Quakers and Conures

[andyparade]

I just adopted my sun conure from a somewhat ignoring family and he is amazing. he has gone from screaming at all hours to only letting out happy squawks when i walk in. he went from flying away if you tried to touch him to taking naps under my covers with me and taking showers on my shoulder. our hard work went a long way. now, i have been offered a quaker to join the family. a little about him... he is supposed to be a one person bird. he does need a lot of attention, which is no problem with me. he is somewhat of a squawker. he has a 20 word vocabulary. i have a few questions about this...

i know all birds are different but do quakers have a good history with conures?

how about quakers with budgies? (i have one of those too)

lastly, is $200 a good price for a quaker with a fairly small cage? (i have an extra large cage i'll upgrade him to if i get him though)

this is my first post, so hi everybody! an help would be awesome. i hope my questions are clear enough.

[Monica]

Quakers are either aggressive/shy birds or they are really friendly. Some do great with other species, while others want nothing to do with another bird. So there's no guarantees either way.

And it's not a good idea to house separate species of varying sizes together. I will say, yes I have done so, but I don't necessarily recommend to do so. Noel and Casey are buddies but I never planned on them being so because of size difference. They've been together for about 6 or so years now. (although currently, Noel is caged and Casey is cage-free, Casey still gose and visits Noel in her cage) That being said, I've lost a bird (bourke) that had escaped from a cage and the top beak was bitten off because of Noel.

For a young quaker, $200 is probably fine. Older quaker you might be looking at $100 and up... if your willing to pay the price then I don't think it particularly matters... but some things to think about... is the bird on a healthy diet? does he come with toys? perches? has he had any recent avian vet checks? can you get those records? how much is he without his cage?

[andyparade]

Thanks Monica! I hadn't thought of a few of those questions. I just e-mailed the owner. No worries, I wont be having any of my birds in the same cage. They all get their own mansions. He is
6 ears old so maybe 200 is a bit much. well, here's him and everything he comes with...

[guest1717171]

i have a quaker that lives with my patagonian conure and he is very aggravating to her sometimes...so i have an extra cage i leave set up for those times

$200 isnt bad for a quaker and a cage and playstand but he does look like he has plucked himself a bit so keep that in mind as it might be something that progresses and that you would have to deal with

[Monica]

Legs look like they could be plucked, and possibly underweight... would need more/better pictures, and perhaps a weight if at all possible to get a better idea... but personally, I wouldn't consider 6 years old to be old... when they could live to 20-30 years old, if not older! And one quaker supposedly lived to 50!

So with that info I wouldn't necessarily say that's a bad deal! Deffinitely needs a cage upgrade, though!

[andyparade]

Well, I'm going to visit him tomorrow. Hopefully the chemistry is good. I'll look closer at the weight and feather plucking issue. And his bird cage is already waiting for him. It's pretty big. Just picked it up from the swap meet saturday. $15!! Just the toys and perches inside it were worth triple that. Also, anyone know any good sites to sell bird cages? I'm trying kijiji, craigslist.

[Monica]

There's also hoobly or ebay. Keep us updated!

[andyparade]

so i haven't visited him yet but I got more info. His diet is just fine. also, he doesn't pluck. those missing feathers on his legs just never grew in. The vet thought it was an illness but it turns out it's not. Just a weird bird! He hasn't been to the vet this year but supposedly he hasn't been sick at all (I know I know.) things look somewhat good though :)
i can't wait to see him.

[birdlover337]

well if he is six and that is the weight quakers are supposed to be dont look at mine lol.... mine is a little pudgy.... when you visit him just check him out and look at the legs you should be able to see if he plucking his feathers

Good luck, hope he works out for yeah

[SouthAmericanFever]

I would honestly call the vet he saw about this mysterious "non-illness" which made his leg feathers never grow in. I think they're pulling one over on you about that. If the vet knows what he's doing, he could explain it a lot better to make it actually believable... or he could tell you the *real* reason he's missing those feathers!

I was going to say $200 is a bit much (at least for my area, I can't say for yours), but with the play stand (and cage, even though it's not great) I think that's a fair price.

My Quaker gets along great with other birds, but I'm absolutely sure that's not true of all of them. He's territorial and will attack me if he's near his cage or a bird he likes--so yours might be territorial toward other birds even though mine strangely isn't (just towards people). "Territorial" is a VERY common thing with Quakers!