Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Trending News
Care and feeding of Indian Ringneck Parrot?
I'm asking on behalf of my friend who is in India. He bought a parrot, which he was told was a baby. Is there a specific timeline of changes in the appearance of an Indian Ringneck Parrot, to tell its age? When do the baby feather moult and the adult appearance start?
It's been eating fruit from his hand, but he says it won't eat from a bowl in the cage. What else should it eat? I told him that with a beak like that, they must be omnivorous and it probably needs more than fruit. I don't think his local Petco has Parrot Chow - he would need to give it regular 'people food', just wondering what kind is best.
It's also pretty aggressive. He thought it would grow out of this behavior, but based on my lifetime of training mammals, I told him that it needs to learn socialization now, or it will only get worse. He bought leather gloves for handling it.
Does anyone have suggestions for handling and taming an Indian parrot? I told him it might have been caught from the wild as an adult, so it will have a harder time adjusting to life in captivity. Can a novice parrot owner usually succeed in raising a baby, or keeping an adult that was wild-caught? I suggested to him that his best option might be to turn it loose.
He took it to the vet once, but he didn't think of all the questions that he could have asked.
Thank you for any help you can offer!
Thank you for your answer (and I'm still hoping/waiting for more answers).
I'm not at all sure the bird IS used to being cared for by humans. He said he bought it from some villagers, and I'm thinking they set some kind of traps out to catch the birds and sell them, so he might be much more miserable in captivity - but how to know that? The fact that he doesn't eat from a cup or bowl seems like a clue that he was stolen from his home of freedom.
What would the diet of a wild parrot be? Fruit, seeds, small prey? When I said 'people food', I just meant whole foods like groceries, if he can't get a formulated pelleted specialized parrot food. I wasn't really thinking of table scraps.
2 Answers
- Anonymous9 years agoFavorite Answer
He/ you can order pelleted bird diets off of the net. I personally prefer rowdybush but there are those who swear by zu-preme and other brands. People food is not going to cut it.
The aggression could be a lot of things and i would not worry about that at all until you have the whole diet issue in hand.
If the bird has feathers that look like a bird, then it is old enough to be eating food from a dish. Babies too young to eat "solid food" from a dish look like babies (feathers pinned and half pinned) ... If you look up pictures of ringnecks online and this bird looks like an adult then it is at least old enough to be eating a small pelleted diet.
No matter what, if the parrot is now used to being provided for by humans, letting it go is a major NO NO... simply can not do that ... it is a death sentence and a cruel one.
Source(s): exotic bird owner / rescue / rehab