NEW MEMBER, need help

[Hannah_Rio]

Hi i'm hannah. i am 11 years old and tomorrow i am getting my first conure , i have had two love birds in the past but i have never owned a conure before. i am getting a yellow sided green cheeked conure and have read 5 books and done a lot of research about them . can anyone who has owned a conure before give me some advice on how i can give my conure the best care ?

[Pajarita]

Hi, Hanna and welcome to the forum. Now, is the GCC you are getting a baby or an adult? Because, if it is a baby, you might need to handfeed. Breeders tell you they are weaned because they are already eating on their own but that is like saying that a 2 year old human toddler can be sat in front of a dinner plate with adult food and feed itself properly because it's already eating things on its own- something every mother will tell you is not so. Aside from that, babies often revert when moved to a new home because they are scared and alone (remember that baby birds stay with their parents for months and months and months after they leave the nest). So, the first order of business is to plan correctly for a good diet and, for that, you will need to have baby bird formula, a feeding syringe and ingredients for soft foods which will need to be prepared and warmed up prior serving them twice a day (baby birds need soft food, the same that a toddler needs special food and not a hamburger and fries). Soft food is just that, food that is soft, easy to eat and to digest. You can use oatmeal (I am not particularly fond of it because it's sooooo messy), steel-cut oats, whole grain couscous, pastina, polenta (coarsely ground corn meal) which you will need to mix with pureed veggies and fruits (from baby food jars like Gerber). Personally, I recommend gloop because this food is perfect for adults too and, this way, when you start them young, they continue eating it the rest of their lives. The other thing you need is fresh produce and some soft seed mix (like the kind that is sold for budgies or parakeets) BUT, once the bird is a juvenile, you should stop offering the seed mix all day long because GCCs eat mostly fruits in the wild and free-feeding protein food (free-feeding is when you fill up a bowl and leave it there all day long - and protein food is things like seeds, pellets, nuts, nutriberries, etc) is not good for them.

The other thing you need to do is keep it at a strict solar schedule with exposure to dawn and dusk without any artificial lights on so the bird can wake up when the sun is beginning to come out and go to sleep when night falls after the sunset (just like the birds on the trees).

Then, you need to make sure the bird is not clipped so it can learn to fly properly. This is very important because birds need to fly - it's as simple as that. Birds can walk but, if they don't fly, they do not develop mentally or physically the right way.

Last but not least, I hope that you are homeschooled or that there is somebody home during the day if you are not because GCCs need to be ON their owner (or another human they love) for many, many, many hours every single day of their lives to be happy. IF they are not, they become very unhappy and start to scream, bite and even pluck their own feathers... they are VERY needy little birds.