Goals update for May!
I’m separating out goals posts into their own category so that they can be easily referenced later.
To find the previous updates on goals, click here, or on the category Training goals to the right.
1) Diet.
My diet preferences can be found here.
In our last update, we had the three new parrots not eating fresh foods.
Two of the three are now happily eating fresh food without any additions.
Who are they? I’ll give you a hint.
Hint #1.
Hint #2.
Who thinks it’s still gross and refuses to eat it even if there are pellets and seeds mixed in?
Hint:
This doesn’t bother me in any real way - I generally expect it to take a bit for parrots to transition, and Cody is eating pellets like a champ, and his vet check came back in perfect order. He’ll transition, given time, just like everyone else.
2) Feather destruction.
Tlalli still barbers her feathers some, and she’s torn a few of her new feathers. However, her environmental enrichment and destroying of the world is going well and she’s definitely barbering less.
She is, however, a VERY busy parrot, who needs a lot of enrichment and has a lot going on. As one way to help that, we’re working on harness training. She will, after only a few days, shove her head happily through the aviator harness piece, so pretty soon (possibly next weekend), we’ll put it on and go outside.
If she’s always barbered, then she is. It’d be nice if her outside matched her inside, but she’s beautiful either way.
3) Cohabitation
You win some, you lose some. This isn’t coming as quickly as I would like, but it’s also not really something that can be pushed.
Tlalli and Theo have been put in the same cage a few times, however, Tlalli is extremely active, and Theo is partially handicapped (he cannot extend one wing due to a joint issue, and thus has very bad balance). Until they’re capable of being together without any fussing out of the cage, I’m not willing to try putting them together again. They will sit on the same stand and mostly ignore each other though. We’ll see how this goes. To see if it makes any difference for Theo, I’ve been encouraging him to stretch out his good wing as much as he can (it’s also atrophied), which may get him more balance over time.
Keela and Cin are also progressing - they’ll stay on the same stand, but generally, if I’m here, Keela wants to be Right Next To Me(tm), which makes it hard to hang out with Cin. We’ll see how it goes.
However, in really good news, Cin with a slight decrease in the number of pellets he gets daily, has begun to be significantly more active and willing to eat food.
SIGNIFICANTLY more active.
Cody is still ridiculously in love with Tlalli and mostly ignores Ky, which is sort of funny and sort of not. For extra bonus fun, Cody has decided abruptly that I am his favouritest person in the WORLD, which wasn’t exactly in the plans. However, you work with what you get.
And what I get is…
‘I luuuuuurve you.’
4) Flight training
Tlalli has finally upgraded to having enough feathers to start reasonable flight training. We need some better perches for her to work on the ‘stretch and flap’ method, but in extremely encouraging news, Cin flew around the house earlier, and she flung herself off the stand too.
Keela is working on a little bit of recall intermittently, but nothing formalized.
Cody and I have just begun step-up/recall training, so hopefully I’ll have an update on this one next month.
‘I shouldn’t need to step up. I should just sit here and be beautiful.’
That’s where we are now. :)
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.