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Post by heatherg on Mar 28, 2024 1:39:19 GMT -5
I have a ten year old blue Quaker named Willow. Willow is very timid about new objects and new foods. He’s also not wild about eating his veggies, unless they’re his favorite kinds. So I have been trying a new way of persuading him to eat raw veggies: we share the broccoli floret, for example. So I bite off a tiny bit of broccoli, and eat it happily. Then Willow bites off a little green floret and eats it and I tell him what a good bird he is, good “_____, yummy” (in this case broccoli). It also works with carrot sticks. In this case I get my own carrot.
Willow always wants the food I’m eating, so we tried this today and he ate a fair bit of broccoli and carrot.
Let’s see what else I can introduce? It won’t hurt me to snack on raw vegetables with my birds, either.
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Post by cnyguy on Mar 28, 2024 19:56:59 GMT -5
When people ask about how to encourage their parrots to try different vegetables, that's one of the things I suggest. Parrots like to share foods that their human companions enjoy. It's nice to have positive proof that it really works!
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Post by heatherg on Mar 29, 2024 11:55:11 GMT -5
This is how I hit him to try his pellets, too. And they’re not half bad.
Anything mommy eats must be wonderful.
Yesterday, Willow had to investigate an empty cereal bowl because “why was I not sharing with him?” Until he was satisfied the bowl was empty and he could move on to other possibilities.
This bird really enjoys me hand feeding him pellet by pellet. Nothing special about the pellets; just that I put each one in his little beak.
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Post by cnyguy on Mar 29, 2024 19:53:28 GMT -5
It's great that the food sharing method is working so well with you and Willow. It hasn't always gone that way with Ralph. For 14 years I've been trying to get him to share carrots with me but he wants nothing to do with them. The same with strawberries, but with those, Ralph will accept a piece then immediately drop it. He likes to get treats by hand too, but sometimes he decides that it would be funny to bite my finger instead of accepting the treat. Parrots!
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Post by heatherg on Apr 2, 2024 23:23:01 GMT -5
Little guy is eating the broccoli and at least trying the carrots. Jasper then either eats the remainder or throws it on the cage floor.
He really doesn’t like it if I forget the little dish on top of his regular pellets. Today I tried just putting veggies in with pellets. Those fresh veggies go bad pretty quickly so I think I’m just going to try little mixed veg baggies, whatever’s on sale, until I get a better idea of what they will consume raw.
Willow stayed up until almost eight pm today. Then I noticed he was squirmy and checked the clock, rushed him off to bed. I’m hoping he will start saying “night night”. If he did it when he WANTS night night that would be even better.
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Post by cnyguy on Apr 3, 2024 19:42:53 GMT -5
Broccoli can be a tough one. It was with Ralph, but it's one of his favorites now. Carrots and sweet potatoes are still on his "I'm not going to eat that stuff" list. For a while, he was really enthusiastic about yellow wax beans, but lately he's been ignoring them, so I guess he got tired of them. I'll wait a while before I offer them again.
Getting nipped when I offer Ralph a treat by hand helped him learn a new word. I always tell him that "my fingers are not edible," and he eventually added "edible" to his vocabulary.
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Post by heatherg on Apr 3, 2024 19:53:35 GMT -5
He disagrees with your statement. Fingers are DELICIOUS.
Warm mashed sweet potatoes are delicious and less painful.
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Post by cnyguy on Apr 4, 2024 19:32:01 GMT -5
Ralph would probably agree about the fingers, but definitely not about the sweet potatoes. I thought maybe he rejected them at first because they were orange, a color he doesn't like. So I tried red ones and cream colored sweet potatoes, and he didn't like those either. I guess he takes after me since I don't really care for them either.
Ralph has made a game out of gently nipping my fingers and expecting me to tell him that my fingers are not edible. If I don't say it right away, he stares at me and says graaaccckk.
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Post by heatherg on Apr 4, 2024 22:22:34 GMT -5
Hahahaha ha. Funny Ralph.
Willow let me know today that the store across the way had a LADDER up and men in safety yellow vests on the roof (clearing off the standing water).
It was very very alarming.
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Post by cnyguy on Apr 5, 2024 20:16:33 GMT -5
I'm sure that men in yellow vests with a ladder would have to be considered a danger to parrots everywhere and proper warnings would need to be issued.
The old refrigerator in my apartment quit working yesterday and the maintenance men brought up a new one yesterday afternoon. Ralph just watched the action until he got a good look at the new stainless steel refrigerator. No alarm calls, but a lot of "I'm not sure that I like the looks of that thing" graaaccckkks. Later when he went into the kitchen to play, he didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to the refrigerator. That's a parrot for you.
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Post by heatherg on Apr 6, 2024 20:47:19 GMT -5
Aha. Now I know what noise the “graaaack” means.
I am displeased and am getting geared up to scream.
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Post by cnyguy on Apr 6, 2024 23:56:29 GMT -5
There are a lot of variations on graaaccckk. Some of them do express annoyance or irritation. But some are not as insistent. They mean "I want to go (wherever)" or "I want that" or ""That looks interesting. Can I have a closer look?" or lots of other things. It takes a lot of practice to interpret all the versions of graaaccckk and even after 14 years with Ralph, I'm still not quite sure of all of them. The ones that express annoyance or uncertainty are the easiest ones.
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