Adventures of Pepperoni and Simone! (ongoing thread)

Thank you everyone for the kind words! After I had convinced my dad into bringing home Simon we went to see him. I saw Pepper and just knew I HAD to have her come home with us too! We were told she does not like men.. she takes food from my dad through the cage but both times he tried to take her out.. she made him bleed.. oops :evil:! If my mom or I go to the cage and open the door she has her foot in the air off the perch just waiting to come out!

I will definitely be taking some new and updated pictures! I will break out the good camera! They both are already growing new feathers, I just noticed some very long yellow pinnies coming in on Peppers belly! It is very exciting! They both are preening and not plucking anymore! I cannot wait for them to show us their true potential! The previous owner informed me Pepper is well acquainted with clicker training and now that she is settled in and trusting me I cannot wait to get started!! My parents are getting over colds.. (thankfully working in a doctors office my immune system is strong!) Pepper has picked up coughing.. then starts laughing.. hearing her laugh melts my heart and I just LOVE it!!!

Taking on pluckers can be very rewarding but also very frustrating. They may appear to grow in feathers and be 'cured' only for them to decide one day to rip them all out again. It can be a long road.

Your guys dont appear to be too destructive as they still have a lot of the downy feathers so hopefully they arent in the habit of it yet.

Some words of advice though if i may. The cage for your sennie looks too small from those pictures and a bigger cage means space for more toys

As these are new birds and especially as they are pluckers please take them to an avian vet if you havnt already, for good new bird health checks and also for some basic bloodwork.

Any new bird should ideally be tested for pbfd and psittacosis (avian chlamydiosis/ chlamydia psittaci) however its even more important for any bird who has any feather abnormalities or loss. Given the plucking i would also be going for polyoma and possibly giardia as a precaution although from what i can see the pattern doesnt look typical giardia but thats never a guarantee. Also your avian vet may suggest further testing to rule other things out, please make sure the pbfd and psittacosis are done by blood. Dont bother with psittacosis by faecal it gives false negatives. Pbfd they also might take some feathers to test aswell to be double sure.

I would also suggest microchipping (it goes in the pectoral muscle in birds) and dna sexing - blood or feather is fine. Purely on the basis it is much better for a vet to be able to diagnose or discredit certain conditions if they know the gender they are working with.

Not sure of your experience with parrots but please dont feed any peanuts/ monkeynuts as they can contain mold spores which can cause aspergilliosis which can be fatal.

Hope im not teaching you to suck eggs so to speak (hope you get the saying lol) but its information i wish i would have known when i first started taking in rescue parrots - thankfully i have a brilliant avian vet

Time for an update! Simon will now be Simone from now on as we found an egg in her cage today! Pepper is looking amazing!

this one is a couple weeks ago..



and this is current!



I will have to figure out how to trim my recording and put it up of the whistling and talking!