Now a proud quaker owner

It should be 8-12 weeks by the time I get it easttex

Congratulations on finding your  baby Quaker. If you can arrange to visit with the baby fairly often up until you can bring him/her home, that will help build a bond with your new feathered friend. Read all you can about QPs, here on the Forum, on the companion site quakerparrots.com and in good books like Mattie Sue Athan's Guide to the Quaker Parrot or Shelly Lane's book available through quakerparrots.com. The more you can learn the more ready you'll be when your new QP comes home.

Congratulations! I bet you're super excited to bring the little one home duckysmum's advice is really good, and the other members of this forum have loads of experience and have helped me SO MUCH! So, make sure a solid cage designed for birds with at least three different sized perches is set up and ready for your parrot when it gets home. Stick with its previous diet for at least a week or so before attempting to switch it. For at least 24 hours when it gets home, leave it in its new cage where it can see food and water and let it watch the happenings in the house. Then, gradually, you can start to interact with it. Rebecca O'connor's 'the perfectly trained parrot' and 'guide to the Quaker parrot' by Mattie Sue Athan both have lots of good advice about acclimatising and training your bird.

When you first go to meet it, ask about its parents and their temperaments, how the breeder guarantees the health of his birds, for the details of a good vet, the hatch date of the baby. Check that the feathers are healthy without stress bars (being a little scruffy is ok as the bird will sort this, but if they are a complete mess and mucky, that suggests illness or stress), that the bird is alert and eating ok.

Some birds will be very tame when you meet them, some will not. If it is tame, ask to hold it, talk to if, smile, start getting it used to your face and voice. If it is not tame, then still talk to it but pay attention to its body language and stay just beyond the distance from the bird that causes it to exhibit signs of stress. Once your little one is home, find the best insurance you can get and sign up, register your bird with a vet and arrange to have it fully checked over for all the usuals; psittacosis, beak and feather disease, respiratory problems and digestive issues. This is just to rule them out and make sure your bird is healthy. Look into these illnesses, and aspergillosis as well, not to terrify yourself, but just so you are forewarned. They are easy to avoid if you know what to do. Prevention is the key.

Once your birdie is settled, it will thrive best on a pelleted diet with fresh fruit and veggies every day. Maya has a mix of Kaytee exact and nutriberries every day, along with a chop of five of any of the following: pomegranate seeds, carrot, Apple, grape, broccoli, peas, green beans, pepper, sweet potato and raddish. I don't offer the fruit two days in a row as, although it's nutritious, it's also quite sugary. I also give her freshly sprouted mix of mung beans, adzuki beans, green lentils and chickpeas. Making sprouts is really easy and provides your bird with lots of protein. Occasionally, Maya also has a bit of pasta, sunflower seeds, millet, a little bit of brown toast or a bit of boiled egg.

I make sure Maya has at least 3 toys in her cage all the time and rotate the toys so she has different ones every month. My main advice would be to read, read, read and educate yourself as much as you can about Quaker parrots and parrots in general. I subscribe to parrots magazine, which keeps me informed and gives me new ideas for ways to enrich my Maya's life.

As you can tell, we all adore our little ones, high maintenance and demanding as they are, they enrich our lives so wonderfully. As long as you arm yourself with as much knowledge as you can, you will have an amazing time with your new feathered housemate! Good luck!