Post by chouchou on Aug 29, 2021 17:20:37 GMT -5
I adopted Chouchou just this past week. He’s been wonderful, but of course, I have a million different worries and questions about him. I’m sure most of y’all know what I’m talking about— the first time parrot parent days.
I’m curious as to how old/young your Quaker(s) was when they reached sexual maturity?
Chouchou was born on May 21, 2021, so he’s only barely 3 months old.
It’s been a very eventful first week with Chouchou. I expected I would be trying to take care of a fairly young parrot and trying to get him used to his new enviornment and life, at least for the first couple of weeks after adopting him. But it looks like he’s already beyond the earlier stages, physically. He doesn’t talk yet and overall it’s clear that he’s mentally still very young. But he’s already started his first molt this week, among a few other indicators of sexual maturity that I’ve noticed. He has this extremely strong scent of sweet almond from him, and just now, he had been regurgitating food. Should I be concerned that he is developing so quickly? I know some parrots are just “early birds” (heh) when it comes to this stuff, but dang, 3 months old seems ridiculous.
I know that hormones are all over the place during molting season, so I’m not too worried about the scent. It is actually a really pleasant smell. The first day I was really frantic about it, because I thought he, or I had a fungal or bacteria infection for unknown reasons, because I’ve had experience with bacterial infection in the past, and my body odor was strikingly similar. But I know that some parrots tend to have varying types of scents, and a sweet musty odor sounds on par.
For the regurgitating, I had no idea what he was doing until after the fact. He is still so young that he bobs his head up and down when he’s hungry, and especially when he’s thirsty, and wants me to bring him food/water by hand. He was chewing on one of his toys when he started to do it, so when he started to do bob his head this time around, I thought it was an instance of the above and was worn out from play. However, I was really confused when he didn’t want either of these. And he just would bob his head. Up and down and kept his mouth open. Then I automatically thought he might have swallowed something wrong and started to get worried. So then the cardboard he had just chewed resurfaced and he flung it out of his mouth. But He didn’t seem uncomfortable or panicked as I would have expected.
A quick search on this forum told me that regurgitation is usually a sign of affection. I was familiar with this, but him being only 3 months old, I didn’t think this was possible for such a young quaker to do. Obviously now that I have connected the dots and realized he’s already becoming a big boi, I won’t be encouraging the regurgitation if I see it happen again. I don’t know what triggered him this time, but hopefully I’ll be able to figure out if it happens again.
I adopted him because I knew he was the one and just felt it, but dang, I didn’t expect this level of comfort/connection in literally just 6 days.
But ya, I’m really curious about other people’s experience with quakers reaching maturity. Or what was the youngest age of a quaker reaching maturity like this that you’ve heard of?
Edit: he’s now going around and collecting all of his regurgitated mess and spitting them back out infront of me. I’m ignoring it, but holy cow, this is just too funny.
Edit 2: I showed my boyfriend a picture of it, and he sent it back to me like this:
[it says “burger” in korean]
I’m curious as to how old/young your Quaker(s) was when they reached sexual maturity?
Chouchou was born on May 21, 2021, so he’s only barely 3 months old.
It’s been a very eventful first week with Chouchou. I expected I would be trying to take care of a fairly young parrot and trying to get him used to his new enviornment and life, at least for the first couple of weeks after adopting him. But it looks like he’s already beyond the earlier stages, physically. He doesn’t talk yet and overall it’s clear that he’s mentally still very young. But he’s already started his first molt this week, among a few other indicators of sexual maturity that I’ve noticed. He has this extremely strong scent of sweet almond from him, and just now, he had been regurgitating food. Should I be concerned that he is developing so quickly? I know some parrots are just “early birds” (heh) when it comes to this stuff, but dang, 3 months old seems ridiculous.
I know that hormones are all over the place during molting season, so I’m not too worried about the scent. It is actually a really pleasant smell. The first day I was really frantic about it, because I thought he, or I had a fungal or bacteria infection for unknown reasons, because I’ve had experience with bacterial infection in the past, and my body odor was strikingly similar. But I know that some parrots tend to have varying types of scents, and a sweet musty odor sounds on par.
For the regurgitating, I had no idea what he was doing until after the fact. He is still so young that he bobs his head up and down when he’s hungry, and especially when he’s thirsty, and wants me to bring him food/water by hand. He was chewing on one of his toys when he started to do it, so when he started to do bob his head this time around, I thought it was an instance of the above and was worn out from play. However, I was really confused when he didn’t want either of these. And he just would bob his head. Up and down and kept his mouth open. Then I automatically thought he might have swallowed something wrong and started to get worried. So then the cardboard he had just chewed resurfaced and he flung it out of his mouth. But He didn’t seem uncomfortable or panicked as I would have expected.
A quick search on this forum told me that regurgitation is usually a sign of affection. I was familiar with this, but him being only 3 months old, I didn’t think this was possible for such a young quaker to do. Obviously now that I have connected the dots and realized he’s already becoming a big boi, I won’t be encouraging the regurgitation if I see it happen again. I don’t know what triggered him this time, but hopefully I’ll be able to figure out if it happens again.
I adopted him because I knew he was the one and just felt it, but dang, I didn’t expect this level of comfort/connection in literally just 6 days.
But ya, I’m really curious about other people’s experience with quakers reaching maturity. Or what was the youngest age of a quaker reaching maturity like this that you’ve heard of?
Edit: he’s now going around and collecting all of his regurgitated mess and spitting them back out infront of me. I’m ignoring it, but holy cow, this is just too funny.
Edit 2: I showed my boyfriend a picture of it, and he sent it back to me like this:
[it says “burger” in korean]
