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Adrian won't play with toys?! Help?!

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Adrian won't play with toys?! Help?!

Postby MorganWoolf » Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:49 pm

Hey, I've had Adrian (pineapple conure) for about a week now. He's about 4 months old. He likes to come out of his cage and spend time on me. LOVES to preen and be preened.
But.
He doesn't...play...with toys. I even have a whole toy box with a wide variety of toys, things my last conure loved to play with and other toys from as many catagories of stimulus I could think of.
He looks at the box, then ignores it to chase after me or my wife so he can preen us.
He's obsessed with picking at my lips (I'm currently trying to train him out of that).
He ignores all the toys in his cage. I have a bell. A braided foraging like toy that hangs from a swing, a ladder, some wooden doo-hickies he can chew on and hang from (all gotten from petco), and a millet holder.
That's another thing
He doesn't like millet.
WHAT BIRD DOESN'T LIKE MILLET?!
I dont' remember my last conure being this way as a baby (she was a Sun/Jenday conure). She was playing, rolling around, and destroying things from day 1. She was bonded and snuggling by day 3.
Adrian bonded and was snuggling by day 1 (to my pleasant surprise, he wanted to be with me pretty immediately. He's very affectionate and snuggly).
What's going on? Is it age? Is it personality? How do I get him to play? Shouldn't he want to play?
Help?!
MorganWoolf
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 2
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Pineapple Conure
Flight: No

Re: Adrian won't play with toys?! Help?!

Postby Pajarita » Wed Aug 14, 2019 9:31 am

:lol: Don't worry! There is absolutely nothing wrong with him/her and what it's doing is perfectly normal for a baby GCC. All GCCs want to do is be on people. That's it! I have two of them, a female called Codee that I've had for years and a new one that must be around 3 or 4 years old. The new one is parent-raised and was all plucked and super high-strung when I got her. The breeder had too many babies that year so the idiot did not handfeed with the consequence that he got 'stuck' with a number of birds nobody wanted and, as he must have fed wrong and crowd them so this one ended up the way she is. But she is getting much, much better. Now, Codee is another story because she is a 'normal' GCC, handfed and sold to a home where, at the beginning, they paid a lot of attention to her and, as time went by and life intervened (as it usually does with young people), was neglected so the parents of the owner (who are friends of ours) asked me to take her in. She has always being a complete delight of a bird, eating well, bathing regularly and getting along with everybirdy in the home. When she came in, I already had a very old, severely handicapped wild-caught peach front male that had been used as a breeder his whole life and they 'found' each other so they spent their days preening each other and cuddling -which is what makes GCCs happy. BUT, every morning, she spends 2 solid hours on me. And she is VERY jealous of her time with me, not allowing any other bird to perch on my body (this morning, she took on the African Gray because she dared to perch on my head). She is so jealous of this time that, sometimes, when the day is beautiful and the sun is shining, I try to put her on top of the budgies cage so she can bask in the sun but she quickly climbs down the side and up on me.

Now, Annie, the new GCC, chews A LOT (mostly paper) but I think this is because she is still overly hormonal and high strung. Codee doesn't play with toys at all and doesn't chew anything and I've had three more GCCs (two males and one female) and none of them did either. So, in my personal experience, happy GCCs don't play with toys and the ONLY thing I've seen them chew (people call it play but it's not really play) and then ONLY during breeding season is the Pinata toys like these:
https://www.chewy.com/planet-pleasures- ... /dp/158499
https://www.chewy.com/planet-pleasures- ... /dp/158503
https://www.chewy.com/fetch-it-pets-tri ... /dp/186067

As to his/her not liking millet, it might be that he/she wants soft food (it's still a baby and needs two kinds of soft food served fresh and warm twice a day). These birds eat mostly fruits in the wild and their beaks are not that hard...
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes


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