Bubba & Jeremiah PP1248 PP1462

Hi, we are Bubba and Jezza

PP numbers: Bubba – PP1248 Jeremiah – PP1462

Names: Bubba and Jezza

Species: Indian Ringnecks

Adoption fee: £150

Cage Supplied: Yes, one large cage each.

Introduction:

Hi! We are Bubba and Jeremiah, a beautiful pair of bonded Indian Ringneck parakeets.

History/background:

Bubba was adopted from Problem Parrots in 2021.

Jeremiah (“Jezza” – nickname was Bubba before the real Bubba arrived):

My original owner bought me from a breeder out of an aviary. I lived with them for a couple of years in quite a small cage, which I found very stressful and displayed some stereotypical behaviour – moving around perches in a repetitive sequence. I came to my current carer for a holiday in 2016 and was provided with a much bigger cage and was allowed out to fly around the room. Loved it so much, I stayed and made it my new home! My human learned more and more about me as we went along and decided I needed company of my own kind as well as her. Bubba is my second friend from Problem Parrots.

It is only with a very heavy heart and through no fault of their own that they are looking for a new home.

Current Presentation: 

Bubba and Jezza are beautiful, fully feathered birds!

Training:

Our human has not taught us to step up or do any tricks. She was much more hands on with Jezza when she first had him as he was very nervous and could not spend all day out of the cage because he shared the dining room with her. He will step on a finger for millet, flies to her from across the room and has done some basic clicker training. Now we have more space and each other for company as well as being able to be out of the cage all day and our tree to play in. Although it is a more natural way for us to be, she still spends time interacting with us every day and we take fruit and millet from her, have our spraying sessions as well as talking and singing together (she dances and we just give her funny looks). She says that if she doesn’t spend time with us, we go a bit “feral”. Bubba is much more shy than Jezza and will always go to the back of her cage first until she is sure that nothing unusual is going to happen. She will go over to our human for treats and will settle on the table that we have in our room when our human is sitting there with us but it takes a lot more time and patience. She has come on slowly and should improve even more with her trust and confidence.

Diet:

We currently have Harrisons Adult Lifetime Fine pellets a bit later and eat some before bed and the rest during the next day. We are covered up and lights out at about 8.30 – 9.00pm.

Bubba loves blueberries and grapes, and also likes carrot, chilli, mangetout, sugarsnap peas, chicory leaves, sweetcorn on the cob and apple. She sometimes likes celery and broccoli. She is not interested in banana!

Jezza loves grapes, apple, banana, sweetcorn on the cob and blueberries. He also likes carrot, chilli, mangetout, sugarsnap peas and chicory leaves. He sometimes celery and broccoli!

Enrichment: 

It was love at first sight when we met and Bubba moved into Jezza’s cage after a little while. However, Bubba henpecked him a bit so now we live in our separate cages but come out together during the day. Jezza talks to Bubba all of the time from his cage next-door to hers. At the moment we have our own room with mesh on one side so that we can see into part of the kitchen and the garden. We get uncovered and come out of our cages in the morning (Jezza likes to go and call for Bubba) and hang out together. We like flying around, playing in our indoor tree, exploring, singing, sleeping and flirting. Bubba has taught Jezza how to chew up the newspaper on the floor and now he does it to impress her. She can be a bit demanding when we are in our flirty phase and Jezza spends a lot of time feeding her and showing her how good he is at ripping up paper for nest building – this gets replaced every day which we find a bit annoying. We do have a squabble now and then as Jezza tries to assert his authority and gets a bit persistent with his amorous advances.

We go back into our separate cages at the end of the afternoon when the veggies are served. Bubba had her veggies as “chop” at her previous Problem Parrots foster home and ate everything she was offered but Jezza has never really got into eating it so we have some of our vegetables and fruit in a bowl and then we have to go and collect the rest that is pegged around our cages. Jezza particularly likes to rummage in his bowl and look for his favourites and throw the bigger things out until he eats them later. Bubba will often take her bits back to her top perch to eat. We sometimes have sweetcorn cob sections hanging in our cage or in the bottom of the cage for a change.

We both like bathing and being sprayed, although Bubba is a bit more shy about it than Jezza, who will come over to be sprayed and gets as close to the spray as he can manage, hanging upside down to make sure he gets under his wings done too. We have a bath each which hang on brackets on our cage doors when they are open.

Summary:

Bubba used to be very quiet and just “peep” a bit but has found her voice and enjoys shouting at Jezza to bring her food and practicing her singing. We have wild ringnecks here so when the wild birds are in the garden, we try to communicate with them too.

Jezza likes to pretend to talk to our human and she thought that he was trying to say “Hello Bubba” back to her and repeat her whistle – when he does it right, he gets a treat and if he does it to her when she comes into our room, it makes her happy and he sometimes gets a treat then too.

Now their carer has heard the wild ones, Jezza thinks that he has been rumbled that he was just making his own parakeet noises all along.

We have to own up and say that we can be noisy sometimes (if you haven’t heard a ringneck shouting, think of a squawking seagull), especially when we have waited too long to be uncovered in the morning or covered up at night or if we think that we have been out in our room too long without any attention and it is time to go in for our veggie snacks – but once we have our human trained to accommodate our preferences, we will mostly be quiet, chat amongst ourselves or treat you to a lovely chorus of Indian Ringneck songs.

We have done some home improvements, which our human is not impressed with. This is very natural behaviour for us, especially at nesting time because in the wild, we would be in a hole in a tree. The architrave that we chewed away was surplus to requirements and was safe bare wood but we should be closely supervised when in the presence of wood trim and if we had access to an aviary, it would need to be a bird-safe metal one.

Bubba has laid eggs before and will come with her own set of dummy eggs, which worked well last time in case it happens again. They like to get a bit full on with their flirting so it is important that Bubba does not incubate her real eggs, in case they hatch. Last time, she stopped laying after she reached the standard quota of 6. These were replaced with dummy eggs as she went along and she sat on them for 2 weeks until she got bored and gave up.

We have previously shared our room with 2 cockatiels. We did not come out of our cages at the same time as them, apart from a day when our human was ill and opened all of our doors by mistake. No harm came to anyone but she didn’t trust us enough to do it again. We found them intensely annoying when they landed on our cages, and lunged at them even though they desperately wanted to be friends with us. When we were out of our cages and they were shut in theirs, we ignored them apart from stealing their veggies from their pegs.

We have been handled at the vets but told him in no uncertain terms how cross we were at him! He just laughed at us and called us “Angry Birds”.

We have our own floor standing play tree with toys.

As bonded birds, it is important that we stay together and are not separated. If you think that we would be the right birds for your family, please don’t hesitate to apply below. We are fantastic birds and will make great company in the right home!

Location: Surrey