# A Cute Boy Joined Our Family Today



## Teddscau (Jun 27, 2012)

On Friday, a lady that Mom knows from work asked if she'd take her parrotlet who'd just lost his mate. Well, Mom's a sucker for parrotlets, and he came to our place just after noon .

He's a green Pacific parrotlet who's about a year old. His feathers look kind of dull—no doubt due to his all-seed diet. Apparently he lost his mate this week due to a very preventable accident.

I have him in the living room (aka Dad's workout room which he never uses), where he's going to be quarantined for a month. I doubt he's sick, but you should always quarantine new animals, even if their blood panels and whatnot come back clean.

His name's actually Thor, but we're changing it to Noah. We'll still call him Thor for a few days in order for him to feel a familiarity with us and whatnot.

He seems to have settled in. He's been preening, calling for his mate, eating, napping, and has been contentedly grinding his beak. I've been talking with him, and he seems to like me. He seems a bit wary of Mom since she's not the best when it comes to parrot etiquette and body language. I mean, she thinks she's good at it, but, you know.

Apparently he was hand tame but he isn't really anymore. I'm going to work with him though, and hopefully he'll enjoy playing with us.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow. Maybe.


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## FaeryBee (May 9, 2011)

*Congratulations on your new family member, Robyn!

I hope you'll be able to get some pictures of little Thor/Noah to post tomorrow. 
I'd love to "meet" the little fellow. *


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## aluz (Jul 24, 2011)

Congratulations on your latest arrival! arty:
It's good to know that the little fellow is settling in well and I'm wishing you the best of luck with him.
I also can't wait to see some pics!


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## Teddscau (Jun 27, 2012)

Yeah, it all depends on how lazy I'm feeling . It can be a pain uploading them, especially if your Internet decides to start acting up.

He's definitely a cutie. I'm going to be converting him to sprouted grains and pulses (lentils, chickpeas, mung beans). I'm definitely going to work on getting him to eat fruits and veggies. His diet should be fun, since he'll get to eat things the budgies won't.

I think I might put Goldenfeast pellets in with him to munch on, but it definitely won't be a big part of his diet. Plus, Pacific parrotlet mutations can get kidney damage from pellets, although he isn't a colour mutation...

Anyways, he wasn't really planned. I mean, just Thursday my parents were saying no more non-humans, then his guardians show up on our doorstep with a cage and a bird in a box.

Oh my gosh, he's unbelievably cute. He's so brave and curious :3. He's already eating the sprouts I gave him, and he's pretty confident around me. Man, he's digging right into those sprouts. I guess he's gotten pretty hungry after his big move. I'm really glad we adopted him. <3

Man, Mom adores parrotlets. Parrotlets are to her what budgies are to me. I hope my budgies won't get upset that I'm going to be spending more time with the new guy than I will with them. I'll try to still spend time with them, but Noah is lonely after losing his girlfriend. And he's really cute. And eats quite dramatically.


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## FaeryBee (May 9, 2011)

*I'm sure you can easily split your time between your budgies and the parrotlet.

That is what I do with my budgies and lovebirds. 
Everybirdie gets attention that way and no one feels neglected.*


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## RavensGryf (May 8, 2015)

Congratulations on the new little family member Robyn!  I think Parrotlets are absolutely adorable . They are said to have big attitudes for their tiny size. Although they're about budgie size, they're a real parrot .

It sounds like Thor/Noah is adjusting very well to a new environment. He must be the fearless type!


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## StarlingWings (Mar 15, 2013)

Robyn, congratulations on your new member of the flock! :congrats: 

It's great to hear that Thor/Noah is doing so well already  I can't wait to meet him!


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## jean20057 (May 31, 2013)

*Oh, Robyn, I think it's simply splendid that you took him in! I can't wait to finally meet him in pictures! He sounds just lovely, and I just know that you will have a blast taming and training him! The best of luck to you! Have fun!

-Kristen*


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## Teddscau (Jun 27, 2012)

Sorry I haven't posted any photos yet. I've been meaning to take some pictures with Dad's iPhone (our "high quality" camera is a piece of garbage), but he keeps running off with it .

Anyways, Noah is amazing. He'll play with my fingers through the bars, but he's reluctant to when I have my hand in the cage. I'll just have to keep putting my hand in with spray millet, and he should eventually become confident enough to touch my hand. He doesn't have a problem when I offer him food through the bars with my fingers.

Yesterday was the first time he touched my fingers. At first, he'd jerk his head back after he poked my fingers, but now he'll nibble on them and run his beak over them. I'm currently working with him to teach him to be gentle. His previous guardians didn't handle him much, and I guess they never bothered to teach him about proper beaking. I think he's figuring it out, though.

Oh, and things are going surprisingly well in terms of diet change. Before, he was on an all seed diet (no fruits or veggies) that likely had a lot of sunflower seeds in it. Now, he's eating sprouted wheat, barley, buckwheat, oats, mung beans, lentils, millet, canary, flax, and canola. I don't really want him eating canola, but it comes in the mix that I sprout. I also got him to take a dozen or so bites out of some spinach yesterday. I just had to tear little pieces off and eat them in front of him, then I offered him the spinach through the bars with my fingers.

Today, I gave him sprouted grains, millet, canary, mung, lentils, etc., and I also mixed in some finely chopped snap peas, sweet potato, and thawed cranberries. He's been deliberately picking the sprouts to eat, but he has been poking at the fresh veggies and cranberries that I mixed in.

I'm also teaching him "be right back" because he gets upset when I leave him.

He can be quite the chatterbox. He'll just chatter away while we're watching tv. Oh, I forgot to tell you guys that we moved him into the family room. We spend a lot of our time in there, and he likes to be where the action is. His cage is in the corner of the room, and he isn't stressed or nervous. He's quite confident and outgoing.

We're looking for a new cage for him, because the one his former guardians brought is too small. It's only 18" x 18" (I forget what the height is). When my mom told me that his guardians were bringing him with his "really big cage", I pretty much expected it to be very small. What a lot of people consider to be a "huge" cage is basically a sleeping cage at best. My mom and dad were surprised by how small his cage was. I'm pretty sure his cage is for an amazon or someone like that, based on the thickness and spacing of the bars. Luckily, his head is a bit too big to get wedged between the bars.


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## nuxi (Oct 28, 2014)

Congratulations,Robyn! Can't wait to see photos of Thor/Noah!


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## Therm (Aug 2, 2015)

I have read up about Parrotlets and that they can be quite nibbly birds and it's an important thing to teach them to be gentle. 

I look forward to seeing pictures of the little guy.


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## Teddscau (Jun 27, 2012)

Yes, you're right on the mark with that one, Therm. I can't tell if I'm effectively conveying the fact that he's biting TOO HARD. I mean he'll be gentle, but then he'll start going at my fingers like a nutcracker to a walnut. I mean, he isn't breaking the skin anymore, but now he's trying to crush my fingers! His problem area is with my finger tips (especially the nails and flesh to the sides) and finger joints.

He's not trying to hurt me, it just seems as though he doesn't think my nails should be on my fingers. They're already short, but I guess I could try trimming them a bit more. I guess I'll have to read up more on how to get him to be more gentle.

I spent quite a bit of time with him again today, talking, offering him food, and holding toys for him. He'll play with the toy for a bit, but then he gets fixated on my fingers. I praise him when he's being gentle, but when he gets too rough, I tell him to be gentle in a firm, somewhat authoritative voice. I don't react in a way that would hurt his feelings or make him angry. I'll also gently move my fingers away when I'm telling him not to be rough. And again, I'm not doing it in a way that makes him want to try to hurt me. I guess this is going to take a while. Although, he is avoiding breaking the skin, so I guess he is being somewhat mindful.

Man, he definitely likes me a lot. He watches me so intently and preened/played with my hair. His excess energy probably has something to do with the biting. I mean, I'd let him out (he clearly wants out), but his mate died from injuring herself while flying around. I guess we could clip his wings, but I'd have my parents do it while I'm not in the room, since I doubt it would be good for our relationship.


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## StarlingWings (Mar 15, 2013)

Sounds like you're doing well in teaching the little guy how to be a gentleman  

He sounds lovely though  Also, I don't think that simply the way his mate died is a reason not to let him have his wings unclipped. I reckon with practice, he'd have fun flying around


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## Teddscau (Jun 27, 2012)

The little brat keeps taking chunks! I'm going to start perch training him. 

I was planning on posting pictures last weekend, but we got bad news on Thursday about Abby, my three year old chihuahua.

My parents took her to her vet appointment in Toronto on Thursday to have her ECG and ultrasound. It turns out she has mitral valve disease, even though older dogs are supposed to get it, not three year old chihuahuas. 

I've started giving her soaked chia so she has extra magnesium to try to help slow down the progression of the disease. 

I'm also hoping that she'll live long enough for MitralSeal to come on the market so she can have her mitral valve replaced. 

If she starts going into congestive heart failure before the prosthetic valve comes out, I want to take her to France to have her valve repaired by Dr. Masami Uechi.


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## FaeryBee (May 9, 2011)

*I'm sorry to hear about your chihuahua's health problems and wish her all the best.

We'll be looking forward to seeing pictures of Noah as soon as you can post them. *


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## Teddscau (Jun 27, 2012)

Thanks Deborah . We're absolutely devastated. I'm trying to stay hopeful, though.

As for Noah, he's been trying lots of different foods. So far, his favourites are sprouts, strawberries, corn, and sunflower seeds, of course. I only give him the sunflower seeds as a treat since they're so fattening. He actually ate part of a veggie curry cookie that I made a while back for the budgies (I had to freeze a lot of them because I made so much). He also ate some of the pasta with veggies I made for him last night. He'll try pretty much anything if I feed it by hand first.

I had him outside in his cage for around half an hour earlier, but it started to get cool so I had to bring his cage back in. He seemed to enjoy being outside.

I'm pretty sure his beak is overgrown, so I'm going to see about booking an appointment to have it trimmed. I don't it's due to the all seed diet he had at his old home. I'll see about posting some pictures today or tomorrow.


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## jean20057 (May 31, 2013)

*Oh Robyn I'm so sorry to hear of Abby's disease. I pray that she holds up until you can get the new valve. I know how hard getting a "fatal" diagnosis can be. When I got the news that my cat Quarty was in kidney failure (literally nothing to be done it was so progressed), I was just heart broken. I knew it was only a matter of time.

I am praying for her, and will ask Lonny to do the same.

I'm glad that Noah is doing so well with trying new foods. This may be the only time I ever say this but, no rush on the pictures. Take care of your pup.*


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## StarlingWings (Mar 15, 2013)

Sorry to hear about Abby, Robyn! :hug: I'm sure she'll pull through. 

As for Noah, I'm so glad he's having an open mind about all the goodies that his new food brings. I'm sure he'll be a lot healthier for it! I can't wait for photos hoto:


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## Sachem (May 6, 2016)

Congratulations on your new boy Noah!!
Paroletts are sooo much fun. I had one years ago named Bernice, she was a little chatterbox and very spunky. I bought a bunch of t shirts with pockets because she absolutely loved sitting in my pocket with just her head poking out :-D

Sadly, I lost her, my lovebird and the 2 budgies I had at the time because being young and very uneducated in bird health , I brough home a beautiful female cockatiel who was to be a friend for my boy Ty... Well I didn't quarantine her, and with about a week and a half I lost all my feathered family, except Ty. Very hard lesson to learn.

Anyway, you are a very knowledgeable and dedicated bird owner. Looking forward to hearing more about Noah, and some day, when it's less stressful seeing photos. Take care


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## Teddscau (Jun 27, 2012)

I just want to thank everyone for your kind words. They mean a lot. As an only child, the dogs are my siblings, and I love them as much as I would a human sibling (actually, I probably love the dogs more than I would a human sibling). There's a few veterinary schools in America that offered mitral valve surgeries at recently as 2012, but it seems as though they no longer offer them due to the cost. It isn't surprising that not a lot of people can afford $10,000–$20,000 for surgery. However, we'll contact them to see if they're willing since we will spend what we need to assuming likely success.

Kristen, I'm sorry to hear about Quarty's renal failure, and the loss of your birds, Stacy. I kept fish (otocinclus, mollies, guppies, ghost shrimp, bamboo shrimp, glass catfish, cardinal tetras, etc.) when I was in elementary school. I kept them in a planted tank with driftwood, rocks, coconut caves, gravel made of polished rocks, and all sorts of wonderful stuff. The tank was 90 gallons and it wasn't overcrowded and I made sure I had at least six individuals of each schooling species so they could school properly, and I only had compatible species who enjoyed the same temperature and all that. I fed them New Life Spectrum and freeze dried foods. I was an expert when it came to tropical fish, and I'd do a 50% water change using a gravel vacuum to suck up all the crud in the gravel every week. They went nuts when I mixed fresh ginger into their pellets . The ginger did an excellent job of clearing them of tapeworms. Anyways, I lost them all to piscine tuberculosis. I had to euthanize countless fish (it was very quick and humane).

Anyways, onto Noah! I made a huge batch of chop last night with my dad. Considering I've never made chop before, it went great! Here's what I put in it:

Bellpeppers (red, orange, yellow), butternut squash, acorn squash, sweet potato, carrots, turnip, radish (including leaves), parsnip, hot pepper, celery, apples, broccoli, zucchini, spelt, and cooked brown rice.

There's a disproportionate number of vitamin A rich veggies in it, but hopefully it won't make them sick. I should've put leafy greens in it, too, but there was just too much food! I made, what, 5 gallons of the stuff? It'll easily feed these guys for several months.

I wanted to also have papaya, green beans, corn, and peas in it, but that didn't happen. I can just throw some peas and corn in their food dishes when I serve them chop. I hope the budgies will eat it, too. They get quite upset when there's something in their dish besides seeds, sprouts, or pellets.

I hand fed Noah some chop just before noon, and he seemed to like it. Sure, he flung most of it, but he did start to actually swallow some of it. I put it in his dish and he's eaten some of it.

I started clicker training the little guy yesterday. At this point, I'm just teaching him that he gets a sunflower seed every time he hears the clicker. He decided to go with sunflower seeds for training, so I spent half an hour yesterday cracking open sunflower seeds and breaking the kernels in half to put in a baggy. He goes completely nuts for those seeds, yelling and scurrying all over. Honestly, he's like a little kid at 4 in the morning on Christmas Day.

He's definitely smart, so I hope I can train him easily.


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## Sachem (May 6, 2016)

Hi Robyn, unfortunately I have experience with having to euthanize fish. Thankfully it's very quick and painless as you said. I was an aquatics specialist for a time.

On to happier things, The chop you made sounds delicious. How did it go? Did they enjoy it?
My feathered family is finally getting used to eating fresh veggies. It makes me very hapy that I know they're eating as healthy as possible


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## jean20057 (May 31, 2013)

*Thanks Robyn, and we've only ever lost the one bird, thank God.

That is definitely going to keep your flock nice and fed for quite some time, that's for sure! Are you planning to freeze it? I need to start experimenting more with the fids' veggie options! I think I'll make some more egg food, and throw some finely chopped stuff in that. Hopefully that'll get them to start liking more things! I have one little guy, Peatri that flat out refuses his veggies sometimes, and it drives his mommy and daddy up the wall.The boys don't go after their veggies nearly as much as the girls do. I think I'll get some organic eggs at work tomorrow so I can get them boiled as soon as I get home!*


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## Teddscau (Jun 27, 2012)

My dad helped make the chop, so it went way quicker than if I had done it by myself. I washed the veggies, he chopped them into 1" pieces, and I put them in the food processor and mixed it in a bowl. I didn't realize until the last couple of veggies that the stupid machine actually had a pulse mode (doh!). I'd been pulsing it manually.

After the chop was made, I took out a bunch of cookie sheets, spread parchment paper on them, and covered each tray with about half an inch of the chop, then stacked them like Jenga tiles in the freezer in the basement. The usual method of freezing them in baggies for individual portions just seemed so wasteful, so I thought I'd try this out.

The next day, I took the cookie sheets out and broke the chop into little chunks, which I then put into large freezer bags. It went really well. The chop was really easy to break apart, especially since it was on parchment paper. I ended up using four large freezer bags for all the chop, rather than 400+ sandwich baggies.

However, this obviously didn't happen without some casualties. After rinsing my hands and drying them, I grabbed one of the cookie sheets from the freezer, and my fingertips immediately froze to it! It happened instantly, and I could actually feel the frost spread on my poor fingers! I ran up the stairs to the main level and screamed for my father, and luckily he actually ran to help me. He helped me run warm water on my fingers so I could let go of the tray.

Man, that was really bad. I could actually feel not just my skin, but the actual tissue in my fingertips freezing. Once I finally got my fingers off the tray, I saw that my fingertips had actually become frozen. Lucky me, I actually got to experience freezer burn firsthand.  It must have been the equivalent of a second degree burn. Luckily they were fine after half an hour. So, just a heads up, you might want to wear gloves or something.

Anyways, back to the chop. Despite my efforts, when thawed, the chop is a bit wet. However, it isn't too bad. I've given it to Noah everyday, but I have to feed it to him by hand, or else he'll just eat the rice and spelt. He has been eating some of the veggies on his own, so that's good.

As for the budgies, I mix it in their bowl along with some sprouts, and they've actually been eating from the dish! Normally, they'd just about have a meltdown if something besides seeds or sprouts was in their dish, but they've been behaving like mature adults and have been picking the sprouts out of the chop to eat. Even if they aren't eating the veggies, this is a huge step! Before, if I put even their favourite veggies in the dish with their sprouts, they would be so disturbed by the whole thing that they would barely even touch their sprouts.

If you guys can eventually get your kids to eat chop, that would be amazing. You can put tons of different veggies in chop, which is awesome. When giving them fresh veggies, they just don't get that much variety since us humans are stuck with eating most of the vegetables.

If you want to give your kiddies more variety with fresh veggies, I'd recommend buying root vegetables (radish, carrot, parsnip, sweet potato, turnip) and mixed greens. Root vegetables can be stored for weeks without spoiling, and the mixed greens come in reasonably sized packages, thus giving the budgies a lot of variety without forcing us to eat salads everyday for two weeks. I like buying the Baby Kale blend and the Field Greens mix for my guys.

Sometimes, my budgies will barely touch their vegetables, so I just skip giving them any veggies for a day, and by the next day, they're usually eager for any veggies that I offer them. All you kids enjoy their veggies, albeit in their own way. Rumi just likes destroying them, but to each their own. Then again, Samantha did end up getting vitamin A deficiency because SOMEONE kept destroying the vitamin A rich foods before she could eat them.

Anyways, I hope your kids enjoy their veggies .

Oh, I taught Noah target training in only five minutes. He started having a tantrum because he couldn't figure out that he had to touch the target stick in order to get the treat, so I just touched him on the beak with the stick and rewarded him a few times, and now he's a pro.


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