Hello from Toronto Canada

[Alexander H]

Hi all
I am a very new parrot owner. I just picked up a 3yr old female Senegal about 4 days ago. She is still a bit stand offish but is coming around and lets me pet her, even pick her up and put her on her back at pet her belly sometimes. She doesn't even mind my dog when she was out this morning she even climbed on the dogs back.

[Wolf]

It sounds to me like you don't want to have a bird very long ! You may think it is cute, but dogs naturally eat birds as part of their diet, so this is not a safe practice to allow.
Welcome to the forum hope we can both help and share with you.

[Pajarita]

Oh, Lordy, I'm afraid you are pushing things way too fast. Senegals are not very forgiving birds and she is now behaving so sweetly because she is on the 'honeymoon' period so, please, stop handling her so much or you might regret it later on. And no touching the belly under any circumstances. It's strictly a no-no caress with parrots.

[Alexander H]

I am not overly encouraging it playing with the dog. And so I should interact with her less for now?

[Wolf]

You really need to be extremely careful about the bird and dog being close together as the dog can bite the bird fatally without even trying to and do it so fast that you could not prevent it even if you were right next to the dog. Add to this that parrots bite, and Senegals bite hard. I have a 5 yr. old Senegal female and about 6 band aids on my hands because of the flesh that she bit out of them. If she bites your dog that way your dog will bite back. Maybe not the first time or even the 10th time, but eventually and it only takes once.
There is a lot to learn about parrots and you have told us that you are new to having parrots. I have no idea as to what anyone has told you if anything or if you have done any research on this or not. I am going to assume that you know absolutely nothing, so feel free to question everything that I have to say and/or correct me if I assume too much.
The first good thing about your new little girl is her age, she should have gone through puberty by now, but there is no guarantee of that as it occurs between the ages of two and 5. If she has gone through it, then what you see is what you get and if not then you may still have some interesting times yet to go through.
Diet is one of the factors that affect your birds health, behavior and breeding seasons and hormones. So you need to make sure that you are feeding her the right foods. If you are feeding her as most new owners do then you will have to change it. This is not usually the new owners fault rather it is normally what they are told by pet stores or breeders. If you are feeding an all seed diet then you need to be aware that over time it will destroy her liver and kill her. Because of this Please let us know what you are feeding her and when you feed it. We will try to help you get her on a healthy diet for her.
Lighting is another area that affects them as this is one of the triggers for beginning and ending of the breeding cycle and it sets their biological clock. It tells their body to produce hormones or not and also affect which are produced. For best results she should be exposed to both dawn and dusk as these are what actually set their clock while the length of time there is daylight also affect their daily behavior.
Touch, sometimes this is hard for first time owners to remember, probably because the way it works is just a bit alien to humans. Basically you do not want to touch or pet their back or belly. Both of these are linked to sexual behaviors. The easiest part of this is to remember that in their natural environment in the flock no bird ever touches these two places on another bird without having intercourse. Now I know that you are not going to have intercourse with this little bird, but touching these areas has some other very important effects upon their bodies. Birds have their sexual organs on the inside of their bodies and they work a little bit differently than ours do. When the food is right and the light signals the right time of the year and the weather is right the body starts producing sexual hormones and this causes a birds sexual organs to grow and become operational. The thing is that they continue to grow if they don't get the right signals from their diet, the amount of sunlight and the wavelengths of the light of both dawn and dusk. They also will continue to grow if we touch their bodies in the wrong places, such as the belly and the back. This might not be such a problem if their sexual organs were not all internal. But because they are, there is only so much room before they begin to crowd out other organs and put pressure on them, so that at first it becomes a bit uncomfortable and them it starts to get painful and over time it gets extremely painful and the parrot become very aggressive because it can't take the pain of being touched. It progress from there to an extremely painful and unpleasant death.
These things at least should help you to understand some of the reasons for our responses to your post. Let me assure you that everyone on the forum will do everything they can to help you and you parrot to have a long and happy life together. It may sound a bit strange to you but each of us care about your birds welfare as much as we care about our own parrots.
You have just got your bird and she has been with you for less than a week and the reason that she appears to be a little standoffish is because she is scared. She is scared and all alone in a strange new place and with total strangers. Because of this she is on her very best behavior, but this won't last and all sorts of bad behavior will arise from this if things don't go just right. This is a very critical time for your developing relationship. What she really needs from you at this time is reassurance and lots and lots of it. So lets begin at square one and start building the foundation of a lasting, and trusting relationship. If you are going to be able to interact with her and have a good friendship then you must earn her trust and to do this you must first reassure her that there is nothing to fear, that you will not hurt her and that only good thing will come from you to her.
Now the best way to do this is to talk to her in a calm and friendly manner. Also because of her age and if she was not neglected or abused, she will remember this and you will progress pretty fast through these initial steps. Set aside about 15 minutes 2 times a day at a minimum. three or four times would be better, because for this the frequency of this has as much effect as does the duration of each session. Start by entering the room that she is in, stop and look at her for a minute, don't look directly at her as this is how a predator looks at her, rather look at her kind of sideways out of the corner of your eyes. Now begin a slow approach and just as soon as she starts to get nervous, or begins to move stop your approach and start talking to her calmly, but do not approach any closer during this session. Now it really doesn't matter what you talk about but I usually recommend that you indulge yourself a bit and talk about what great friends you want to be with her and about your hopes and dreams for this relationship are and include lots of the words that you will use to praise her with, words to tell her what a good girl she is. At the end of the time, say goodbye and leave. Follow these directions each time and in a few days or quicker you will be right at the front of the cage.
You need to know what her favorite food is so that you can keep it out of her diet and use it for a treat only.
Continue with these sessions only since you are at the cage you can offer her a treat occasionally while you are talking. if she takes the treat from you then you move on in the next session to opening the door to her cage and offering her a treat occasionally while talking to her, if she takes it, then in the next session you ask her to step up onto your hand to get the treat. Once she does this a few times then you will at least have earned that much trust and can move on to target training and then wherever you want from there.
Sorry that this is so long but it gives you the information to at least get you and you parrot friend off to a good start with each other. If we can assist in any other fashion please feel free to ask all the questions that you want and we will do our best to help you as much as we can.

[Alexander H]

Thanks for writing all that out that was very informative! I got her from someone else so I have been feeding her the diet she had her on. So she is eating about 70% zupreem fruit blend, 10% gourmet seed, nut and dried fruit mix and 20% fresh raw veggies and fruits. She has been eating everything and leaves a bit of the dried food behind and I leave that in all day and replace in the morning. I am pretty sure her favorite food is carrots as she eats those before everything else. As for info I have been getting it off the net and someone from my work who owns parrots (starting to question some of the info I got from him though). I will start doing her socializing tomorrow and work with her that way.
Thanks so much for the help!!!

[Wolf]

I am glad to be of assistance in any way that I can, so if that helps you then it served its purpose and was well worth the time spent. Your little girl will need to go to an avian vet for a check up as soon as you can arrange for it. Yes, you want to do this before she ever gets sick as it will help to establish a baseline for her vitals. Her diet will need some improvement and except to say that Zupreem fruit blend is trash, I will let Pajarita help you with that as she is probably our best bird nutritionist. Also there are a few others who while they don't completely agree with her aren't too bad either and perhaps they will assist as well with helping you to work out a good diet for your bird. By the way is there anything we can call her other than your bird?

[Alexander H]

I have named her Emerald. I figured the zupreeem stuff sucked as it has a lot of sugar and fillers. I was thinking of trying to switch her over to mazuri parrot diet but ill have to research that more.

[Pajarita]

Wolf gave you an excellent account of basic parrot husbandry so I just have a couple of things to add. In my personal opinion, the most common mistake people make about parrots is assuming that they are supposed to be treated like 'pets' meaning they have to adjust to our schedules, lifestyle, homes, etc and submit to us. This hardly ever works with them because, even in the best of circumstances, when they bond to us and love us to pieces, they don't consider themselves anything but our equals so respect for their desires, likes and dislikes is essential to a good relationship. This is not something we are used to do with any other animal that shares our lives and some people are just plain unable to do it but it's actually fairly easy, simply think of your parrot as a little person and don't do anything you would not do to a stranger or even an acquaintance and you will be fine. So don't presume and don't go touching and treating her as if she knew and love you until she does. Allow her to set the pace of how slow or how fast your relationship would go and, if you want her to do something she doesn't want to do, don't force her, cajole her instead and, when she does it (out of love for you), reward her. Don't take her compliance and love for granted as you would a dog's.

As to diet, I don't like to free-feed any high protein food (pellets, seeds, nutriberries, nuts, etc). Parrots in the wild do not eat all day long, they have a large breakfast in the morning, might pick a little something during they day or not and then have dinner enough to fill their crop. So I give them the healthier food in the morning and leave it there all day until it's time for dinner (sunset) when I feed them the high protein food. I feed gloop (dish of cooked whole grains, pulses and veggies) and raw produce in the morning and a measured (enough to fill the crop) amount of a good quality seed mix doctored with a nut or more for the larger species. Now, senegals do need a bit more protein than other parrots their size (like conures, for example) so I give mine about two level tablespoons of two different cockatiel mixes together (one has striped sunflowers in it while the other is safflower based) plus one nut (like an almond or a pistachio or half a walnut). I don't think that pellets are the best dietary option for parrots (way too dry, too bland, processed so no phytonutrients, most of them have soy and lab-made vitamins) but if you are going to feed pellets, the only ones I would recommend are TOPs because, at least, they have no soy and their vitamins are food-derived. Mazuri is not organic and nothing but corn, soybean meal and wheat middlings (not even the whole grain) with all kinds of lab-made vitamins added to it, the only good thing in it is marigold extract. But, on the other hand, it's much better than the 'fruity pebbles' pellets.

PS Don't use carrots for training, they are too nutritious for you to restrict them, feed them regularly and use a little piece of almond or something like that as a reward.

[Alexander H]

Ok Cool thanks so much you two for the help it is greatly appreciated!