- Grab on.
Can you grab on?
- Babies, oh babies.
(kissing sounds)
Oh such cute babies.
Oh they're so cute.
(kissing sounds)
Mm.
Okay guys, we are going to try
to do this conure care video for you with three sun conures.
(bird squawks)
- Where's the last one?
- Plus Comet, my giant sun conure.
For those of you non-bird people
he's not actually a sun conure,
I'm joking 'cause his coloration is similar.
And the other one is on the chair watching us.
Who knows where they'll end up?
Okay so, conure video,
I'm actually somewhat hoping these girls are loud
so that you have a realistic expectation
of what you're getting into when you get a conure.
Just cause they're little doesn't mean they're quiet.
- It's like chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.
- What kind of treats do sun conure prefer?
My sun conures favorite treats are spray millet,
is the top favorite, sun flower seeds, safflower seeds,
they love those.
Mixed varieties of nuts, what else do they like?
(laughs)
I think that's about it.
All of those are treat foods for conures.
Their main diet is a fresh mix in the morning that we make,
raw food basis. (bird squawking)
- Really?
Yelled in my ear.
(chuckle)
- That's what they do.
So our sun conures get two meals a day like
the rest of our parrots.
First one is that fresh food I was talking about,
which is like a natural feeding system,
it changes with what's based on what's in season.
Babies. (kissing sounds)
Good girls.
In the evening these guys get a organic pellet
that is super high quality.
It's cold-pressed, so we don't lose any of
the nutritional value through the manufacturing process.
And we love the ingredients of our pellets.
When it comes to diet, we did so much research
that we now offer what we recommend.
We have our cookbook series. (laughs)
We have a cookbook series that talks about the recipe
that we serve in the morning and talks about
the pellets that we give in the evening.
Then as you know that their favorite treat foods,
those are reserved for really good behaviors
and any sort of training that we do with them,
so that's how we use the treats.
It's also how we would use fruit in their diet as well.
You can probably see one is there,
one is there, one is here.
As far as showering and bathing,
ideally you would do this everyday with these guys.
One of the ways that you can do it is just offer them
an extra water dish for them to soak down in.
I found that as soon as I give my birds a clean water dish
they are jumping in it.
Only these guys cause they're the only ones
that can actually fit in the sized water dish that I give.
That is one way they can just self-bathe.
These guys do that for sure.
Another thing that they really like
is when I'm doing dishes,
they will just crawl down my arm,
into my hand and soak themselves in the water.
So, they love playing in the sink,
you can actually run a faucet and have them run through it.
Some birds, especially budgies,
love laying against and rubbing.
(birds squawking)
What was that?
So many distractions you guys.
Where'd all three of you end up?
Okay, one, two, three, got 'em.
They're up there.
Two of them are there, one is still there.
I don't remember what I was saying.
Oh yeah, showering and bathing.
So, in the sink is another method,
rubbing themselves against wet greens is a third method,
a lot of small birds really like doing that.
So if you get a bunch of greens,
you rinse 'em and you don't necessarily thoroughly dry them
or anything, you can just lay them out
in a dish they can rub against them.
(bird squawking)
Hey baby.
(kissing sounds)
Who had sweet potato on their beak?
Okay, another method of showering or bathing
is getting a shower perch
and letting your bird shower with you.
I found that with these guys,
they loved being on the top part of the shower
and like watching me shower.
And then sometimes they would jump down
and they would get on my shoulder, in my hair
and then especially after a shower,
they love playing with my wet hair.
You can use a spray bottle and do some misting.
If your bird does not like showering or bathing
or getting wet, you can literally train it.
You can train just about anything.
I show this in a play list with Rasta,
an Alexandrian parakeet who hated water
and I trained him to bathe.
Eventually once you train them to associate it positively,
you do not have to reward them for it,
it becomes self-rewarding,
so that's a really cool thing about training bathing.
They also are great hairdressers.
So, as far as bar spacing I'm going to leave a resource
in the description that you can check out,
that goes over bar spacing for all species of birds
and what to follow.
The bigger the better as far as enclosures.
I use five by eight aviaries for my birds,
or six foot diameter aviaries
or 15 foot diameter aviaries.
(laughs)
Oh my gosh that tickles.
Wow, distracto.
So, the bigger the better,
that way the enclosure isn't this horrible place,
it is a place of fun, where they can go and destroy things
and not get in trouble for it.
They can be encouraged to forage and self-entertain,
they should enjoy being in their enclosure as much
as they enjoy coming out to hang out with you,
so it should be a balance.
And I have all three, right?
One, two, three, yeah.
Speaking of toys,
foraging toys are awesome because
it keeps these little guys busy.
These little guys are super duper duper duper noisy.
These are the ones that I have the biggest problem
with neighbors about and how they can just keep going
and going and going is really really insane.
So, the more foraging activities you can teach your bird
to do the better and then you can plan it around times
of natural screaming, which is usually in the mornings
and in the evening.
So, if your bird likes to wake up with the sun
and scream about it and go to bed with the sun
and scream about it,
before that happens you can put some foraging activities
that are literally going to keep your bird busy for an hour
and the sun will go down, it will have missed it
and will just be like, oh I was busy,
I totally missed the sun going down,
now it's just down and I go to sleep.
That's what I do with all of my birds when
I keep them outdoors, I just beat them to it,
I keep them busy and then before they know it they're like,
oh it's dark, I have to go to sleep
and I forgot to yell about it.
Foraging is fantastic in the toy form.
Wow, what are you guys doing?
The other thing is they really like preening type toys
and these are toys that my doves also really love.
It's kind of bamboo form, things that they can pull out,
I have like a flower bouquet toy in my toy line
that is super popular with these guys,
they just love fixing everything or undoing things.
Also, any toys that can keep their beaks busy,
I have a kabob line which is amazing in our toy bundles
that we send out each month
and it is all of my birds favorites,
and I have birds from sun conures to an African grey
to galahs to macaws.
Hands down their favorite toys are the kabobs.
The reason why is they go from soft woods to harder woods,
they go from small to large
and so you have this really awesome variety
of being able to pick it apart
and whether your bird is a baby bird or an older bird,
they have the same ability to pull it apart
and have fun with it.
It's going to make any bird feel like they have
the sharpest beak in the world
and it's going to actually be filing it down.
(kissing sound)
So, of course when it comes to toys,
check out mine.
They're all natural, they're made of really,
really cool things like oyster shells, coconuts, bamboo,
woods, they're only used with vegetable dyes.
I swear by them, I love them,
it's what I give my own birds.
So, everything I recommend is something that
I actually use with my own flock.
Why we picked sun conures.
First of all, we didn't pick them, Dave did,
and I think it's because he didn't do his research.
I think because he saw them doing certain behaviors
that he wanted to use in our show,
that we didn't actually end up using in the show
or even training.
Hopefully he'll be working on that.
(laughing)
Oh my gosh.
Personality traits, pros and cons.
The pros are that they're so much fun.
Certain personality traits are going to seem like
a pro to you that might seem like a con to me
and vice versa.
So, their noise, definitely a con.
Uh.
Their personality is naturally just how playful
and funny they are, up there, it's a con, I love,
or it's a pro.
Oh man, I'm going to get awful at this, con and pro.
(laughs)
That was intentional guys.
Gosh, personality traits,
to be honest they're all a little bit different.
I have three girls, they're all just funny and playful.
However, Lily is a rockstar, she's fantastic,
she loves to work, she loves to train,
she's just a very quick learner and easy to engage with
and interact with.
Phoebe wants the least amount to do with people.
That's Phoebe.
And Dietke is our baby, she is the youngest of the three
and she falls somewhere in between,
where she picks her people.
They're all trainable.
Lily is by far the most easily easy to engage.
I can't even focus.
(bird squawks)
Hi Comet.
(bird squawks)
Good boy.
Good boy Comet, good boy.
Those of you that don't know,
I'm going to be posting a video.
I have been working with flight training this guy
and getting him reconditioned back into shape
and I'm so proud of the fact that he just flew right now,
because I tried for weeks to get you to fly
and you wouldn't do it and here you are, you're doing it.
P.S. he looks like a giant sun conure.
Don't get angry or jealous.
Okay, another personality trait,
they get jealous.
Luckily they're also easily distracted.
I feel like Comet might actually do
a flight session right now.
Comet.
(bird squawks)
Oh, what a good boy, good job buddy.
Okay, it's turning into the Comet video,
which sun conure's not happy about.
Let's do it again.
Hey, you dive bomber I saw that.
Good boy.
(bird squawking)
My goodness, good boy.
(bird squawking)
That's a con, that you poop.
Oh that was a shell, I guess that wasn't poop.
I thought you didn't want to play anymore.
Try to do a conure video but you have a macaw.
The other thing about toys is to keep getting
their favorites of course,
if there's a certain toy that they always destroy,
keep getting it because they're loving it.
But also make sure you change it up and you add variety
and you keep building on what they like.
Our toy (bird squawk) our...
Whoa.
How bout you just hang out,
wanna try just hanging out?
Our monthly toy bundles are called a mystery boxes,
because not only is it a surprise for your bird,
but it's a surprise for you too.
So, we pick different toys each month to send to you.
A lot of them are similar as far as made out of
a lot of the same things, but they're created individually
and differently so that it offers something different
and fun for your bird.
While still staying within things that they like
and they recognize as being able to destroy.
I'll put a link in the video description
to our parrot toy bundles that you can check out.
Hello handsome guy.
Who knew I'd have a macaw in my conure video but
I guess it counts because you look like a giant sun conure.
(giggles) You do.
How much time to spend out of the cage?
This question always has the same answer,
no matter what species you're talking about.
When it comes to having your bird out of the cage,
it's not about the amount of time
you spend with your bird out of the cage,
it's about the quality of time
that you spend with your bird out of the cage.
So, if you spend most of your time with your bird out of
the cage yet they were negative interactions
as far as he was always getting into trouble,
then it wasn't really time well spent
and your relationship over the long term
is actually going to go backwards.
If you have a dedicated three hours to spend
and in the morning you take your bird out,
you shower with him in the shower,
you give him breakfast on a stand
where he's just happily eating breakfast,
then you do a little training session for treats
or vice versa and then I'm going to put him back
in his cage for some foraging opportunities while
I go to work.
Then when you get back from work, come home,
have a training session with him,
put him up for dinner on a stand and or maybe not,
whatever you want to do, hang out
and then put him away for his twelve hours of sleep.
That was a much better amount of time
to have spent with you,
where your relationship's going to go way further
in the long term than if you spent the entire day yelling
and flipping out at your bird for doing bird-like things.
They're very destructive creatures,
they're going to chew on the crown molding,
they're going to get into things that you don't want them to
and even dangerous things where they find wires
or cables to chew.
Ouch.
She's like burrowing into my neck.
You can't see her cause she's just super burrowed.
So, just keep in mind the quality of the amount of time
that you're spending with your bird outside
of it's enclosure verses, hey,
I'm a better bird owner than you
because my bird was out 14 hours.
Even though I had to towel him at the end of the day,
to get him to go back into his enclosure.
It's way better to have spent less time
that was all positive and in the long run
is only helping (bird squawking) build your relationship.
(kissing sound)
Macaw's are quieter than conures guys.
(bird squawking)
Hey you.
Okay, a lot of you are asking about hormonal behavior
with conure and nesting in shirt,
doing anything that appears nesty is nesty.
Try to discourage that.
These guys will play in like blankets and things like that.
Just be mindful of when you're doing it
and at what time of day
and all the other triggers that could go along with it.
If it's the one thing that you're doing,
it may not trigger hormones but
if you're giving them mushy food
and you're allowing all this nesting behavior all the time
and especially during the spring or the fall,
then you're most likely triggering hormones.
Okay so the noise thing.
It's easier to train any other bird to be quiet, you guys.
Maybe I would argue a cockatoo but...
What happened?
It was a bigger step than you thought.
However, it can be done,
it can be, not that you can train a sun conure to be silent
but you can minimize how annoying they are.
You can put quiet on cue, you can put words on cue,
you can put whispering on cue.
Any noise, whistle, singing, anything that you like more
than the screeching and screaming you can encourage
with treats and training.
But that is why it is so important to have the diet correct
because if your bird is getting seeds and nuts
and it's normal everyday diet you're doing nothing,
(bird squawking)
it's not going to understand that it's
a food reward when you try to use it as a treat.
If your bird gets vegetables in the morning
and a really good quality pellet at night
and then you use seeds and nuts for training,
now all of a sudden that's a high value
and it's going to think about,
what did I just do to earn that
and how do I do it again because
I want more of those treats.
So, keep that in mind,
everything goes back to diet.
Diet is the foundation of which you build
a lot of your training on.
Honestly, on my consultations,
it's the very first question I ask,
what are you feeding your bird,
what is your birds diet.
How to deal with aggressive, biting conures?
Again, you want to shape their behavior through food.
So, literally teach them to step up,
teach them tricks, teach them things that you want.
Training is your common language,
you use that to communicate (bird squawking)
I want these behaviors,
I don't want these behaviors.
And then there's you, being so quiet.
You're just the best.
So distracted by you, you're so cute.
I have been hanging out with Comet a lot lately,
so he's just so, oh, he's getting all baby mode on me,
I can't take it.
In essence, how to deal with biting, aggressive conures,
trick training is a great way to form a bond
and a language.
Most birds are biting because you are missing all
the signs leading up to them having to bite you
or it's been established that they just know
you're going to ignore all the other signs,
so they just go straight to biting.
What you have to do is establish a relationship based
on respect and a lot of that can be done
through trick training,
cause that's really how you're going
to get to know your bird and how your bird's going
to get to know you.
It's also hands-off training,
so you don't have to worry about getting bit in the process
of training and your bird doesn't have to worry about having
to bite you to communicate.
Okay, so how to reduce the loud screaming?
I said it was possible, I didn't explain how.
This takes time, all of the stop screaming stuff
that I've heard from people,
they see a change within a week.
Are you getting your butt kicked by a conure?
Here, they're teaming up on you buddy,
it's not cool.
All the changes that I see with screaming,
usually people start to see a change within a week.
Like they'll say, oh the noise level is decreasing
but it usually takes months
to phase out really obnoxious screaming.
The way you do it is by putting silent on cue
and calm on cue and talking or whispering or chatter,
or gosh, anything.
(bird squawking)
Besides the screaming.
So, what I would say with working with three,
I definitely have one noisier one
and it's Dietke.
Dietke is the noise maker.
I would work with Phoebe and Lily first
and I would work on teaching them to talk.
Lily is the most vocal as far as actual good vocals,
like talking vocals.
She says, "babies" and she gives kisses.
So, I would work with her first on putting that on cue,
because then she would be begging
and she'd get to a point where she would do it all the time
and it would be more likely to teach these two that like,
hey that's how you get attention,
that's how you get everything that you want,
is through these other vocalizations.
And birds learn vocalizations better from other birds.
So she will be able to teach them, (bird squawking)
she'll be able to teach them how
to talk easier than I would have time at teaching them
to say the same things that I've already taught her.
To be honest, based on the language
that I'm getting from my conures right now,
they aren't really interested in hanging out with me.
So I'm going to go ahead and put them away
and I'll show you how I do it.
And this just kind of means
they're ready for their own time.
Whoa.
They've been in here for awhile.
I was filming a tasty Tuesday for my Patreon account
and they were all taste testing it,
so they're food motivation is down right now for me
to be able to show you guys anything.
Hey buddy, good job.
Here you go.
So, I'll show you how I get them back.
I use safflower seeds and their cue is baby
and girly-girls.
The only problem is that Comet's probably going to want
to come.
Babies come here girlies,
come on girly-girl.
Good girl.
So, I'm going to go take them away.
Hold on Comet, I'll be back to fly you.
They were bored that I was trying to make
a video about them.