Baby Rocky

We met Rocky when he was 3 1/2 months. He stuck his beak into Mark's pocket (picture below) and that was it! How could we resist that! He sold himself to us!

We weren't even planning on getting a big-ger bird, although I had wanted one for years and Mark knew it. (And frankly, we didn't know how involved the commitment was either at the time.) We were in an apartment at the time and we had our Cockatiel, who had been a stray, and I figured that was that. Mark was the driving force in the purchase, but I was with him all the way! We thought through the 50 year commitment it would take and we went back and put down our deposit. Then started visiting and learned to feed weaning formula with a syringe. The picture below is Rocky after a feeding while still at Darlene's. Look at the parting feathers and the skin of his full crop. Not to mention weaning formula dribbling out his beak. So cute!

We brought Rocky home at 4 months. He was "Roxy" for 2 weeks because people at the store who had seen him, cuddled him and fed him from the time he got there were sure he was a girl from the way he acted...plus he's peach! :-) We found out through blood sexing that he was a male. We had taken him to a vet for a full check up the day after we got him. We heard horror stories about drawing blood through the neck, how it had terrorized other cockatoos and they were never the same, that sort of thing. So we were apprehensive, but wanted to make sure he was healthy and Darlene encouraged us to do so. They say they can't take the amount of blood they need through toes, because it would take too long. It all went VERY well! They sedated Rocky, took the blood and implanted a microchip for us in a very fast amount of time. He came out groggy and wanting to be cuddled. Not mad at us at all, but rather wanting comforting...and in a few hours was back to normal. No bad effects at all.

The first night, he screamed bloody murder! He was down to 1 feeding and we had been told not to give him more because it would mess up his weaning. (They say not to take an unweaned bird, but we had developed a good relationship with Darlene and she was very informative and helpful. We only used the syringe for about another week, maybe less... We then made the weaning formula thicker, put it in a cup and he ate from a cup rather easily. Within a few more weeks, I switched to oatmeal and he STILL eats oatmeal with soy milk every morning - the soy milk cools it down).

Anyway, back to that first night. Rocky was screaming, it was midnight and we were in an apartment hoping not to get evicted!! We tried pleading and being firm, we even stupidly tried showing him that there was no fun to be had outside his cage - like that would work! Then we covered him, turned out the light again and hoped. Nothing - still screaming. So I thought he might be hungry. We talked about not breaking the weaning rule, but I gave in and fed him. Feeding him did the trick. He had had a hard, unfamiliar, crazy day and had burned up a whole lot of calories! He then went to sleep. Yay!

We would later find that his screaming meant one of a few things - he was hungry, he wants out of his cage...or he has too much energy and wants to play. And yes, he does still call to us in the morning when he hears us up...and sometimes before we're up! A lot of the time we will go get him and bring him in bed with us. When we first did that, he would play and cause a great ruckus. Now he curls up and goes back to sleep too! Never do this when you are extremely tired though, you could roll over and crush your bird.