Confessions of a Parrot Owner

I am here to share my experince living with my now 3 year old Senegal Parrot to highlight both of my best times with him as well as times where I have failed him as parrot mom.
I wish I could say I brought my first bird into my life under ideal circumstances. Though I did spend a good year of research before hand and had pretty much memorised "The guide to a well behaved Parrot" as well as " Guide to the Senegal Parrot" both by Mattie Sue Anthon I didn't seriously take into consideration what my life would be like 10,20 and 30 years down the road.

I first layed eye's upon Cyrus, a small terrified Sennie at my former place of employment in a large cage with bar spacing suited for a macaw, not so much for a sennie. He had no toys, and no cagemates just a big rusty old cage with some branches. Everything I had read over the course of the last year told me no,no,no,no,NO; don't buy from a petstore. Yet I couldn't help over the next month falling head over heals for the little guy. I convinced my employer to allow me to add toys to his cage, and played with him on my breaks trying to teach him step up and trust humans. Though he had been "hand fed" by the staff at the store he was never socalised and was the only bird from his clutch that the store had bought so he had never learned how to behave around humans or other birds. Instead he sat in his cage, day after day for 9 months in a loud, dusty enviroment in an open space where customers passed by on a regular basis.

I was 15 at the time and had the task of trying to convince my mom to please let me take home this cute little bundle of feathers. A month had passed since I had begun working at the store and I had successfully gained Cyrus's trust and had taught him how to step up. I began to bring my mom in on my lunch break on weekends to show her him. She is in no way a huge animal person but having grown up with a budgie she did have a certain fondness for birds and after a few more weeks of this I managed to convince her. He was $600 so on my $7.50 an hour pay with part time hours because of school I had to finish paying him off before I was allowed to take him home as well as pay off the cost of his cage, which was an additional $400 plus all of his toys and perchs which was another few hundred.

It took about a month as I had a bit of money perviously saved and finally the day came that I could take him home. I was so excited and had spent all week making sure his cage was perfectly set up, with lots of toys and a variety of branches. I had him setup in the living room where he could see everyone but still be far enough away from the kitchen to be safe from any fumes ( even though I ensured my mom promised not to use any teflon pans ever again). I was delighted that I had my love home and ensured he had a variety of play stands around the house where he could eat his veggies and tried to give him as much time as possible out of the cage. Deep down I still felt guilty for supporting my store as I knew we would soon get another Sennie to replace him and the chain of birds being kept in the wrong enviroment and being sold to wrong people would continue but I managed to convince myself it was ok, the whole buying from pet stores thing was in my mind, probabaly just blown out of porportion. I know better now.

The next week came time for his first vet checkup, I had found a clinic about 20 mins away that specalized in avains and exoitcs. They did a complete checkup with blood work, fecel sample and a lookover and said they'd call me back within a few days with the results. I waited patiently not worrying to much, wrapped up in my bubble of bliss convinced just becausehe came from a not so great pet store didn't mean he would be horribly ill; again I was wrong. The diagnoses came to a shock as me, he had chlamydiosis and was ordered on a bimonthly injection schedual for 8 weeks. Setting aside the very costly vet bill I felt ashmed and stupid for not admitting to myself that their was a very real chance of this happening and I was grief striken wondering how advanced it was. Luckily Cyrus survived and after being out about a grand he was left physically in poor conditions, his feathers were full of stress bars and looked very unhealthy, despite being on a good mix of zupreem pellets, millet and fresh veggies.

The next year and a half of our relationship had it's normal up and downs but I had long since gotten into the routine day to day rituals of cleaning for,caring for and loving Cyrus. He, like all parrots had his bad days and would let me know with a hard nip but I was conditioned to ignore it and kept on loving him anyways.

At age 2 and a half he began to enter into the terrible two's or what seemed like it, he became more irritable and unpredictable with alot of screaming. For ahwile he refused to let me near him and would lavish my mom with attention. I was fine with this as I knew this was a routine part of not only the terrible twos but of parrot love triangles and continued to do the cleaning part of living with him and left the emotional providing to my mom and stepdad. With time he beagn to re accept me and after his 3rd birthday on Sept 14th/06 we were pretty back to normal besides he no longer displayed all of the same babyish behaviours that he used to.

Then in the end of October I made a descion which greatly hampered our relationship when I brought home my first dog, another descion I wish I could say I made with a little more caution as he to came from the same privately run petstore, from one of the BYB's we bought from. This is not something I am proud of but something I will live with as my commitment to all of my pets will always come first. Though in no way did I ever consider Duke, the pup a replacement of Cyrus, however he did take up alot of my free time especially as he was only 9 weeks old and very very hyper and destructive.

For the first time in the 2 and a half years that Cyrus and I had lived togther I had to choose something over him and Cyrus began recieving less and less time out of his cage. Though I tried very hard to keep everything the same as it had always been it was very hard to find time for both of them as both were very high demand pets and Cyrus, regretablly was placed on the back burner. This continued for about 2 months with Cyrus maybe coming out for 20-30 mins at tops to eat dinner with us. I knew this wasn't fair to him but found it almost impossible to try and manage the two. He began to develop screaming problems during the day, something again I knew was my fault.

I took a step back and was disgusted that I had placed my pride and joy in such a terrible situation: Me, the always proud parrot mom who went out of her way to ensure he had the best every day, from new toys, to the best foods, to making sure he had at least 2-3 hours of out time a day at the min, who spent most of her off days at dollar stores and walmart buying materials to make him new stuff had allowed my baby to become emotionally deprived. It hurt me very much to acknowledge this as I wanted more then anything to be able to shrug it off and say most people do it but I knew these were just excuses.

I wanted to step up the plate and way to ensure that both Cyrus and Duke could happily co exist in my life for their normal life spans with me happily no matter what happened. I found as I began spending more time with Cyrus every day my old love for all things avain was re born. I began to enjoy seeing Cyrus every day, something for the last 4 months I can honestly say gave me a headache as the burden of knowing I was mistreating him made me feel guilty so I disconnected to save myself, again something I am not proud of. I switched Cyrus on to a foarge only feeding routine, something by itself which seems to of made him 100% happier and keeps him busy all day long, abnormal screaming ( as we all know our birds like to be herd) ceased completely.

Over the next month I worked hard at increasing Cyrus's out of cage time and interaction time back to it's normal 2 hour period as well as his normal eating dinner and cuddle tv cuddle time as well as meeting Duke's physical and emotional needs.

We are now just starting to get everything in sync and it takes great guilt off of me to know both of my babies are very happy and secure in their homes.

Though I do not know what the future holds for the three of us I am commited and deterimind to keep my furry and feathered kids with me wherever life takes me. I am taking a vet tech course in college this coming fall and plan on having my first bird room when I can afford my own place and hopefully adopting a new play mate to share both my life and cyrus's life with.

Being a parrot owner is more then can ever be learned from reading books alone and though as I look back at the last 2 and a bit years I know their were times when I failed Cyrus as an owner but I will never regret my descion to bring him into my life and the times we have shared togther, good and bad have taught me so much and I cheerish them greatly. The saying a dog will unconditionally love you while a parrot requires unconditional love couldn't be closer to the truth and so I guess the main point of my post was just to remind new and old owners alike that when we made a commitment to our birds, we made a permant one, and we owe it to them to honour that as best as humanely possible through the good and bad.

Anyhow thought it would be a good way to introduce myself and Cyrus

Cheers

Kayla

P.S- Pics of Cyrus and his cage





Forage area one



Forage area two



Forage area three ( already destroyed but usually covered in shredded paper towel which needs to be shifted around to find food)



And lastly Cyrus and I

Very cool. You write very well. Glad to meet you.

Hello!
Well done! I'm glad that you stuck it out & realized what you needed to do. I'm also very glad that you feel that when you take on a parrot, its a life long commitment. It is! Some people don't realize how much work & time it takes to care for a parrot properly. They go into a pet shop sees a parrot & maybe it says "hello" & oh, he's sooooo cute! I have to have him! Then when they find out how much work they really are, they give them up! Not fair! Thats how I got my Milo, a Timneh african grey. I'm the last home he will have. He's here to stay! I'm so lucky to have him! I'm also owned by a congo african grey, named Toko, he just turned 4 months on the 7th of oct.. He's a lovey! back to you, I wish you luck & alot of joy with your feathered friend!

That was a very nice introduction. I own a pinneapple green cheek, i just bought him a couple weeks ago as a newly weaned baby.His name is Dakota. Hes so pretty though. I am a new parrot owner.