Hello from Missouri

[faeclarinet]

Yes, it can be said of most parrots that belong to companion species (meaning, not aviary ones if they have companions of their own species) but some are more independent than others - for example, an amazon or a pionus and even some grays and macaws are OK for a number of hours as long as you are there with them but not GCCs, they want to be ON you all the time.

What about senegals? I am super interested in a GCC but am also open to other birds. I'm having a hard time finding info on senegal behavior however.

[Wolf]

I have a Senegal female of about 6 to 7 yrs. old. When she arrived here, she was literally running away from an abusive home and looking for a new home. She showed up here at my house starving, dehydrated and half frozen and asked to come in. I let her in and tried to find her owners. Eventually I did find her previous owners and thankfully learned how she was treated before I said anything about her. So I kept her as I could not allow her to return to the abuse that she had escaped from. It had taken me several months to locate her previous owners and I do know that they had made very little effort to find her and it was only by accident that I had learned who her previous owners were. So anyway I kept her.
I was the one that was responsible for her well being from day one, even though at first she chose my Lady to be her special person and all she did was bite the h$%% out of me. I researched to find out what kind of Parrot she was and what to feed her and care for her. She was our very first bird and neither of us knew anything about parrots.
Almost a year after she came to live with us she switched he preference in humans and bonded with me and has remained steadfast with that for nearly three years. I had learned of this type of change when they went through puberty and looking back I know when she went through this but did not know it at the time it occurred as I was still too inexperienced to know what was happening with her at the time.
She is a very loyal bird who seems to think that her proper place is mostly on me, although she is also somewhat independent and can entertain herself should the need arise. Which due to the fact that I now also have a few other birds that are also bonded with me, does occur on a daily basis. She is happy to remain on me and has learned to not attack any other bird that I am working with while she is out. My Grey, however, will not allow another bird on me if she is on me nor will she allow another human to touch me while she is on me. Kiki, my Senegal, would allow the Grey to remain on me and due to my intervention she doesn't fight the Grey for me as I have taught her to just fly away and I will call her back to me shortly. But she is not afraid of the Grey despite the difference in size. She would happily take the Grey on if I would allow it, which she knows that I won't.
She is very much a one person bird, but she does like to meet any new person who comes to the house and luckily has never offered to bite a stranger, yet. My lady can do very little with her as Kiki bites her if she tries although she will occasionally fly to her and perch on her. But if my Lady moves a little too much Kiki bites her. If she tries to pet her or do anything with her, Kiki bites her.
Even though Kiki is bonded to me and loves me a lot, she is slow to give her trust. She likes to maintain a certain degree of control of her own life and what happens to her. It is well worth the effort and time it takes to earn her trust and I have no complaints with her or her attitude. I think she is a wonderful bird.
I thought that this would be the best way for me to explain her behavior to you. Every Senegal will be different and their individual differences can be as broad and as important, if not more important than the difference in the species of parrots.

[Pajarita]

Yes, every bird is an individual, no doubt about that!, but there are general characteristics that are common to most of the individuals of the species. I've had three female senegals and one male. One female, Cowboy, was pretty much indifferent to people. She did not attack or bite your hand even if you put it in front of her but she had no real interest in interacting with people. The other two females, Tobita (ex Toby) and Zoey, were both sweet-tempered but Tobita was given up because of constant screaming and Zoey because of unmitigated aggression to her owner's wife (they tried everything, including keeping her clipped but nothing worked) but Tobita did not scream again after her second or third week here and Zoey has stopped attacking my husband (but he doesn't believe it ) but no other bird can be on me and she is intensely jealous of any other bird that have a close relationship with me. The male had been left in his cage for most of his 11 years before he came to me and was, by far, the MOST aggressive bird I've ever had (he stopped attacking all the time after 3.5 years but it took another 3 or so for him to become my friend -he is now perching on top of my laptop screen and asking "What you doing?" and "What's your name?" - He is the best talker I've ever had, too). In general, they tend to be one person birds and can be quite aggressive with other people and birds if they get jealous.

[faeclarinet]

I think I am going to go with a GCC. I am wondering how to find out how much to feed them daily. Is there a book for conures that tells you what and how much to feed? I want to feed them veggies and some fruits for sure and a pellet diet, but I just don't know what quantities.

[Wolf]

There is so much to learn about these birds partly due to the number of different species of parrots from all over the world, with different diets and personality traits, as well as even within each species each bird is so much of an individual that sometimes their individual differences cam be more important that the species differences. Also most of those that study birds don't put much time into species of birds that are in captivity, which has resulted in far less being know about the lives of these birds than should be known. This is beginning to change and more is being done to learn about these birds that at any other time, but this has also led to many different opinions on how to interact with and care for these birds, so there is a kind of mish mash of old and new information that we all have to wade through to learn to care for our birds properly. after 3 almost 4 years of constantly studying on these birds I feel like I am still on just the first few pages of their introduction and haven't even reached chapter one yet.
I do not feel that pellets are a food that I would recommend for feeding to any pellet and even less so when it is a small parrot species. I recognize the ease of use concept as well as the bird no longer being able to pick out it favorite parts of the food and thus a possibly more balanced approach to nutrition. But this is countered, in my opinion, by substandard ingredients, the use of artificial vitamins and minerals in which the bird find it difficult to utilize. Soy and soy product seem to account for some behavioral issues, such as feather plucking and self mutilation in some of these birds because of an allergic reaction to it. The dryness of the pellets is another area of concern that I have become aware of and it can cause dehydration in some birds. Most birds drink water twice a day most of the time, usually just after eating in the mornings and evenings, and since some of them live in arid and semi arid environments they have evolved some water conserving features that the dry pellets interfere with leading to an increased chance of dehydration. This is particularly true with some of the smaller species of parrots. The food that they would normally consume has a high water content, so it is definitely worth considering before you begin to use pellets in their diets.
I currently have 5 species of parrots ranging from a parrotlet and budgies on up to an amazon and I feed them all in the same manner. I start them with fresh veggies and fruit and a leafy green followed about an hour later with gloop, which is a home cooked mixture of whole grains, mixed vegetables and /white beans and lentils. This is for breakfast and for all day foraging and then I feed a high quality seed mix for their dinner which I remove after they go to sleep for the night. I would urge you to do some more research and consider a similar type diet for your new bird.
I would also like to point out that even should the bird food companies finally improve their pelleted diets to a satisfactory level that parrots still seem to do better with a large variety of shapes and textures and tastes in their food. Their eating habits are much more akin to ours in this respect than to say a horse or a dog or cat who do just fine with a limited variety and often do better without any changes in tastes. I don't know if this is related to their intelligence or not, but they like and miss the variety if it is not there.

[Pajarita]

Wolf is correct. I've been keeping parrots since 1992 and doing research on their natural diets for almost 20 years since my first rescue was diagnosed with high uric acid and have reached the conclusion that pellets are, most definitely, not the best dietary option for parrots. And, taking into consideration that you can't free-feed them and still need to offer raw and cooked produce, I really do not see the advantage to them. My birds, including my GCC eat gloop and raw produce for breakfast and all day picking and a small, measured portion of a good seed mix for dinner (the GCC gets larger produce portions and a budgie seed mix for dinner -as well as vitamins once a week- because they are primarily fruit eaters in the wild and require low protein). The other good thing about gloop is that you don't have to worry about how much you give them because they can eat as much as they want of it and not gain weight.

[faeclarinet]

Thank you so much for that helpful information! I was reading everywhere to feed them pellets, and I'm sure that's partly because companies selling pellets were the ones putting out those articles. It's nice getting info from actual bird owners! hah


I owned birds when I was a kid and of course the internet wasn't the best thing for information yet. It was still just a baby. I fed my birds all seed diets with occasional fruits and veggies. I didn't know that they would pick out their their favorite seed and leave the rest. They were happy healthy birds but their diet could have been much better. Shortly after starting high school, my mom married a jerk who made me get rid of my birds because he didn't like the noise. (Even though he would blast Disturbed literally at 3 AM with his subwoofer)

So, I am happy to be able to find so much information because any birds I have from now on out I want to have good healthy diets so they are as happy as can be. Plus, I've had the birdie blues for years! I'm so excited to be getting a bird within the next few months!

[Pajarita]

The reason that everybody recommends pellets is that they are easy to feed, gives people a sense of 'rightness' (they actually believe they are feeding their birds perfectly nutritious food) and everybody else does it. But the truth is their popularity is that, originally, Harrison's pellets (which were, pretty much, the ones that 'broke' into the bird food market big time) were sold only by vets who made a profit on them so, of course, they recommended them as the best thing. And, truthfully speaking, they were a huge improvement over a seed-only diet. People thought that advice from a vet was 100% informed so they followed it not knowing that avian vets do not study parrot nutrition at all and they were just repeating what the Harrison's sales people were telling them. Forward a number of years and, with the wonderful expansion of the internet research capabilities, people like me (pain in the neck know-it-alls who don't trust anybody's opinion without checking it three times) started doing research on their own and figured out that ground up grains and seeds mixed with man-made vitamins dried up and formed into a pellet couldn't possibly be the best diet for a bird that consumes plant material as its natural diet so they started coming up with their own and so gloop, mash, chop and kitchen-sink were born.

I am happy you have kept your love for birds for so long and are now finally in a position to care for one.

[faeclarinet]

Are there recipes for these wonderful inventions?

Birds are my favorite animal. I've always been amazed by them and love them, no matter if they're wild or tame!

[Pajarita]

There are a couple of threads right here that explain and give different gloop recipes because this is what Wolf, Liz and I feed our birds but, in reality, you can make your own recipe and tailor it to your bird's preferences as well as its species needs. Chop and mash tend to be just raw fruits, veggies and leafy greens either almost pureed or so finely chopped as to become a homogenous mixture while kitchen-sink was just another name for them from the 'everything but the kitchen sink' saying.

I've tried both mash and chop (mash is finer than chop), only I added cooked grains to them, but my birds did not like them. They seem to prefer the coarser texture of the gloop and the ability to pick and choose what to eat first and what second -which they don't get with mash or chop.