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He looks relatively good now, and thank you for complimenting my little buddy Junior. That is his better side. He seems to have a baseline level of feather picking. Sometimes he will pick more, sometimes less. He has no real bear spots but he picks at his wings to the point he cannot fly for years now. Right now he has some red tail feathers, but sometimes those are gone. I do think it might be behavioral or hormonal. He loves to get petted, but I only give him head scratches for years now in case too much touch incites feather picking behavior. A bird vet treated him with Lupron, an anti testosterone drug. This seemed to help a little but it was variable. Thank you for any advice.

There's no guarantee that your grey will get along with another bird, especially having been an only bird for a good portion of his life. Most of my own birds don't really care for the others, but they do love to hear and mimic their vocalizations. I just downloaded his image, and I think he actually looks really good! Have you noticed if his plucking is seasonal? If so, he could be hormonally plucking himself. Just a thought.

What a lovely read. Welcome to the forums! I'm glad you got to take Auri home! Sounds like you were made for each other! Funnily enough, I first discovered parrots whilst working in a pet store as well. We had a grey and an eclectus in during my time there. I fell in love with Reggie, the electus but wasn't able to take him at that point because I already had Alfie. He had come from another store that hadn't cared for him properly so we got him eating better food, got his feathers back to good condition and socialised him before selling him to a family. I was fascinated by the grey we had in too. So I did loads of research, read every book I could find, talked it through with my family and eventually spent all my savings on getting Alfie from another local pet shop.

I think you've done your homework. It's not a project I've ever undertaken myself so I can't really comment I'm afraid! But it looks good and I'm sure Auri will love it. It's always good to have a second cage kicking around if you have the space to store it- useful if you ever need a holiday cage for your bird. Alfie's cage won't fit out of my doors so I have a smaller cage upstairs which he goes in when I work from home (so we can keep each other company instead of being in separate parts of the house) and that one will also be used if he ever has to stay at my parents house or elsewhere for any reason. Also if a fault ever develops with his current cage I have a backup too!