion bird has been tried though not in a cage free room,
just two cages and free time. These were both male and were ,,borrowed" for this purpose, the people trying this hoped to breed from her. She ended up mutilating both male birds, now I did not try this myself, but she has meet a few Amazons and been quite grumpy towards them. This is my only parrot, I've only had budgies and lovebirds before this, I'm not very experienced, I must admit I listened to the people that told me she wasn't the type to have a companion bird, that it wasn't right for this bird, I could try myself though I have no idea were to get another bird When you say same species are you referring to another chapmani mealy, another mealy or just another amazon? The other birds were not mealy but amazons, maybe that was the problem?

She isn't loud at all, she is very quiet in general.
I do realize that parrots are loud creatures, I've had her for 2 years in my apartment and knew her for 5 before that, 7 years in total. I also know that this isn't a very long time together. She has been dumped plenty of times for screaming. She does not scream excessively at our house, she's a very quiet bird really, she did start with it when she first moved in but we always left the room when she started and came back when she stopped + showing her attention for stopping. She is a smart girl and learned very quickly, about 2 weeks. So I know that she is extremely quiet, at least compared to the noise she made when she first got here. The screaming it self (when I leave) is not really the problem, I'm worried about her, not her screaming, but the reasons behind it, she isn't happy and I want to fix that. The previous owners that I've meet all used methods of punishing her for screaming in various physically ways or with screaming back ,,no" or sushing, I'm a fan of positive reinforcement and use that with my dogs, that's why we used this method and I don't want to use any other, anything should be possible to do with pos.r.f that you or anyone else will advise.

In the next paragraph I will explain why I leave her at home knowing, that she, as a parrot is a very social creature.

I used to take her with me to work but I was pretty sure she was unhappy there since she tended to start screaming excessively, and she seemed more relaxed after the day if she could just stay at home alone, I might have been reading her wrong?
Do you think that she would prefer coming to work again? It's a pet store. A lot of new people coming and going, I just got the feeling it was to stressful for her, she didn't want to leave her ,,home" to her travel cage but was always eager to leave work to the same cage. She isn't very fond of ,,loudness" so we got rid of our television set and just listen to music with earplugs. She as a quiet bird I assumed likes quiet surroundings, she seems happier when it's quiet, but she calls me often and goes all back and forth on her perches and I reply to her with the same thing or come over to talk to her, but only if she is doing ,,nice" sounds that we want to encourage.

Maybe this helps to know is that for these 2 years I've opened her cage for her every morning and every evening (when I'm home) there is a platform right by the door for easy access and a play thingy next to that and then a parrot stand further away. She only recently went on her own free will to the platform outside the cage but has never used her play thingy or bird stand unless we put her there and she never lasts more than a minute, then she is off to her cage again (the only thing that has been there for her always). Her vet wants me to pull her cage to the middle of the floor to make her more insecure and to make her trust me more, I haven't done it as I really hate seeing her insecure, is that something you guys would recommend me doing too?
She has excellent plumage (vet) and does not bite her self (anymore, used to) this vet has known the parrot for a few years. She interacts with me quite happily but gets extremely nervous when out of her cage, she likes boys far better than girls and seems to like me worst of all girls. It's not in my nature to force myself upon animals so I've given her time, let her get closer to me on her own terms but my boyfriend is the one that physically interacts with her. Though I'm the only one she has showed ,,mating" behaviour towards, that confuses me a lot, I thought that when they do ,,that" to you it means they like you quite much...?

Punchline is that she has reacted very badly to meeting other parrots, no matter species or sex and doesn't freely want to leave her cage, let alone be in a separate room, but as I said before I truly have very little experience so I probably am doing it wrong or understanding her wrongly. I started her on Harrison when I got her, she was on seeds before that, something that was not working for her.

I see your point and it is a good one, as for no solution I guess I'm confused about what to do, she doesn't seem to like work, she doesn't seem to like other parrots and now she doesn't seem to like home alone but used to like it. I guess I was thinking that maybe ,,finally" she was expecting something more from me than just being there and talking to her maybe I could start clicker training (do it with the dogs anyway), that maybe this ,,changed" behaviour was because now she wants more from me? And someone here might have some ideas as to how to proceed if she indeed wants more from me now.

All the behaviors you describe are typical of a bird that was not only poorly socialized but also neglected and even abused and, I might as well tell you, they are not easy to rehabilitate. Well, actually, let me rephrase that, they are easy to rehabilitate in the sense that there is very little work you need to do but they are not easy in the sense that they take a loooooong, loooooong time to start showing normal behaviors.

I agree with you that bringing her to work is stressful to her. Parrots like her are insecure birds and that translates into stress, something not desirable at all for any animal but much less for parrots that are already stressed out by the unnatural living conditions of captivity even under the best of circumstances. Of course, the fact that she is alone in a cage during the day does not help matters as what she really needs is the constant reassurance of a trusted companion next to her. Now, I've only known one bird that did not like other birds and that was a female ekkie. She did not recognize herself as a bird and feared all others. Plus, female ekkies been the dominant gender of the species and naturally aggressive, she attacked other birds. But I would not expect that of an amazon. In reality, amazons are the easiest and the hardest of birds to keep because they tend to be more 'wild' in their behaviors than other species like greys, toos, macaws, etc. They are natural good eaters who enjoy their veggies and fruits, they absolutely love their baths, they are mostly couch potatoes, entertain themselves quite well, not real bad chewers and they tend to form deep bonds with other birds very easily so, from an owner's point of view, they are not the most cuddly and needy bird and they tend to have their own opinions as to how they should be treated so they are not the easiest pet but, from a rescuer point of view, they are great!

It's a shame you have to work outside the house because what she needs is quiet, steady company for a long time so she can relax and learn self-assurance. If this was a bird that came to me, I would do the same I do with all other birds, just leave her alone in her cage (I do cage them for quarantine until they are fully vetted and they have been transitioned to my own diet -I don't feed pellets, I make gloop for them) letting her absorb the noises, sights and routines of the birdroom and, once she can come out, I would just let the door to the cage open leaving her food inside at the beginning and slowly start weaning her out of her 'safety blanket' (the cage) but only at the pace she felt comfortable with. Unfortunately, you can't do this. Is there a room in your apartment that you can set up as her own? Because if she could be left out of her cage all day long, that would go a long way towards her rehabilitation. Cages are awful things, when you think about it, and no healthy, well-adjusted, happy, secure bird would ever choose to stay in one so the fact that she does is very, very telling of her psychological state.

You have an almost impossible situation in your hands, I am afraid, because I don't see how you can provide what she needs... Have you considered a daily boarding arrangement? I know a lady who owns a grooming salon who cares for the birds of working people during the day, they get to be outside their cages all day long and interact with other birds then, in the evening, they go home with their owners. Not the best solution but better than nothing. You could also see if you could find a friend, neighbor, relative, pet sitter that could come for a couple of hours to let her out and interact with her in the middle of the day so as to break up the 'lonely' time. Maybe somebody with a nice, quiet amazon... I don't know what the circumstances were of her been introduced to those two other birds but I've never heard of an amazon who did not like other amazons (and although it's better to find them mates of their own species, they do bond with other amazons and even with birds that are not like jardines, pionus, etc). It's possible that the whole thing was mishandled because, for what you have told me, her previous owners were not what you would call bird-savvy.

Personally, I think that you might have to consider rehoming her to a place where she could be dealt with by somebody with experience in birds with personality disorders... somewhere where she would not be rehomed again and where she could take her own sweet time in regaining back her self-esteem, where she could have company 24/7 and where she could learn normal behaviors. Somewhere like The Oasis or Foster Parrots or Project Perry or Best Friends or some place like that. Problem is, good luck getting them to take her because they are all operating at over-capacity and are not taking birds in any longer. You might find a private sanctuary if you look hard enough. I take in birds like her when I have the room and they do very well in the birdroom. I have a grey that was practically catatonic when she came to me, a failed breeder and chronic plucker that had only feathers on her head and who would just perch in this one stick inside her cage and nowhere else. But you should see her now! She still plucks her chest and her legs are bare because of follicle damage but she forages around the room, she flies, she vocalizes, gives kisses, takes baths and has even gotten herself a boyfriend! Of course, it took over four years of very slowly expanding her horizons a little bit at a time to achieve this. But it can be done.

Let me tell you something. Some people think rehoming a bird is always a bad thing, that it's some kind of a personal failure and a betrayal to the bird but, if the bird has problems you cannot solve and it's rehomed to the right place, it's a selfless act of love and charity because regardless of how much we might want to help a bird, if the help the bird needs is beyond our capabilities, the best thing is to admit this and do right by the bird. I am sorry I couldn't be of more help but I really don't know what else to tell you.

You have actually been of great help and I do appreciate it very much.
Finding her a new home was of course as you pointed out something I
said I would never do and after seeing her dumped time and time again
in ,,my" pet store I had decided I was the final place. I never thought
she was ,,normal" after what she has been through, there was even
a brake in in the pet store and she was abducted by people with drug problems.
She ,,vanished" for 8months and amazingly was recovered again,
this is a small country and at the time there were only 4 mealy amazons here
(only know of 3 in total) she being the only chapmani.
I bought her because she was a property to every one else,
even the cops and the insurance company,
I know it does not make sense to spend so much money on a bird
in that condition but as a ,,property" she would have been sold
again and again. There is not one parrot shelter in Iceland nor
do I know of anyone with a private rescue thingy like yourself.
We are tiny, I'm in the pet trade
and there for know the few businesses that are involved. We have one
shelter in Iceland, it's a cat shelter that does euthanasia every week.
And one storage pound for dogs but not a dog shelter.
So until I come across some one that would be ideal for her I should
do my best to right by her.

We have a spare room that we've been using as a computer/office/guest room,
I should be able to change things make a room just for her,
if I do so would you recommend me moving her cage in there?
Also during the summer it doesn't get dark outside here, at all,
in the fall it starts with one hour, then two and slowly increases until
it doesn't get bright outside. So I think I would have to close the window
light somehow if she is going to be free during nights, I do provide her
with artificial lighting during winter and would continue to do so,
I should be able to make seasons with that and closing the window off.
Is there any particular time zone I should be trying to mimic?
(I'm only asking because you are very helpful and willing)
I'm thinking eastern Ecuador, something close to were she originally comes from,
but maybe that's not what I should do?

I'm not entirely sure what gloop is but I'm guessing it's the fresh
cooked veggie stuff? I've been giving her as a ,,treat" this mixture:

boiled brown rice/boiled kidney beans/boiled carrots/boiled squash/broccoli

Is that something close to it? I'm a bit scared to take her off the Harrison
since it did wonders for her, she's so pretty now but I did read up on
that making this sort of food for them was better than pellets so I've been
making it as a treat, along side when I cook for us, sometimes I add
something more to it, she really likes the harrison pepper thingy so I've
sometimes added a bit of chilli, and sometimes I add the aviX sunshine factor.
I don't mind doing that and I make our own dog/cat food to.
Is that what you mean by gloop?

About meeting other parrots, I was not there when she mutilated the other
male amazons but as I understand it one of them can not fly after the bites
she gave him. She did kill one lovebird on my watch, totally my fault, something
I am very ashamed of.
When we've meet other pet amazons it has been in the store so maybe
that all together was the problem, she doesn't seem to like the store so
why should she want to talk to other birds there, the other Amazons were
very friendly and pulled their owners right to her, she then made weird sounds
and looked fierce so they backed away, me being told what she did to the other
male amazon asked the owners to listen to their birds body language
as they did not want to be close to her any more, that's really all I've tried.
Maybe if I make this room for her and bring another bird home and keep
it in a cage in the living room similar to your quarantine that would work better?
She is supposed to be 14 years old what age should the preferred male
amazon be? I might have to import it and that can take quite some time,
but if I make her the room then she should be able to wait a year or so?
While I save up for it?

Now another thing that I wonder, If I get her a male amazon what do
I do to prevent her from breeding?

Thanks again for all your input, it has given me new stuff to google
and reconsider, I do love this bird even though she doesn't like me much,
and I will give her up if the right people come along.

Oh, geez, yes, that changes things a lot, I thought you were in the USA. So, yes, do give her a room of her own and keep her cage-free 24/7, that will make a HUGE difference to her. It might not seem like it at first (she might spend her days in or on top of her cage at the beginning) but, in the long run, it will. Do make sure this room is parrot-proof, though (no electrical wires or dangerous stuff -plastic, etc) she can chew, no appliances she can knock over, no furniture she can damage, steel screens in the windows when they are open, no fans, etc. It's very important that you put a food quality full spectrum light overhead because it's the only way she will produce serotonin (the 'happy' hormone) as they need the UV light for that and only good quality FS have it (do not use UV bulbs, they were created for reptiles and amphibians and can damage birds eyes -I know of a cockatiel that went blind because of them).

And yes, I would try to introduce her to another bird down the line -you would have to wait until she feels comfortable in her new room before you do this and do it very gradually and under supervision. If she bit another bird so badly that the bird lost the use of a wing, they must have been caged or the other bird must have had a severe clip because, otherwise, he would have flown away from her so make sure they are both fully fledged and know how to fly.

Gloop is a dish made of a mixc of cooked grains (like wheat, brown and wild rice, triticale, oats, barley, teff, spelt, quinoa, etc), pulses (beans, more in the warm months -longer days- and less in the cold ones -shorter days) and veggies (mine has corn, carrots, sweet peas, green beans, wax beans, broccoli and sweet potato). I make up different flavors by adding other stuff and different spices to it so they don't get bored by eating the same thing every day (for example, the one I call 'apple pie gloop' has dried apple chips, raisins, honey and cinammon - the one I call 'pizza gloop' has chopped sundried tomatoes, black olives, peppers, white pepper, paprika, a touch of garlic and oregano) and I alternate one day spicy, one day sweet. This is what I feed all my birds (from budgies to cockatoos) in the morning along with a piece of raw fruit, one of raw veggie and a leafy green, different ones every day of the week to ensure a wide range and good nutrition. And don't dispair if she doesn't eat them at the beginning, it takes a long time to convince them these new things are good food but, eventually, they do eat them.

In order to reproduce a more 'normal' daylight schedule, I suggest you use dimmers for your overhead lights and place an appliance on the floor (maybe even under a table) so, at a certain time, you start dimming the overhead lights, then you turn on the soft light on the floor and turn off the overhead, finally, you turn off the one on the floor. This way, you are emulating the effect of the sun going down by reducing intensity and lowering the angle where the light is coming from. Now, you need to make it so at different times of the year they get different daylight hour periods to establish photoperiodism. This will make her body produce sexual hormones only during breeding season which should be during the warm weather months. The idea is for her body to have the seasons birds have in the wild. All birds are photoperiodic but tropical birds do not use photoperiodism as trigger for breeding, they use weather and diet instead, but, in captivity, where birds live indoors and get the same rich and abundant diet all year long, it becomes imperative to expose them to different daylengths. I would make it so she gets fourteen hours of sleep during the cold weather months and only ten during breeding season. People talk about 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness but it's very hard to control breeding if you do that.

The room
Changing the room for her will take some time, there are a lot of dangers in there, making it ,,parrot proof" as you put it. We had her in this room in the beginning (in a cage, never tried cage-free before) but that seemed to upset her, being in a separate room, she kept calling us for attention (which we ignored, but gave her it when she was quiet), so that's why I moved her to the living room, where we go on about our day, it's open to the kitchen, rather big room for an apartment. Won't she be scared if I leave her in this room? Is it appropriate for me to spend time with her while she is getting accustomed to it? Or do people usually just leave them in peace while they figure things out by them selves?

Lighting
We have been using some sort of lights meant for humans but produce UV as an by-product, some thing we read somewhere was more appropriate for birds than the reptile lights and wouldn't hurt them, I'm thinking those are okay, hopefully, these are FS come both in T5 and T8, we already have a dimmer on it we just have to move it to the other room 10 hours and 14hours make sense to me.

breeding
You said control breeding? Does that imply that she will breed? Maybe a another female partner might be better instead of someone she actually can reproduce with? I've seen to many egg bound birds to want that stuff for her, to bad there isn't a surgery for them like dogs/cats.

Gloop
seems to be similar to what I'm already feeding as treats, when you google the word you get a some parrots named gloop and then posts by you on various forums
I think I saw it in some magazine and copied it from there, either way she really likes it as treats so feeding more shouldn't be a problem.

Room: All my birds are in the birdroom because the idea is for them to live cage-free and be able to fly, forage and establish bonds with other birds. The ones that are more deeply bonded to people do go through a weaning period where I pay more attention to them and spend more time while gradually reducing the time and intensity of the attention so they 'learn' to be birds, again.

Lights: Here in USA, commercial FS lights are not really that good so we need to buy the better ones online. The ones I buy are the reflector or flood lights on this page (Verilux® Full Spectrum Incandescent Light Bulbs for Home or Office provide Bright Clear Light) - I use the 100 watt in the winter and the 60 in the summer (they get sunshine through the windows). They have a CRI of 94 and a Kelvin of 5550 which is the highest I've found.
Also, you need to switch from 10 to 14 hours by doing only 15 minutes a week because their bodies cannot adjust to a bigger difference or any faster.

Breeding: No need to panic. Getting her a male will not mean that she will breed. She might go through the motions of courtship, nesting, laying, setting which is very healthy for her to do but just switching the real eggs with plastic ones takes care of the actual breeding. As to getting eggbound, let me tell you something, I bred canaries for over 15 years and now care for many bonded pairs of psittacines in my rescue and I have never, ever had a single eggbound female. It's all a matter of diet and supplementing them with Calciboost, Calcivet or any other avian calcium.

Gloop simple recipe:

Put equal measures of:

Wheat (I use soft white spring in the winter and hard red winter in the summer because it has higher protein)
Oat groats
Triticale
Barley
Teff or Spelt
Amaranth or Quinoa
Lentils
Brown Rice
And one third measure of wild rice (like one cup of everything and 1/3 cup of wild rice, for example)

in a microwaveable container with twice the amount of hot water. Nuke it for 20 minutes and let it sit until it absorbs all the water.

Add one kind of beans in the winter and two kinds in the spring, summer and fall (I normally use chickpeas and black, pinto, red, kidney or mung beans).

Add flax seed all the time and sesame seed two weeks prior molting time (here, it happens mid summer so I already started adding it to their gloop).

Add thawed frozen (if you are going to use cans, make sure they are the ones without salt) corn, green or sweet peas, cubed carrots, sweet potatoes, broccoli, green beans and wax beans.

This is your basic recipe which can be frozen in small packages (if you leave the frozen baggie out overnight, it will be ready to use the following morning) or kept in the fridge (but not longer than four days). You make the flavor of the day by adding stuff to this basic recipe.