Meeka is proving to be a very sweet girl. She is currently still in quarantine pending her vet visit today but has been getting more comfortable.
She Loves a good head scratch and is starting to step up for me. She has been eating pretty well and seems to prefer the Zupreem pellets to the fresh chop but did try a bit of watermelon and liked it. One of the biggest challenges will be to get her to stop plucking her feathers and a key to that will be making sure she has other things to do. Her previous home, if you can call it that, was a very small cage in a van with no toys or even a perch and boredom probably contributed to her plucking. She has a been playing with the toys in her cage which is a great sign as that will give her something to do besides pluck. The next thing will be getting her some foraging opportunities to further occupy her attention. She will also be moving into a huge 64x32 cage in the bird room with other birds and lots of things for her to interact with to further distract her from plucking.
Later that same day:
To provide some easy to learn foraging behavior I gave her a tray of washed pebbles mixed with some seed and some easy to see nuts. Within just a few minutes she was down there digging away to find the treats. Once she understands how foraging works I will reduce the treats and provide more of her pellets in there instead of in her food bowl which will require her to spend more time foraging. The more time I can keep her occupied the less time she has to pluck from boredom.
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