Birds in Hull By Pete and Sue

In November 2004 Sue and I promised ourselves a really special present for Christmas this year, we needed something really special because of the shitty year we had had.

We decided that we should buy a parrot. Actually you can't buy a parrot, everyone we spoke to on the Net told us that we had to adopt one. Fair enough, we found a local breeder in east Hull, they bred African (congo) grey parrots. We saw 4 baby greys that were being hand reared to become silly tame, and usually silly tame birds become the best talkers. We were amazed at the size of them, 4 little balls of white fluff, about 3 inches tall with the biggest feet that we had ever seen.

The breeder told us that at this stage (4 weeks old) the babies needed feeding 6-7 times a week, each feed being 4-5 teaspoons of bird formula every 3-4 hours, which had to be at 100-105 degrees. We went away thinking it might be too much hassle. In December we called the breeder to tell her that we would like to buy one of her birds, only to be told all her birds were sold and we would have to wait until the parent birds (Cracker and Charlie) had another brood.

The brood wasn't expected until early February 2005, so we left a deposit and went home and waited... Then in February we received a phone call. The breeder had rung to tell us that the pair had a brood of youngsters and that she had reared them in the nest box, but she wouldn't be able to see them until they were about 4 weeks old. This would bring the viewing day to March.

Towards the end of March we went on a visit to choose our adopted baby, a bouncing baby boy with jet black eyes and whopping great feet. He was fully feathered with a very dangerous looking beak. Taking the bull (bird) by the horns we fed him for the first time. He took 5 spoons of rearing food from the 2 brand new novices, but we did it, we fed him proper, and that was the start. We arranged to take him home 2 weeks later, which brought us to April.

Once we knew we were getting a new member to our family we went crazy, going to buy a new cage, bird food, formula, fruits and vegetables, not to mention going to 15-20 car boot sales searching for suitable toys and bird related objects. Anyway we were ready, we collected him, brought him home, put him in his new home, a plastic box measuring 2ft square. He couldn't fly yet, even finding it hard to walk.

7 feeds of 5 teaspoons soon went down to 4 feeds of 15 teaspoons a day, noticing that every day that passed he was growing bigger and being bolder, and we were encouraging him to come to us when we called. Now was the time to choose a name. We all wrote names down on a A3 sized paper, and we ended up with 34 names on the paper. We chose the name Georgie.

We have had the pleasure of Georgie for 7 weeks now, he is coming on lovely, fully feathered, flying, wolf whistling, starting to talk, saying hello. He is eating everything we put in front of him, fruits, nuts, vegetables, Cheerios, Weetabix, corn on the cob, pasta, soaked seeds. His favourite food is pomegranate seeds. Georgie is 5 months old on 15th June.

We have joined the Parrot Society in Hull, a group of people who meet every 2 months at the Antler Club on Marfleet Lane. We chat about parrots of every kind from budgies to macaws, we show films and slides, have guest speakers, and also chat about the care and conservation of parrotlike birds of the world. If you are interested in our feathered friends please feel free to ask, we can usually put you in touch with someone: email enquiry@thisisull.com .

We (Sue and Pete) hope you all enjoy reading about our Georgie, let us know if you enjoyed reading this article.

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