Some questions before I buy an IRN

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Vio_0iv
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 8:36 am

Some questions before I buy an IRN

Post by Vio_0iv »

Hello,

I've been reading over these forums gaining lots of information but I have a couple of questions I would like some input on before I actually commit to purchasing a feathered friend. We would likely get a hand raised bird off a local breeder.

Firstly I read they need 10-12 hours sleep per night. Currently my husband and I keep rather odd hours due to the times I work. I normally start work at 2pm and finish at 10pm. We like to eat dinner together so we have a really late dinner shortly after I get home and we are usually up until anywhere between 3am-5am and awake again around 12pm. My husband doesn't work so will have plenty of time to spend with it during the day. I think I'll have to work extra hard to try and bond with it if my husband spends the most time with it. I also expect if we proceed to get a IRN that our sleeping habbits will need to change but I wondered if any of you have had much leeway in when your bird likes to go to sleep? Can you gradually adjust it's bedtime until it's going to bed later? I would love to be able to come home and still be able to interact with it after 10pm for a while but dont want to do wrong by the bird.

Second question. I will eventually be working from home. I take phone calls constantly for my job and will have a seperate office away from the room my husband and the bird would spend most of their time in but not on the opposite side of the house or anything. If our IRN ends up being loud at times I'm concerned it may be too loud for my work. If there's a bit of noise that can be heard that would be ok. In your experiences if your IRN is being loud is it very loud elsewhere in the house when doors are closed? I was thinking I could find a youtube clip of a noisy IRN and play it loudly in one room and see how noisy it is in the other room but it's hard to tell how loud to turn the volume up to get a real indication of the noise level.

Thanks.
MissK
Posts: 3011
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:46 pm
Location: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

Re: Some questions before I buy an IRN

Post by MissK »

Hi. I keep a similar schedule. I found that the bird is happy to wake up and participate in the middle of the night, but he's not exactly at his best. If he is up for a while in the middle of the night then he needs to sleep extra the next day.

I have found it works best to let him be awakened when I come home in the middle of the night, speak to him as I go by, and let him go back to resting. I can't help waking him unless I were to relocate the bird room, but the bird room is otherwise ideally situated as it is. SO, waking in the middle of the night is the price he pays for living here, but he has adapted well. I did experiment with lights on timers, but there is no substitute or disguise for the real sun.

My recommendation would be to let your bird do as mine does. He sets his own schedule according to the action of the sun, gets awakened briefly as I come home at night, and in the morning wakes on his own time. He's almost always up before me, at any rate, and from this I make an assumption that he's getting satisfactory sleep. If you follow that model, your husband would be the one adjusting his lifestyle by making sure the bird had enough peace to go to sleep with the sun, and you would have to respect it as well once you start working from home. As far as adjusting the bedtime, again, no way to hide the sun or lack thereof. You can make him stay awake, probably, but I don't think you should.

Regarding the phone, I've found it is easy to have a conversation from a different room, but hard to disguise the fact you have a bird. Unless he's not making any noise at the moment. I imagine if you could shut two doors between you that might be enough, but since I don't have doors to shut between us unless I go to the bathroom, someone else may have to take it from there. I can tell you I can stand in the street in front of my closed home and still hear the bird.
-MissK
Wessel Gordon
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Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2011 12:02 pm
Location: South Africa
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Re: Some questions before I buy an IRN

Post by Wessel Gordon »

hi Vio_Oiv

I agree with what MissK said about the bird setting it's own alarm-clock so to speak. I have 6 birds (5 IRN's and an African Grey - only the Grey is inside the house) and it's impossible to hide the fact that they're around.

With you working from home soon I'm assuming it's going to be mainly during office hours which works in your favor because birds tend to be quieter during the day. I sometimes work from home too and find that the birds aren't too much of a disturbance over the telephone. What I suggest is that if you have to make a call is to ask your husband to entertain the bird for a few minutes while you're busy with the call. That will help keep the bird entertained and (hopefully) quiet and help build a bond between it and your husband.

A last word of caution: when you do go out searching for a bird make sure it is handtame and not simply handreared. Less scrupulous breeders (luckily by far the minority) will simply feed a chick on schedule and not handle it till the next feeding which means the chick isn't as tame as one from a breeder that takes the time to handle and play with the chick before, during and after a feeding session. Unfortunately I've bought ''handreared'' birds which the breeder assured me was handtame but the most contact the bird wanted was snatching a treat from me and retreating. A good way to test this is to ask the breeder if he/she will allow you to handle some of the chicks they are rearing...if the chicks seem playful and comfortable being handled when there's no food involved I would say it's a good bet that the chick is handtame. It will also give the breeder an idea of how comfortable you are with handling a bird and might suggest another that will suit your personality and circumstances better. Please note: all of this is out of personal experience so other posters might disagree.

Kind regards,
Wessel
Vio_0iv
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 8:36 am

Re: Some questions before I buy an IRN

Post by Vio_0iv »

Thank you so much for your replies. Very helpful. Look like I'll become a morning person in the future. I think the noise will be fine and if it's not I'll need to look into some other methods of reducing the noise in this room.

The breeder I've chosen told me she only hand raises 3 at a time because they need a lot of attention to stay tame and she has a couple videos and photos from the last breeding season on their facebook profile which filled me with confidence. They had the first egg for this season laid August 10.
MissK
Posts: 3011
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:46 pm
Location: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

Re: Some questions before I buy an IRN

Post by MissK »

I agree with Wessel. In hindsight, I should have mentioned to get a tame bird. :oops: An untame one with fill the house with more alarm calls, quite shrill and loud.

Also, please recall that babies of any wild animal will be easier to handle than they necessarily will be once they grow a little and get some sense of self and personal power under their metaphorical belt. I would hope that tameness would grow, but I think it has a lot to do with your handling of the bird as well.

I'm fond of saying the bird you get is the bird you get and anything more is not assured. Every bird has potential but not every bird achieves that potential.
-MissK
Wessel Gordon
Posts: 408
Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2011 12:02 pm
Location: South Africa
Contact:

Re: Some questions before I buy an IRN

Post by Wessel Gordon »

It sounds like you picked an excellent breeder.

My one female is incubating a clutch of eggs at the moment but due to me being in a wheelchair and her nest being high I'm not sure how many eggs there is. She doesn't even bother coming out when I change their food and water but if I stay quiet for awhile I can hear her moving around so I know she's still around. For some reason she stopped feeding her two chicks after about 10 days and I intervened too late too late to save them but this year I'm prepared better.
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