My Quaker Parrot Kiki and Extra Information

I own one Quaker parrot named Kiki who is about five or six months old now. We bought her May 2nd, 2009 unweaned which means she couldn't eat solid food yet. So I practically raised her since she was a baby. Most people consider baby birds ugly and they are pretty ugly when they are featherless but I think their lovely nonetheless.

It's not the best idea to purchase an unweaned parrot but I knew from previous encounters how to properly wean a parrot. Feeding the baby parrot isn't the most difficult part but must be administered carefully and properly. Probably the most difficult part of the weaning process is switching over to solid food. For me and Kiki switching to solid food wasn't difficult but I have heard terrible stories about people buying unweaned chicks that end up dying so unless you have experience DON'T BUY UNWEANED PARROTS (sounds hypocritical doesn't it).

Besides my whole weaning comment Kiki has been a joy to raise and she started talking before she was fully weaned which made me feel like a proud parent. Kiki likes to eat corn, broccoli, zucchini, white grapes, bananas, honeydews, apples, guavas, pears, cucumbers, brown rice, whole grain pasta, whole grain bread, sometimes a little low fat mozzarella cheese, and rarely we give her peanut butter on a toothpick in addition to her pelleted diet. She actually eats all this except not at once but if you own a parrot you probably know how picky parrots are when it comes to food. Instead of a seed diet she eats a pelleted one which allows her to receive proper nutrition however we don't deprive her of seeds because that is the whole point of a bird's beak. I think she prefers pellets over seeds though, because I put some seeds on top of her cage but she went inside to eat the pellets.

The first thing most people ask me when I tell them I have a parrot is "Does it talk?" I tell them yes and that Kiki can say her name, peek-a-boo, hello, hmmm, and she can make sound effects like farting, rolling her tongue, giving kisses, whisper, scream like my sister, etc. Some of the things she knows are when its time to eat, sleep, when someone is using the microwave, exiting her cage unaided, taking the remote's battery cover off and many other things. If I had more time I could probably train her to do tricks on command but she mostly chooses when she wants to do things. She practically likes every stranger unless they hurt her except she doesn't like my father too much. Like most other parrots she takes her own baths, trims her beak and nails by herself, and screams for attention when needed. I think she also knows stealing is bad because she usually runs away from me when she takes something. Posted below is a slideshow of her and a video of something she stole.