Consider this before buying an Umbrella Cockatoo!

We have eight parrots at the moment; the most difficult to handle is Jack the umbrella cockatoo.

Before Jack arrived we had five parrots, one of them being a citron cockatoo who mutilates himself, so we were at least prepared for his bad habits.

Jack bites his feathers off and just leaves the stubs. He is now 5 years old and came to us in the middle of April 2001.

His previous owner Jill bought him as a joint venture but when her circumstances changed she found she didn't have time to give him the attention he needed and he started to bite his feathers off. He also began to become very demanding and scream when he didn't get his own way.

He then came to us and spent a week of being left to his own devices and only being handled when necessary by my husband Dave.

Jack would then go to three different members of the family but had a real hatred for the two youngest children who were eleven and thirteen. So when he was out we had to keep a very close eye on him, because even though he can't fly he can leap and run very fast.

After two weeks of being with us he decided I was his best friend and turned on Dave giving him several nasty bites, including biting right through the cartilage of the top of his ear.

But his friendship with me only lasted a few weeks and he decided Jade my fifteen year old was the love of his life .He then turned on me biting right through my cheek and he has hated me ever since.

I do all the cleaning of our parrots daily but Jack has to be removed from the room when I clean his cage, because if he even sees me near it he will jump down to attack, and even a squirt of water won't stop him.

The cage Jack came with was very strong and usually will contain a large bird but jack began to break the welds on the bars so he now has a much stronger cage usually used for macaws.

The worst trait of an umbrella is the screaming. All parrots scream and we have role call twice daily, but Jack will scream for attention the minute I get home .I only work part time but Jack has learnt that when I pick up my keys to go, the four dogs we have will howl and he joins in. So he now knows that if he screams a certain way he can get the dogs to howl, even when I'm in. Most of Jacks screaming must be ignored and training three children to do this was the hardest part. When Jack screams we don't go into the room until he stops, if we are in the room we just don't give him any attention at all and talking to one of the other parrots usually works. If he has a "paddy", a high pitched scream accompanied by crest up and flapping wings, he gets squirted because the paddy usually ends with him falling off where ever he is perched, which is dangerous as he cant fly.

Jack is a lovely bird if he loves you, but he is very unpredictable as most umbrellas are and Jade often gets bitten.But it is misplaced aggression and he will bite Jade because he can't get to the person he really wants to bite.

Many people see baby cockatoo's and see how loving they are, buy them and then realise that they can't commit to the hours these birds need. They are more demanding than most types of parrot and when they don't get the attention they want they are very likely to mutilate themselves. This mutilation can be as little as plucking out a few feathers, to the extreme of hacking themselves apart.Both of the citron cockatoos we have do this and it can be very distressing.Also there is the noise factor, they are very loud and their voices can really carry, I am very lucky to have deaf and understanding neighbours.

There are a few more things to consider, as with all parrots cockatoos are extremely destructive and they don't care if it's your best coffee table. They are very messy, they will attack the other members of the family, including dogs and cats to keep them away from "their mate"and finally it is like having a four-year-old toddler for at least forty years.

So if you are considering getting a cockatoo, which I would not recommend, visit people who own them, not just once but many times to see how awful they can be. Do loads of research to see if they really are the bird for you and when you have decided that they are, think about the cockatoos that Safehaven has had to help re-home. Some of them have had many homes as they are passed on when a problem crops up, they are all really loved, but all previous owners tell me that if they had known what a commitment cockatoos are they would never have bought one.So when you have taken all this into consideration and then think I still want one, PLEASE THINK AGAIN!

Tracy.