new bird and new here help!!

[kika95]

He gets up with me every morning at five or six and around eight or nine we pull his cage and little table its on in front of the Window and open the curtain and he has his tomato and grape around eight thirty or nine thirty when we have our coffee. And usually I can here him eating before I get out of bed in the morning. Also in the afternoon he gets a little fruit or veggie but I always take off the skin and no seeds in it. And every time w eat he always goes to his food bowl and eats without fail. Charlie gets tired around eight and ill put the sheet over his cage but I leave one side open until whenever we go to bed. I don't work so I'm home with my birdie almost all the time except for two or three hours every afternoon.

[Wolf]

Please don't clip his wings !! At least postpone it until you have a chance to read what we have to say and look into it yourself a bit more. If you clip his wings it will take at least two years to undo this act, but postponing it will mean that if you really feel that you must it can still be done.
I really don't know how much you do or don't know about your bird and I don't know how much experience that you do or don't have with parrots. Because of this I will probably seem like I am talking to someone with little knowledge or experience, and you would be right, but I mean no disrespect by it, I just want you to have the information that you need to make an informed decision instead of going by what you may have heard.
I know that breeders and pet stores and even a large percentage of vets will recommend that you clip your birds wings, but the $50 question is why. Why do they recommend this thing? If you stop to consider this, your bird was meant to fly, so the reason obviously has nothing to do with what benefits the bird. The reason is the owner of the bird and inmost cases, it has to do with the new bird owner who doesn't yet have the knowledge or experience with parrots to know anything other than what they are being told by those that they, logically, should be able to trust. The sad truth is that in this matter you can't trust any of these people. The breeder and the pet store want to sell you a bird, they want to sell you the most expensive bird that they can and they don't care how much you do or don't know or how much experience you have. They vet is a bit harder because they should know better. But they want you to keep coming back so they don't want you to mess up by leaving a way for the bird to get outside and get lost. So money is also their reason for this. All of them will say that this is for the safety of the bird, but logic alone refutes this as being true since the primary means that a bird has to escape from danger is through flight. Walking is not their primary means of transportation and they are not fast enough to escape danger unless the retain the ability to fly. Clipping a birds wings will not help it to escape serious injury or death when the bird is behind you on the floor and you step back not knowing that it is there, but flight can. It will not save a bird from being caught in a door that is being closed or opened and it is next to it, but flight can. These are both common occurances that result in the death of pet birds that have been clipped. Clipping a birds wings may keep it from escaping through a window that has been left open, but so will closing the window or having screens that fit and are in good repair. I often fail to find the logic of trying to make the bird safe for the environment when you should be making the environment safe for the bird.
Birds are designed as flying sex machines, so to speak as everything about a bird is centered around flight and reproduction. Everything about how their body is put together and its proper functioning is centered around its ability to fly. It has hollow bones, it has only one lung but also air sacs throughout its body to increase both the effiency of its respiration as well as its capacity. its eyesight is designed for seeing object at high speed such as when flying, the skills that enable the bird to fly and maneuver in flight are skills that increase its intelligence and problem solving capabilities as you don't have a lot of time to avoid obstacles and work out trajectories while you are flying. And the list goes on and on. The only form of exercise that benefits a birds body is flight as most of its muscle mass it devoted to flying. There are so many posts on this forum related to flight and its effects on the bird that I can't begin to remember half of the documentation provided on this one facet of a birds abilities.
If you will postpone clipping your bird wings for a short time and sift through a bunch of conflicting information you will find that there are no documented cases or instances showing that clipping a birds wings benefits the bird in any way or that it makes anything safer for the bird. You will find all sorts of scientific documentation as to the physical, psychological and emotional benefits of flight for the bird. In my opinion clipping a birds wings is one of the greatest mistakes that you could ever make, especially if you want to have a healthy and reasonably happy bird that is well adjusted to its surrounding environment.

[Pajarita]

Awww, what a beautiful little bird! It's hard to tell from the picture but you seem to have the Colombian or the Venezuelan species - and do you know what they call them in South America? Periquito Carasucia. Isn't that a wonderful name?! Periquito is the diminutive of perico and another name for conure, and carasucia is actually two words: cara (face) and sucia (dirty) so their name, translated into English would be Dirtyface conure

I wholeheartedly agree with Wolf about clipping and I will add something else. I was born and raised in a country where there are wild parrots and, although it's not as common as most people would think it is, there has always been people who kept them as pets but never clipped. The practice simply does not exist. Personally, I think that handicapping a bird by clipping his wings is cruel. It seems illogical to me that people who would never even consider keeping a dog chained to a tree or a horse hobbled for life would consider it perfectly OK to cut the wings of a bird and thereby deprive it of flight. The principle is exactly the same but, for some reason, people don't usually see it that way and I don't know why...

Now, his diet is no good, my dear. Not your fault, of course, but you still need to change it. He can't be free-fed high protein, and dehydrated fruits (which are always treated with sulfites) are not good for him. He needs cooked whole grains and raw produce -and some need to be organic as per the 'dirtiest list' put out every year (grapes and cherry or grape tomatoes been on it). He also needs a large variety so as to round up nutrition. Their natural diet is mainly fruits (berries and more berries as in the kind that grows wild in the countries where they come from like blueberries, cranberries, buffaloberries, acai, etc) but, like every other bird in the world, they love corn on the cob.

[kika95]

Thanks wolf and no offense taken this is my first bird and I really honestly don't know much about birds. So all these posts are helping a lot and it amazes how much all of u guys know its really great and helpful I was reading some posts to my husband to and he also found them super helpful. We were going to get his wings clipped cause I saw them growing in but after reading a few posts we decided not to. I want my conure to be happy and have the ability to fly. Somebody posted that flying is to a bird what walking is to a human and that it should not be taking away from him and I agree. This website is really great and is helping a lot. I really do appreciate the help and I'm glad this is the first thing I read this morning because if not I wouldn't have seen the post and we would have left at 10 to get his wings clipped thanks again..... thanks for the feeding tips pajarita and I love the periquito carasucia thing super cute and kind of mean couldn't stop laughing. Charlies never had corn on the cob so I cut up some small pieces and stuck him in his cage tried to feed it to him but he just wants to bite right now what kind of whole cooked grains would be good to feed him I read somewhere that cooked plain whole grain pasta was good??

[Pajarita]

Oh, no, no, the 'carasucia' is not meant pejoratively! Not at all! It's because of the brown on it and meant in a completely affectionate way, I can assure you - or, at least, that's the way I see it

Now, don't give up on any food that is not touched the first 50 times -and I am not exaggerating by much here. Parrots are not instinctual eaters as most passerines are, they need to learn what is good to eat and what is not and breeders never take the time for this at the period on their lives when they are supposed to do it (babies and juveniles) so you need to eat the new item in front of him several times before he considers trying it out. Yes, whole grain pasta is good but I prefer whole grains (and they do, too). If there is a Whole Foods nearby, check it out. They sell whole grains in bulk - things like kamut, wheat kernels, oat groats, hulled barley, brown rice, etc. But they also have packaged red, black and wild rice, different kinds of lentils (my birds love the black ones), etc. Look in the diet section for tips.

[kika95]

Thanks again ill be sure to check that out and ill keep trying with the corn because he's being picky I'm gonna try some whole grain rice later too. Its nice to have help from people that know what there talking about. Thank u