Buyer Beware

From chatting with customers over the years, we have found that one thing is consistent about bird people, we all put a huge emphasis on our birds. They are a huge part of our lives. We call ourselves "slaves to them" or "Jo-Jo's mom or dad" (I'm "Rocky's mom", Mark is his "dad") and are thrilled to chat about them. Some devote major portions of their day to bathing, feeding, cleaning and catering to their birds and reap great rewards in the process. They truly are wonderful beings! Problem is, not everyone who gets a bird understands the needs and commitment it takes to make it possible to live with a bird happily. So many get caught up in the beauty and

"coolness" of the idea of a bird and don't pay attention to the full story. We have put together a section here of a lot of what we have learned in our 8+ years of living with a Male Goffins Cockatoo and 16 years of living with a Male Cockatiel. Most of it was from reading magazines like Bird Talk and Companion Pet Quarterly as well as going to seminars and learning from Darlene, who sold us Rocky. We learned a lot about Avian Adolescence from listening to Phoebe Linden at a MARE convention in Ohio back when Rocky was a baby, before we ever had any problems...and from being involved with The Ann Arbor Cage Bird Club.

Our eyes were opened to the really bad stories of bird abuse by Sally Brooks in 1999. She sent us stories and told us about Horace. We want to thank her for turning us on to the major problem that bird rescues face. Thanks Sally!

Our basic advice is don't fall for the "coolness" of birds from seeing them in movies, on TV and at parks and buy one until you consider the bad/hard/biting/screaming part of living with a bird. It is all manageable, but it is also very real. Rocky and Tiele do many, many, many cool, fun, entertaining things that we couldn't imagine life without them now, but it took from the time Rocky was a little over a year until he was about 6 years old to really get him to understand how painful his bite is and that it isn't OK. It has been a long, frustrating, fun, great and hair-pulling-out kind of 8 years for us. Rocky is a great companion now, but it didn't happen over night and he still can be willful and difficult at times...and I mean in the "watch your fingers" kind of way! If you are thinking of getting a bird or have one and are having difficulties, read on and then read more from the countless behavior experts.

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The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The Good and the Bad are interspersed in all of this writing, but I will tell you right here in black and white what the Ugly is. The Ugly is the reason so many people should not venture into parrot ownership. The Ugly is the biting and the screaming - and with cockatoos it's hard to overcome because they want attention all of the time.

There are things that parrots are going to do just because they are PARROTS! Mark & I like to quote that great line from the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" where Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom are dueling in the blacksmith's shop. Finally, Johnny Depp flings dirt into Orlando Blooms eyes and "ends" the fight. Orlando Bloom's character says "You cheated." and Johnny Depp says "Pirate?!!?!" - as in, by definition I don't play by the rules. When Rocky does something not so nice, but "parrot-y", as long as it isn't too bad, we laugh and say "Parrot?!!?!"

Rocky January 18, 2005

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Mark and I aren't experts - and we have a small cockatoo so we have no experience with how things work with larger cockatoos. We have figured out how to live with Rocky and Tiele because we truly love and care about them. So we read a lot and did a lot of trial and error. We feel we owe it to them because we made that kind of commitment. It was a lot of learning how they would react in certain circumstances and changing OUR behavior...as well as maintaining ourselves as the "heads of our flock" no matter how hard Rocky tries to take the title. Because we took so much time teaching him right from wrong, manners (somewhat), etc., his behavior has changed so much for the better. We have gone through a lot of antiseptic and bandages over the years, but in the past couple of years, bites are seldom and not as bad. He has learned a soft bite - like holding our finger instead of taking a chunk out of it! Yay! He is spoiled, pampered and gets attention of some sort most of the day - whether it's sitting with us or being on a stand or cage within eyesight of me and/or Mark - Being able to see his flock or know where they are is very important to Rocky. If he is in another room, he will call from time to time just to check on us! What a bird!

Call of the Wild!

There was a thought at the time that Rocky came to live with us, and probably still is widespread, that if you get a hand-fed baby that they won't develop "wild" traits. A bird is NOT a domesticated animal...The definition being that wild or unwanted traits have been bred out over hundreds or thousands of years. They still have the urge to mate and to establish dominance, etc. A lot of people don't think they should be pets and we have thought that way quite a lot too. They are a little like getting a foot-tall baby cub tiger. So cute at first and possibly manageable by anyone...As time goes by, nature takes over and makes them harder to manage until only people who have learned how to work with them, such as Siegfried and Roy (in the case of tigers), can. And even they had a "problem". But they will tell you that the tiger was only doing what his instincts told him to do...to get Roy out of danger. Unfortunately, people don't have the excess skin that cubs have for the tiger to do that "cub carry" successfully on Roy...and how many of us assumed it was an "attack"? How many times do we read our bird's intentions incorrectly?

With a tiger, people understand the possibilities of problems and don't even THINK of having one as a pet. At least most don't. With a bird, it's different. They figure when theirs starts acting up (expressing natural reactions and instincts) that they got the "bad" one and give it back, sell it or disregard it and leave it in its cage. We have heard stories of people trying to starve their birds and worse, crazy, but true, mainly because they didn't understand what they were getting into and didn't take the time to figure out what to do. What a horrible thing to do to a living being! For more information about rescued birds, please check out our bird rescue information and don't stop there. Just doing a search under "bird rescue" will show you how prolific this problem is.

I liken an undisciplined and misunderstood cockatoo to a 2 year-old with a box cutter. He knows what he wants and will do anything to get it...and happens to have a beak that he has found works well as a weapon to get what he wants. If you don't figure out non-violent ways of dealing with that beak, it can be disastrous. We wanted to keep our fingers intact and our cockatoo in our home, so we read, read and read and found ways.

That said...I also want to say that I usually don't venture into telling people what to do, but I was asked recently by a customer of ours who is pretty new to birds for my thoughts about a Goffins Cockatoo since she saw that we live with one. I know she didn't think she was going to get the mounds of emails I sent her, especially the ones telling her to get her deposit back!! I tried to make it clear that it wasn't her personally that I thought should steer clear of bigger birds until she knew more, but people in general. It was a case of me knowing a whole lot of the bad that has happened with birds and wanting to share that so she didn't find herself in trouble too...and have another bird suffer. I know that is what motivates all of the avian behaviorists who are out there. So I put all I wrote to her and more here in hopes of maybe helping other people.

We love Rocky, but truth is, he was/is difficult to keep loving all of the time, especially in the "formative years", which I would guess would have been our first 5 or so years with him from a little after a year old until about 6. Not everyone is willing to give that kind of time and understanding and training to a "pet" who bites them (sometimes very hard) and screams (when we didn't understand him). Check out another site especially devoted to larger cockatoos and hear how a cockatoo can scream - www.mytoos.com. Goffins are a little more quiet, but still can be very loud! We just kept telling ourselves "He's lucky he's cute!" Most people would do anything to help a child grow up, learn right from wrong and be socialized into the world. You need the same level of commitment with a cockatoo! Most people don't give up their kids...MANY people give up their birds!

A few other sites about Goffins in particular:

http://www.featheredfamily.com/goffin.htm

http://www.rescuethebirds.org/Bird%20Pages/Bird%20Descriptions/goffins_cockatoo.htm

http://www.theaviary.com/goffin.shtml

All you have to do is look at the high populations of formerly wanted/now unwanted birds currently living in bird rescues to see that a great number of people have fallen in love with baby birds, caught "Bird Fever" and then buy a couple in their first year only to find they can't manage them a few years later (if it takes that long). So, I took quite a bit of time relating to her the truth about Goffins Cockatoos as we have found it... Here is a composite of my emails that explain how Mark and I have set up life for Rocky and Tiele, what we do for guidance and "punishment" and how we ended up with happy, healthy, fully-feathered birds even if we have gone through a few bottles of hydrogen peroxide cleaning out some major bite cuts from Rocky. Birds just bite. It's a fact. They can be excited and grab at something wrong or be trying to get their point across like "I don't want to go back in my cage!". But they are wonderful too!

Purpose and Disclaimer Buyer Beware Baby Rocky

Rocky and Tiele's Page Our Set-up What works for us

Bird Rescue Information Beaker Seals Beginnings

We've been on the Net since 1998.

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email: Lisa@tothepointdesign.com