Red-tailed Jaco: description, conditions of detention, diet

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Lovers of tame birds very often choose the red-tailed jaco for home keeping. The fact is that this bird has extraordinary mental abilities. It is easy enough to teach her to speak. But as for the content, this matter is not so simple, after all, this is a bird, and not a home toy. Therefore, before buying, you should study what the red-tailed jaco needs at home.

Purchasing a parrot

Problems for bird owners arise due to the lack of truthful information regarding the content of birds. Many sources write that the red-tailed Jaco is unpretentious at home. However, this is an erroneous assumption. The red-tailed Jaco parrot is not a toy, and not even a canary, but rather a serious bird that needs constant care and training.

The first difficulties may arise at the stage of buying a bird. The fact is that the official capture of Jaco is very limited, the number of captured and sold individuals is being counted. Therefore, the black market for these birds is flourishing.

Poachers tend to sell older birds. Wild parrots are offered under the guiseyoung individuals. And people acquire them, not knowing that they have to learn all the difficulties of raising an age bird. Well, if she does not turn out to be completely wild and embittered, since such an instance is simply impossible to re-educate. Zhako's age, unfortunately, can only be determined up to one and a half years.

Nuances to be aware of

Abroad there are special nurseries where these parrots are bred. It is in them that the chicks of the red-tailed Jaco are sold. Of course, the price for such a bird is simply over the top, which is why people contact dubious traders.

An honest seller will never recommend buying a Jaco to a person without experience in caring for large parrots. If you keep a bird only in a cage and do not train its mind, then it will develop neuroses. In such a situation, the parrot will begin to terrorize others.

If you have the time and desire to deal with such a serious bird as the red-tailed jaco (the photo is given in the article), then you can bring up a good true friend. Such a manual parrot is very attached to the owner and can even be jealous of him. Since the red-tailed jaco has a high intelligence, so it can be trained in various games, human speech and imitation. In captivity, Jaco lives up to forty years.

Red-tailed Jaco: description

Jaco is probably the most unprepossessing species of all large talking parrots. He does not have such bright plumage as, for example, a macaw parrot, so beautiful spectacular photos with him will not work. The main tone of the feathers is gray, it can have different shades, from light todarker. It is thanks to this coloring that the bird is also called the African gray parrot. A bright accent in plumage is a red tail.

Red-tailed Jaco is a large bird. In length from head to tail, it reaches forty centimeters. In adult parrots, the iris is colored yellow. As a rule, males are slightly larger than females, but their sex can be reliably distinguished only by doing an analysis (DNA testing). Chicks have slightly darker feathers and irises. They become lighter with age.

Lifestyle

Red-tailed Jaco (photo shown in the article) in nature lives in tropical thickets near rivers. To spend the night, parrots flock to the trees. They live in small groups, but cause significant damage to agricultural plantations. During the nesting period, the birds are divided into pairs and retire until the end of feeding the chicks.

The red-tailed Jaco parrot is very cautious and noisy. Birds are afraid of people because they are hunted for meat and chicks for sale. Jacos do not fly well, their numbers have declined markedly due to poaching. The subject of hunting are also bright tail feathers. They are used not only as decorations, but also for magical rituals.

Birds lived in large noisy flocks in the last century, but now they live only in small groups.

Jaco's talents

It is believed that Jacos are the most talented parrots capable of onomatopoeia. An average bird can memorize over a hundred revolutions.human speech. Numerous studies by Dr. Irene Pepperberg have proven that birds associate words with the objects they represent. In addition, they perceive colors, shapes, serial numbers, and even zero. The talking red-tailed jaco is quite common. Many birds begin to talk a little by the age of two or three.

Wild individuals are very loud. They squeal, squawk, whistle, snap their beaks loudly. When starting such a bird, remember that at home it will behave the same way. This annoys many, but this is the nature of parrots. Therefore, you should think carefully before taking such a pet.

Parrots often repeat the sounds they hear around them. These can be the sound signals of equipment, an alarm clock, an intercom, barking dogs and meowing cats.

Red-tailed Jaco: leaving

Jaco were pets as far back as the ancient Romans and Greeks, that is, about 4000 years ago. In those distant times, only rich and noble people could afford to have such a beautiful talking bird. One of the most famous owners of such a parrot was Henry VIII. How does the red-tailed jaco behave in captivity, how to feed this bird? Such questions are most often asked by beginners who encounter such a fairly large bird for the first time. In fact, the parrot is not very demanding. The red-tailed Jaco, whose diet does not contain exotic foods, eats a wide variety of fruits, berries, vegetables, nuts, and herbs. But it should be remembered thatbirds cannot stand drafts and do not like tobacco smoke.

Communicating with a pet

But what Jacos are demanding for is attention from a person. Birds are very social. For a full life, they need to communicate daily with the owner they trust for at least several hours. The longer their relationship lasts, the better.

Winning the complete trust of a parrot and its affection is not so easy. This requires a lot of effort and a lot of time. But when you manage to make friends, you will not regret the hours spent.

Adaptation of a Gray to a new environment and to new people can be very long. The duration of this period depends on many factors: on individual characteristics, the age of the bird, the efforts and time that the owners spend on their pet. Immediately after acquiring a parrot, it is best to leave it alone. He needs to get used to the new environment. You should not let him out of the cage either, it is also necessary to monitor the bird's contacts with other pets, if any.

Young individuals get used to people very quickly. In general, Jaco has such a feature as the need to choose a leader for himself, and it does not matter if it is a human society or a flock of birds. How quickly a parrot gets used to the owner and becomes tame depends on how much time a person devotes to it.

Communication Rules

A parrot is not a decorative toy. Therefore, a cage for a red-tailed jaco cannot be a placepermanent residence. You can't keep a bird in it all the time. Since the Jaco needs constant communication, then outside the cage he should not be bored and be left to himself.

A parrot can reproduce human speech very well. Therefore, you can easily bring closer the moment when the bird starts talking. To do this, you should devote some time to learning to talk. Lessons should not be too long, it is better to spend a few short lessons a day for a couple of minutes.

Words must be pronounced separately and clearly. In addition, it is better to use words or phrases only when they are appropriate for the situation. If your house already has talking birds, then Jaco will be able to learn speech from them. On the other hand, a talking parrot can teach a beginner how to talk.

An important point is that you need to teach your pet not only to communicate with a person, but also to entertain himself. This is necessary so that Jaco can play himself while the owner is not at home. To do this, you should purchase toys for your pet and change them regularly. With a lack of attention from a person, a gray can develop psychological problems that can cause feather plucking.

Where to put the pet's cage?

Parrots need at least ten hours of darkness and complete silence. Such birds tend to get used to the place, so they react very painfully to its change. Moreover, even minor changes in the familiar environment already unnerve the parrot.

RedtailZhako, whose conditions of detention, on the one hand, are simple, and on the other hand, require the fulfillment of certain rules, does not like to be in a draft or near a heater. It is better to place the cage in a well-lit area, but it should not be a windowsill, as open space and bright light also cause discomfort.

One side of the cage should adjoin the wall so that there is a zone of calm. It is not worth placing a bird in the kitchen and in the bedroom - this does not meet hygiene standards. In addition, the cage must be positioned so that communication with the Gray takes place at eye level.

Cage shape and size

The cage for a parrot should be spacious enough so that the bird, being on the perch, can spread its wings, wave them and not catch anything.

The cage must be stainless steel. There should be such a distance between the twigs that the Jaco could not stick his head through. It must be remembered that the parrot will break, bend, crush, unscrew everything that it comes across. Therefore, the cage must be very strong. You need to close it securely, you can even lock it, because the bird shows special cunning when opening all kinds of constipation.

Jaco's disease

A he althy parrot has a smooth and dense plumage, clean feathers on the stomach, bright clear eyes, a smooth beak, a plump chest, paws without damage, calm breathing. Unfortunately, like all birds, the red-tailed jaco is also prone to ailments. Diseases can manifest themselves as followsway: a decrease in reaction to ongoing events, fluffiness, sticky feathers, shallow breathing, protrusion of the bones of the sternum, abdominal hollowness, peeling of the beak, feces on the paws.

Parrots have a constant loss of a small amount of fluff. This is a completely normal process. But during periods of molting, fluff becomes more. Dry indoor air can lead to more dandruff.

The most important part of care is bathing. Jacos just love water. Frequent bathing (preferably daily) helps to maintain the natural structure of feathers, horn and skin, cleaning them from dust and dirt. Birds can be sprayed with a spray bottle, also placed in a cage with baths of water, and even bathed under low pressure in the shower. It must be remembered that it is necessary to accustom a parrot carefully and gradually so as not to scare the Jaco. If a trusting relationship has already been established, and the parrot allows you to pick it up or at least sit on a stick, then you can take it to the bathroom and wash it thoroughly until the feathers are completely wet. If the bird still does not trust you very much, then bathing in the shower can be arranged right along with the cage. Wash not only Jaco, but also his house.

The process of drying feathers is certainly accompanied by increased heat transfer, for this reason the parrot must dry in a warm room (the temperature must be at least 20 degrees).

One of the important points is to create optimal lighting conditions. In summer, everything is much simpler, there is enough sun, only you needshade the cage from direct rays. But in winter, the lack of light will have to be compensated with a fluorescent lamp. Their application gives excellent results.

All parrots can get sick, the red-tailed gray is no exception. Cheek swelling is one of the possible diseases that occurs as a result of an infection. The doctor may prescribe vitamins and drugs that will help turn the purulent focus into a solid state and then the tumor is removed. Sometimes antibiotics are required, but for this, tests are preliminarily given. In addition, adults are very often prone to benign tumors. Sometimes they reach such sizes that they interfere with the movement of the bird, then it is removed. It is absolutely not dangerous for Jaco.

Reproduction of Jaco

Puberty is reached in the fifth year of life. And if they are kept in captivity from birth, then the process can be delayed. However, couples are formed at the age of three. Ideal conditions for the selection of partners are natural conditions. Their similarity can be reproduced by placing the birds in one aviary, and then observing the behavior of the parrots. Gradually you will see who prefers whom. The finished couple can be planted separately.

But it makes sense to make sure that partners are heterosexual, since Grays can also form same-sex couples. The main sign of the formation of sympathy is the process of feeding each other from the beak.

Chicks appear

The mating season for parrots lasts from October to May, and sometimes nestingtakes place in July. The couple settle separately, they put a box or a hollow, which will serve as a nest. Grays usually have three to five eggs in their clutch, which they lay in a few days. The hatching process lasts 28-30 days. The female is engaged in this, and the male guards the nest and feeds his girlfriend. Chicks are born at intervals of several days. The first hours they are not fed, and then the female gives them her goiter milk. During this period, you need to give more feed to the birds, and it should contain more proteins, the concentration of which is better to reduce as the young grow up.

The first week, the chicks themselves cannot raise their heads, they have a very heavy head, so the female turns them on her back with her beak and pours milk. The male at first does not help to feed, he is allowed to the process only after ten days. The young open their eyes from the tenth to the eighteenth day. For another four weeks, the female will always be near the babies and not leave them. And then the female and the male fly out together and bring food to the babies.

Self-feeding

You can try to feed the chicks yourself and grow them in an incubator. But this is a complex process. You have to spoon feed them all the time. First, they are given dropwise water with saline, then liquid baby puree (apple or banana) can be added. In the first week, food should be liquid and heated. As the chicks grow up, their food needs also increase. Gradually, portions must be increased. Food should no longer be liquid. Imagine that during the firstweeks, young animals should be fed every two hours. After two weeks, the interval is already six hours. And after six weeks, feeding occurs twice a day.

It is easier to take a baby from the parents at the age of one or one and a half months and then manually supplement it yourself if you plan to make it your pet. Chicks, with constant contact with a person who feeds him, very quickly become tame. In this case, it is better for babies to contact with a large number of people. This has a positive effect on the behavior of the chicks. But this method also has its drawbacks. The fact is that a Jaco grown in this way experiences difficulties in creating a pair and breeding. You can slightly smooth out this effect by raising several chicks at the same time.