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Post by aaron on Nov 19, 2015 10:31:58 GMT -5
Gosh, that's unfortunate. I'm really glad to hear the mass is shrinking, however. I don't know enough about the meds used to treat fibrosis to know how much of a tradeoff it would be to simply treat him as if he has fibrosis. Seems like avoiding something so invasive as a liver biopsy would be wise, but I don't really know what I'm talking about. How is little peppy feeling?
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Post by aaron on Nov 18, 2015 19:50:06 GMT -5
Thank you for taking in this little one and trying to find his owner! He sounds like a sweetie. Feel free to ask as many questions as needed!
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Post by aaron on Nov 18, 2015 18:25:06 GMT -5
Sounds like things are going well. While I think it'll be better in the long run if David allows out-of-cage time when you are not home, it will be hard for Byron to understand if he is inconsistent about it. So, I think for now, what you are doing is a good approach. Get Byron used to not being let out when David is home, but continue making sure that David is well socialized with Byron when you are both home. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of tips when it comes to introductions to new people, but the others might.
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Post by aaron on Nov 17, 2015 14:57:46 GMT -5
Welcome! I'm not very experienced with young parrots, but my gut tells me there's nothing unusual with this behavior. As a bond develops between you and your young parrot, the parrot realizes it wants to be with you as much as possible. In general, these birds tend to be this way-- they want to be with you all the time. Screaming for attention is a challenge that most parrot owners face at one point or another. You can train the bird out of it by ignoring them while they scream, and then immediately praising them as soon as they stop screaming. You need to repeat this over and over and over again. It could take a long time, but eventually it should lead to a significant reduction in screaming.
Good luck and please feel free to ask as many questions as you would like.. we are happy to help! Keep us posted on how things go!
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Post by aaron on Nov 17, 2015 14:48:58 GMT -5
I'd be wary of reacting to his screams by moving him to another room, because merely the activity of moving him could end up encouraging the behavior. In such a case, he's successfully gotten your attention, even if it's simply the attention required to pick his cage up and move it. There's definitely a question as to whether he can piece together the cause and effect to make the connection that now he is stuck in a different room because he screamed. He may simply be left with the impression that he successfully got you to come over because he screamed. I think the best thing to do is ignore, and then praise when he stops. I used to recommend punitive measures/time outs, although with the specific caveat that the punishment not last more than 3-5 minutes because I thought anything longer was counterproductive... but at this point I'm starting to think that any punitive response can be counterproductive. I do still cage Cupcake when she bites and draws blood, but very, very briefly, and only if I am able to catch it immediately when it happens. Their attention span is short-- they build connections based on very short periods of time. If the string of events has too long a duration, no connection (or the wrong one) will be made, it seems. At any rate, I am sure you guys will figure this out. Cupcake makes the most noise when she's in the shower with us, because it's loud in there, I think, and it makes her feel less self conscious about it. That's the only place where she does anything that sounds like it could be attempted speech. For whatever reason, it never develops into words, but she'll do a warbly mumbling kind of sound that she practices over and over. Only in the shower. These little birds' senses of self are very cute.
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Post by aaron on Nov 17, 2015 10:46:33 GMT -5
So happy to hear this, Jan! What a strong boy you have there in little Pippin.
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Post by aaron on Nov 17, 2015 10:39:50 GMT -5
Cupcake is 4.5 years old and does not talk at all, although she does laugh quite enthusiastically! So it can vary quite a bit!
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Post by aaron on Nov 17, 2015 10:32:27 GMT -5
Eventually, Byron will figure it out. When my stepdaughter gets home from school, she typically gets home before my wife and I, so she has her own key and comes home and gets started on her homework while she waits for us. For a very long time... many months... Cupcake would scream at her incessantly, because of course, she wanted to know why she wasn't being let out. But eventually she started to understand that the little human isn't going to let her of her cage for whatever reason and stopped screaming. Now she is perfectly quiet. It took a really long time though. Patience and persistence tends to be the name of the game with these birds when it comes to behavioral modification.
All of that said, if Byron only screamed for 20 minutes, that's a pretty big improvement. He's already realizing that screaming isn't going to accomplish anything in that scenario, it seems.
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Post by aaron on Nov 17, 2015 10:24:20 GMT -5
So it looks like if you go into the settings for Avast, and go to the Avast Web Shield section, and disable HTTPS scanning, this should resolve the problem. Make sure you've updated Avast to the latest version as well. I believe this article is discussing the issue: www.ghacks.net/2014/10/31/avasts-https-scanning-interferes-with-firefox-and-other-programs/But as you will notice, this article is from October of last year, and claims the problem has been fixed in newer versions of Avast. So I would make sure you've got the latest version before disabling any features. Of course you could just use Chrome, which I personally prefer anyhow
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Post by aaron on Nov 16, 2015 14:51:39 GMT -5
The strange thing about this is that this website is not using SSL, so I'm not sure why you would be running into certificate issues. Can you provide a bit more detail as to what the message says when you get blocked? Have you tried using a different browser to see if anything different happens? Which browser are you using?
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Post by aaron on Nov 16, 2015 13:23:33 GMT -5
We have that same cage as well (first in the list -- ours is a dark color). Cupcake definitely struggled with the bar spacing at first, but now she has lots of tricks she uses to get around it. It's a solid cage. Very easy to clean. Cupcake wastes most of the space too. From what I can tell she really doesn't care about the interior of her cage at all. It's just where she waits for us to come home and let her out. I come home and all of her poops are in the same place. She just sits there patiently with the occasional excursion to go eat.
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Post by aaron on Nov 16, 2015 13:19:49 GMT -5
I'm not familiar with that brand either... we use Harrison's as well.
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Post by aaron on Nov 16, 2015 13:17:42 GMT -5
Hahaha I love wet bird smells as well. And dry bird smell too. Cupcake smells like a dusty corn tortilla chip in the best possible way.
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Post by aaron on Nov 16, 2015 13:15:58 GMT -5
Glad to hear that both Pippin and Peppy are doing well!!
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Post by aaron on Nov 16, 2015 13:10:11 GMT -5
That's a lot of personality! I know I would struggle. Cupcake is a pretty easy Quaker, and there are certainly times when she's got more personality than I can comfortably handle. I can barely imagine dealing with two of them.
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