Our Pets

A Portrait Of Becky And 9 Cockatiel Chicks

2009-10-24T13:30:00Z

Baby Cockatiels Are Lots Of Fun

2009-10-17T23:26:00Z

I've taken a few photos of our latest cockatiel babies.

Eight 'Tiel Chicks And Counting!

2009-10-02T01:21:00Z

Over the last two weeks we've had 8 cockatiel babies hatch from 3 different nest boxes, and there are still some unhatched eggs! One of the of parents was a baby bird that we hand fed earlier this year. He has already started reproducing!

Cockatiel Photos

2008-12-18T00:10:00Z

Here are some of our newest babies (about 6 weeks old) as well as a couple shots of our 'older bird'(Chantilly).

200+ Guppies

2008-02-26T22:40:00Z

Last Saturday, Dad decided to separate the male and female guppies, so that we could control breeding. He put the male red deltas in Mare's 29 gallon tank, the females remained in the 35 gallon tank, the really big females in Suzi's 10 gallon tank, and the lyretails(they have a different sort of tail, but are babies from our own red delta guppies) in my 10 gallon tank. The cobra guppies were already separated downstairs. Then there are the little babies and the one that are in the angelfish tank and the turtle tank. That's a lot of guppies! I'll ask Dad to estimate how many.......he says..."200 or more"!

More Cockatiel Eggs!

2008-02-20T20:02:00Z

Our faithful parent cockatiels are in the midst of raising four babies, but the mamma is already sitting on another batch of--not two, not three, not even four--but five new eggs. We're starting to wonder where we will put all these cockatiels!! We made the decision to advertise Peterkin and Clarissa(We're not so Pete is a boy and Claire is a girl anymore), and see if we can sell them. Pete and Claire are the first batch of babies that we had; they came with the parents which we "adopted". Someone came last night to look at the Pete and Claire. They were interested, but not ready to buy yet. But we are excited about the new babies, who are now living outside the nest, except for the runt. We had to keep the runt in the nest, cause it it wouldn't stand up, and it is really scared of people. A couple times, Dad even fed it applesauce from a dropper.

We are really enjoying having cockatiels and parakeets as part of our family.

Babies just born!

2008-01-21T18:36:00Z

We just looked into the nestbox, and saw the father cockatiel, and the mother cockatiel-----and we're pretty sure we saw at least one fluffy, little baby cockatiel! We were quite surprised, and, wow; all we had to do was leave the parents alone and try not to disturb them, and here we are, with another set of baby cockatiels, and YEARS of fun and learning! God has really blessed us!

Our New Saltwater Animals

2007-12-27T12:56:00Z

We recently received a mail-order shipment of saltwater creatures. We got a Mertensii butterflyfish, a royal gramma, four green chromis, four maroon clownfish, a bubble-tip anemone, a fragment rock of mushroom coral, a brittle green starfish, a sand-sifting white starfish, six snails, and ten of hermit crabs. Quite a list, isn't it? It was fun to take all the fish out of their plastic bags and slide them into the aquariums after they had acclimated. Tim was the one who bought the butterfly fish. That's probably my favorite saltwater fish that we have. I think most of the fish are eating now, but some are very afraid, and the female maroon Clown fish is preoccupied with the bubble-tip anemone. Clownfish have a special relationship with anemones. It benifits both animals, as the anemone can provide shelter for the clownfish, not stinging it (anemones sting other animals, and our one killed some of our invertebrates), and.......I'm not sure what the clownfish does for the anemone. Maybe it brings it food. I heard of someone who trained his clownfish to do that. Anyway, the clownfish love rolling in the anemone.

Two of the chromis, one snail, and one clownfish died. the maroon clownfish fought a lot at first when we put them in the 46 gallon tank.

Update: another maroon clownfish died. So now it's two of them. Too bad.

Mated cockatiels with babies

2007-12-08T01:00:00Z

We just brought four new cockatiels home, about 10 minutes ago! They are a prolific breeding pair with two six-week-old babies. The previous owners told us that the female is bossy, and wants to be in charge of everyone. The poor male is missing a bunch of feathers on his head, so on one side he looks like a very strange vulture. The poor guy is hen-pecked. I just hope the 'hen' doesn't try to peck me too!

We recently ordered some bird/parrot training material.

Our new SW animal can split rocks!?

2007-12-03T02:11:00Z

Yesterday(Dec 1) we bought some new Salt Water(SW) animals and plants. One of them was a long tentacled anemone, this animal can sting to some extent. Ok, so yesterday we put the anemone on a rock. We woke up today and found that the rock the anemone had been sitting on split in half! We have no other way to explain it than this animal split the rock in half. Amazing!

New Cockatiels on the way!

2007-11-29T01:02:00Z

We are planning to get a pair of new cockatiels. The previous owners named them Cinnamon and Chantilly. This is going to mean that we have 5 parrots! The female, Cinnamon, is 1 year old. They say she's shy. Chantilly, the male, is 10 years old. The people say he's the nicer one. Yahoo! More birds!

There are other shots in the photo gallery.

The New Turtles

2007-11-27T22:14:00Z

We have three water turtles in the 125 gallon tank. We got them about a week and a half ago. Dad saw an ad on Craigslist for them, so he contacted the person who was giving them; this was a great free deal.

The lady( in Rockville, Maryland, about 22 miles away) had to get rid of them, but wanted to give them to someone who would take good care of them.

We were the third people to reply, but Dad told her about his qualifications, and she picked us. Now the turtles situated in their tank, and we feed them blood-worms. We put some guppies in, too, to see if the turtles would eat them. The guppies are still in there, so the turtles must have decided to spare them. We also put two BIG snails in, because they were wreaking havoc in the first tank we put them in, plowing down the plants and eating them.

The Baby Chicks

2007-11-27T01:43:00Z

The chicks are doing well, and are a lot bigger than they were when we got them. They're actually starting to be like chickens, instead of delicate balls of down. The chicks are so nice. Hopefully we will be able to take them outside for a while before winter sets in. We are glad that there are still twenty-seven of them; not a single one died.

Meet our Parakeets!

2007-11-27T01:13:00Z

We have three pretty little parakeets. We think two of them are males, and the last one is a female. The blue one is Pippin. He's the friendly, playful one. That's why we let him out more than we let the others out. The green one is Merry. He's pretty shy, but sometimes he lets us pet him. The pure yellow one, the female, we think, is very human-shy, but she's quite talkative, and lets the other birds know she's important. Her name is Tweetie

An Introduction to our Aquariums

2007-11-26T14:02:00Z

Our family has been quite interested in aquariums these last four months. It all started when Granddaddy Mehlfelt gave us three aquariums which had been left in his house by the previous owner. Dad had kept aquariums when he was a boy, so we decided to try it. We started out with a few simple, easy-to-keep fish. Then Dad ordered a 72 gallon bow-front acrylic tank. That’s pretty big. We put plants and nice fish in it. We continued to acquire more tanks, and now the number has grown to fourteen, including a 125 gallon aquarium with three turtles, and a 150 gallon tank. Our three biggest tanks are big enough for the three little girls to crawl around in.

The majority of our tanks are freshwater, but we have two salt water tanks, too. This year, when we spent a week at Sandbridge Beach (near Virginia Beach) we actually took a 20 gallon aquarium with us! We filled it with salt water, and put sand and shells in it. Then we put in sand bugs and sand crabs (only one crab survived the trip home). We couldn’t catch any fish, because hadn’t been able to find our seine before we left for our four hour trip to the beach. A while after we had returned from our vacation, we bought a Fiji Blue Devil Damselfish, two Clown-fish, and a Fan, which is like a plant but it’s really an animal, being able to move, and withdraw it’s fan when frightened. That fan is spectacular!