One Dog and Two Birds

A lot of people visit our site, looking for tips on adopting birds, mostly conures of course. Though we have been meaning to write about adopting birds, we can tell you this right now: It is not easy to keep two of them busy.

Pepper is a quite girl and hardly ever makes any noise, she calls to us if she wants food or need to go to bed. However, Nikko is a entirely different story. He is young, very healthy and has loads of energy. It is a challenge to come up with ideas that would help him burn off some of that excess energy, if he is not tired, is directed towards me (mostly with anger). Nikko did not grow up with toys and doesn’t care for them. I have tried to get him interested in them, but we haven’t had any luck yet. However, he likes to shred (Pepper too) and thats one way to keep him busy.

I gave him this card board box, about a month back. Pepper tends to keep away from new things, whereas Nikko loves to investigate them. So, as he came near, I threw in some seeds inside the box (I had cut a hole for him to get in) and in a few minutes he was inside.

The first day, he shredded all the flaps of the box inside and threw the box off the cage a couple of times, and scattered shredded cardboard all over the place.

Pepper joined him from day 2, she liked to shred from the outside and did not want to venture in.

Watch out for happened to the box in 6 days!!!

For her birthday, along with a bunch of little toys, Amy also got a big Bear toy, whom we named Colbert (after Stephen Colbert from the Colbert Report). Honestly we never expected Colbert to last this long - it has been more than 6 months and he is still intact. Amy loves him, and when we get excited about him, she will drag him from one room to another, hold him by the leg or ears and shake him violently. She also like to lie down on him and reflect.

Nikko and Pepper love peanuts. Equivalent to Amy’s Kong, we have a peanut holder for the birdies, that stimulates them and they play around with it to get to the yummy nuts. Pepper usually tries to reach and grab with her beak, and uses one of her legs to hold it steady, while she works her way through.

Nikko gets really excited when he sees peanuts even before I get to put them in the toy. He runs around the cage, trying different ways to get to them. His best shot on it is by hanging upside down. I will go for anything that keeps him busy.

If we have to give credit to one thing that Amy has, that is absolutely awesome, thats the Kong! She loves it, no matter what it is filled with. We get the usual Kong stuffer for it, but also go for peanut butter or yogurt+peanut butter, as is, or frozen.

Amy knows the Kong by name and brings it to us when we either pull out the stuffer or ask for it. It is something more fun for her to do, when she is not walking around with a ball or a toy in her mouth.

The Kong is also a wonderful distraction that no other toy can create when we are leaving the house. Amy doesn’t care much when we leave for work, but if it is for anything else, she would want to go with us. And usually we take her wherever we go. However, with the temperatures below zero these days, leaving her home with the Kong is good for all of us.

Amy got two more new toys today - a red Elmo and a pink Cow. She was just so excited to get new toys, like she doesn’t have enough of them. Now, we can’t fit any more toys in her basket. These two toys are human toys and don’t have a squeaky in them. Amy doesn’t pull apart toys that don’t have the squeaker in them. Long living toys