Meet Lolly, a 10 year old Rose-breasted Cockatoo, who is an aviary favorite of our customers! Lolly came to us about four years ago as a purchase for our breeder program. He was owned by one of our good customers, but he was becoming more and more unpredictable in his behavior within the family. Male Cockatoos are infamous for getting very protective of “their person”, which often leads to biting when they feel threatened. In Lolly’s case he was very attached to the wife and whenever another family member would come near he would bite her in the face as if to say “hey, get that person out of here”. After getting repeatedly attacked in the face, they could not handle him anymore and we purchased him with the hopes of finding him a female and getting him into our breeding program. Well, females are not so easy to come by and in the meantime he has found his place here among our store pets. At first we were very on edge with him; unsure of what to expect with the wide range of people that come into the store and how he would react. He used to always want to sit on shoulders as he was allowed that in his previous homes. We do not allow our store pets to sit on shoulders because of potential danger to customers getting bit in the face. There were several times in the beginning that Lolly would sneak up on unsuspecting customers’ shoulders and give a good nip. Thankfully we were able to redirect him to sitting on hands or laps and avoid these issues. After four years together, he has really settled down and we can see his behavior problems only occur during breeding season, which is easy to track and monitor.
Lolly is an excellent flier, like all Galahs, and enjoys the outside aviary more than many of our birds. As soon as he sees me go out the aviary door to prep getting the birds outside I hear him in his loud, excitable voice “Wanna go out?”. Lolly is an excellent talker and has such a sweet vocabulary consisting of some of my favorites: “Pretty, pretty bird”, “how are you”, and “I love you”. Recently the staff has been working on training two birds each and Madison has taken Lolly on as they have a great rapport. Lolly is target training like a pro and is already recall training with Madison a good 6-8’. Madison’s goal is to do recall with Lolly during events as he loves to show off for a crowd. I can’t wait to see what they do!
