Senegal Parrot - A list of problems

[Semih]

Hi,

I have a "wild" senegal parrot of whose age I have no idea. She seems young, but at least 1,5 years old (with yellow eyes). It has been 6 weeks since I have got it. Here are my problems with her:

1- Her hair on top of the head and a little bit back to the grey part of the back-neck is very thin. You can see her skin, and it became thinner after she had a shower. Is it because of the water, or could it be a kind of disease?

2- She just eats birdseed (sunflower seed), and nothing else. I managed to feed her peanuts a few times, but that's it. No fruits, no vegetables, no other type of nuts or cracks. How can I make her eat something other than birdseed?

3- This one is long, please bear with me:

I started to handfeed just the second day she arrived. Considering she is caught from the wild, I was very happy that she would be more prone to be tamed properly. I have read every single entry about Senegals in this forum and many others including scholarly articles, and I watched every video on Youtube (which is banned in my country - Turkey) that contains the word "senegal" and a bird, and many more about parrot training. I tried clicker training for about 10 days (sometimes the whole day - with proper break times), but she had no reaction to the sound. I gave up and started the target training with the stick. The same thing happened and I gave up again. Then I tried to put the treat in my hand in such a position so that she has to climb (step-up) to get to the food. No achievement yet

After that, I developed a theory on bird personalities There seems to be two basic types of birds: Some birds recognize humans as their friend or mate, because we are giving them food, toys, etc. That's what creates the so-called "bonding" process, which might require some work but you can clearly see the progress. However, some other birds just never get the idea that we are trying to be good to them. They see humans as something they have to escape from at all times. It doesn't matter how long and hard you try. They get the food from your hand, because they have been hungry for some time, and that's it! They get the treat, and run away. You can even manage to make them step-up a few times, but they are usually accidental and they will never be like Kili, or even half-good as her So, it seems to me that all the work might be for nothing, and I think she will not be tamed ever. There might be a little progress, but there will never be a "bonding", because I cannot see even a tiny bit of sign of progress.

She regularly climbs up to the corner of the cage and tries to get out by chewing bars and trying to squeeze her head through. She does this constantly, even when there is no one around. I felt very sad and let her out a few times, but she flew on top of ceiling lambs or curtains and stayed there for hours. When I was out of the room, she reached her cage and went inside to eat. That's all. She just screams and runs away when I try to get anywhere near of her.

I have read somewhere that you have a 50-50 chance to tame a wild Senegal, and if you cannot see any progress for 5 months, than you might give up. Of course it is a bit early, but how should I behave for the next 3 months to be able to achieve anything? Or, should I give up already? (There are no baby Senegals in my country, and no one breeds them. I would very much like to have a baby Senegal, but it doesn't seem possible)

[Wolf]

The very first thing we can do is to throw your theory out As it is totally incorrect.

The obvious reason for the feathers on the head and neck of your bird is that it is trying to squeeze through the bars of the cage and this is rubbing them off.

How did you get a wild caught Senegal? How long ago was this bird caught? I am not being nosey but it does have a bearing on it's diet. You are going to have to be creative if you are going to change its dirt. Like everything else about your bird you are going to have to exercise patience among other things if you are going to be effective.

You are going to have to begin all over with this bird. To begin with you are going to need to sit with this bird and talk to it and read to it just as you would have to do with a very young child. You will be watching for the bird to relax and start asking to be with you. While you are doing this, offer it a treat once in a while. At first it will not accept the treats so just leave it where the bird can easily get it. Do not ask or expect anything fro9m this bird for a while because if you do, you will destroy any progress that you may have made with it.

You are dealing with an intelligent and courageous being and it will fight you to the death, so you must win it over. to do this you must treat it will love and respect and kindness. In its natural environment this bird is social and monogamous but it does not have a leader as its social structure is not based on dominance. You must win it trust, there is absolutely no other way and this take time.

It is fine to give the bird time out of its cage and even though you must wait for it to return to its cage on its own I think that I would continue with this as it is good for the bird, it may make the taming process go a little slower at first but it will be better in the long haul.

[Semih]

Thank you for the kind reply.

All senegals are wild caught here, so I have no other option. I suppose it is caught 6 or 10 months ago. They stay in very tight cages, fed with birdseed because it is cheap. No one buys Senegals, because they say "it is not colorful enough"

Anyway, I'll try speaking and reading for a while and see how it goes. Thank you!

[Wolf]

Wow! I am not really sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it is a crying shame to take them from their natural habitat, but on the other hand I can see that if it survives it is probably a stronger, healthier bird. I can't say that getting them from a breeder here in USA is any better as there are a lot of very bad breeders here that don't care about the bird.

Thank you for sharing that with me.

What are you giving it to eat, and how are you giving it to him? I mean like in small pieces, finely chopped, whole or how? Do you know if any of the fruits and veggies available to you grow in the birds natural range? Here we have to go to pet stores or order most of what our birds get, how do you obtain your birds food? ! don't know anything about where you live, so I am thinking that if I understand more that I may be able to offer suggestions that may fit in better with local availability.


Thank you.

[Pajarita]

I agree 100% with Wolf but have a couple of comments.

1. You can't feed a parrot sunflower seeds and peanuts and nothing else. If you do, the parrot will end up dead in a couple of years because there is no nutrition in the diet (no vitamin A, no vitamin C, no calcium, nothing). It is, therefore, imperative that you get fruits and vegetables it. Try eating apples, bananas or grapes in front of it and offer a bit every now and then and, when you leave the room, place some inside the cage. Try presenting it in different ways: a big piece stuck between two bars, cut into little pieces on the bottom of the cage or in the feeding bowl, skewered and hanging from the top of the cage, etc. And, get yourself some vitamins that you can add to its water.

2. You can't train a bird for hours and hours. You are doing nothing but flooding the bird and it simply does not work. Training sessions should be short (15 to 20 minutes) and just a couple of them during the day but, in any case, you should not even be trying to start training until the bird is no longer afraid of you (again, it doesn't work).

3. How could a Senegal be a wild-caught in Turkey? Turkey is about 3,500 miles away from the Senegal's natural habitat. You mean to tell me that these birds are caught in Africa and transported over this huge distance all the way into Turkey?! That's just plain criminal! And, if this is the case, it's no wonder the poor bird is deadly afraid of people! Lord only knows how they manage to survive...

[Wolf]

Hi Pajarita;

Glad you popped in on this one. I have so much to say and some that I know better than to say and it all gets bottlenecked and mixed up when I am typing and I just have to stop to bring my thoughts back into focus. I am sorry that I didn't get to the items you commented on, but just so you know I am 100% in agreement with you and wanted to say thanks.

[Semih]

Hi again,
I didn't think there would be additional entries in this page, so I haven't checked it for a while, sorry for that.

Wolf;
Various food and supplies are more than enough and available here. The pet shops also have nutritious mixed cracks, fruits and vegetables. I tried almost every kind of food, including millet, in small pieces (as big as a sunflower seed). Since the bird is not eating any of them but sunflower seed, I started to use a mix of liquid vitamins which is again sold in petshops. I'm adding liquified vitamins in her water.

Pajarita;
1. Thank you for suggestions, I will try different methods. Some people say that she will eventually eat fruits and other things, but it might take a few months to get used to the new environment. I hope she will, but for now I'm giving liquid vitamins as I mentioned above.

2. I didn't mean to say "hours and hours". I read and watched all the instructions, and I think I'm doing it right. She is now stepping up (thanks to Wolf's advices), not afraid of me or my hand anymore. However, when outside of the cage, she is still flying up to the lambs and standing there until she is hungry. Hope she will get down in a few weeks

3. Good point. Senegal is wild caught not here but in Africa, and yes, they fly all the way to Turkey in big cages full of many kinds of birds. There are 20 or 50 birds in a cage (large birds come in 20, little birds like Senegals come in 50). They are sold to the wholesalers at the airport, and distributed to the individual petshop owners. I'm just trying to save at least some of them. Around half of them come injured, plucked by other birds, some of them lose their fingers or a foot and they can't stand up on a stick so they crawl at the bottom of cages. They are further bullied and injured by other birds in petshops too. Only African Greys and Cockatoos are taken good care of, because they are the most popular and expensive ones. They are usually bought by middle eastern tourists and transported to Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. Iranian tourists are very fond of African Greys for some reason I don't know. I have learned all these by talking to petshop owners.

I know it sounds very bad, but I cannot do anything about that and I'm very sorry for all those little birds. I had no idea how this business worked here until I started looking for a Senegal parrot. And now, I decided to make a difference, maybe in a couple of years. Today, I bought another Senegal, and it's a male. He is very calm and cute. When I put him into my girl's cage, they liked each other very much, and they seem and sound very happy. I hope they are going to have babies, I am going to provide the conditions for breeding (as good as it can be in an apartment). And when (if) they have babies, I will hand-raise them until they are ready to leave their parents and I will start to give away hand-fed Senegals to the people looking for them. And also, I have made an arrangement with my sister-in law's husband. I think we will start some kind of a bird-farm near the West coast of Turkey in a couple of years, and raise healthy and happy Poicephaluses, Conures and so on. Why am I doing all this? Because, I believe if I can provide hand-raised birds to the market, less people are going to buy birds from those awful tradesmen, and then the wholesalers will catch less birds from the wild. I hope to save at least some of the wild birds from getting caught by raising some birds in my farm. I am open to suggestions and ideas on this farm project, I don't know whether it is a good idea or not, but this is all I can do. I am not willing to earn money, I have another job, this will just be something like a public service without any significant profit. I just love birds. I hope you understand me.

[Wolf]

Hi ! glad to have you back and to hear that we have made some progress with your bird. Thank you for the update on how she is doing.
Do you have a clicker and a small stick about 12 inches long? I am thinking that next time you get her to come down and into the cage that this might be a good time to start her on target training. It should help a lot for when she goes to the rafters to get her back down.
I am understanding how you feel about the birds and the bird trade in your area and although I have no idea if your idea is workable or not or what effect if any that it might have there, I am in agreement with how you feel about it. I don't think that I would do hand raised birds though. There are many issues cropping up with hand fed/ raised birds. These issues are both physical and psychological in nature. One of the least harmful of these issues is the fact that a hand raised bird does not know how to help take care of their babies. Because of this, I would look into finding a way of providing the parents the things that they require to raise their young and only handle them so as to have tame birds. This would provide for a much healthier and psychologically stable offspring.
Please stay in touch with us and share with us. You don't have to have a problem.

[Semih]

For the last two days I've been able to make the girl eat lots of things other than sunflower seed. Basically, it was very easy, because the new Senegal boy eats many things. The girl just looked at him eating different stuff for 30 seconds or so, and then she started to eat as well. I was very happy. Here is the video of them eating pear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNf1yGKxNIg

They eat peanuts, walnuts, apple, pear, millet.

I left the door open, and soon after they went out of the cage for an hour. The girl still flies on top of things near the ceiling. The boy's wings were clipped by previous owners, so he walked and hid under the sofa. I give the girl a medicine every two days, so I have to catch her from inside the cage using a tulle. She has a parasitic infection on top of her head, I apply the creamy medicine on the head, and also spray an anti-parasitic one under her wings. She is getting better now, and she doesn't scratch her head through the bars too much. I noticed that she was doing it not because she wanted to escape, but because her head was itching like hell. Obviously, they are a little bit afraid of me.

I have two questions:
- How can I make them comfortable outside of the cage? Do I have to wait for some time to get them used to the new situation? (The girl was with us for 3 months, and after she learned to step-up, I brought the boy. They seem to be getting along pretty good)

- Yesterday, I took them to the bathroom to take a shower. The girl has very little hair right now. She already had a little bit less hair than usual when she first came around, and after taking a shower, she lost more hair on her head. I thought it was due to the infection on the head. But now, the boy has less hair on his head after the shower. Is there anyone having the same problem? Do Senegals have sensitive hairs on their head? Am I not supposed to bath them? The water heat was good, the water pressure was minimal, they enjoyed to be under water. In short, what is the best way to bath a Senegal?

[Wolf]

Hi Semih ;

Senegals do not have a problem with bathing and will need to have one offered at least once a week. You do want to keep the temperature down though, As a general guide I start with cold water and add just enough warm until I don't feel the water temperature, any warmer is too much.
You now have two Senegals with a parasitic infestation, the parasites are so contagious that if one has it all birds that come into contact with them has it from that time, it only takes a second for this to happen. you need to talk to the vet and start treating both of them right away. I am sure that she loves being netted about as much as I enjoy salt in my eye. Yeah, giving medications always makes them a bit distrustful, but what can you do about it?
I saw your video and I saw the place on the males head as well as the females, other than the parasite they look good. It is always easier to get one to eat different foods if they see another parrot eating it too. Thank you for sharing the video with us.
I am not sure what you mean about making the comfortable outside the cage, it could mean many things so if you could give me an idea of what you mean, I will try to help.