reptoman

Hey Steve. I should have our outdoor aviary complete when its too cold to put her out in it We keep her in the cage first thing in the morning so she gets her fresh chop. She won't eat it until after its wilted otherwise. She is out in her room pretty much the rest of the day. Most of the chatter happens right after getting out of the cage in the morning when I am not training her. She will start up again shortly before she gets her pellets for dinner in the evening. I think part of the talking comes from having her own TV going all day. I got a 14" tv dvd combo for $15 on craigslist and it works great. When she is quiet I check the IP camera in her room and she is usually sitting on the tree or training perch watching TV.

That is great to hear! Thanks Jeffnok. Its a real thrill every time I hear a portion of a song in perfect pitch. She started with the end of the song I have been teaching her and then she throws out another part entirely and sticks with that for a couple of days. Funny to see kinda how she thinks and watching her dissect the different parts of the song. (its the Andy Griffith intro.) I am hoping this amounts to the entire song in the correct sequence but even the parts she gets perfect out of sequence are so cool to hear.

Zoe is becoming easier to understand. Still sounds more like croaks and whistles for the most part but I can hear the occasional word here and there. She is also starting to piece together parts of the songs I have been whisteling to her since we got her 6 months ago. Very excited to hear her saying words but with the way she enjoys her 2 hour long chattering sessions I fear there will come a day when we wish she would stop talking For now the smallest speech progress is super exciting.

I got some new pics of our TAG girl Zoe yesterday. I also took a short video of her giving kisses and waving. link to video

Zoe is making another sound. Link to a video is below. Super sweet bird!

I 100% agree that we are the ones being trained, lol.

Thank you! My wife has been showing her the different rings and saying the color of each for quite some time so I tried seeing if she could pick a specific color while we are playing fetch. I was shocked when she picked the right color 4 times in a row! I could not get it on video but I will continue working with her on that. So fun watching her learn and, more importantly, enjoying it. She grabs a plastic ring first thing each morning so we can play fetch.

Zoe is starting to look and act more like an adult. She is really the sweetest bird. She has started talking but still has only said hello clearly a few times. Everything else is still garbled but a clear attempt to say something. Her whistling is getting better and she has figured out that if she whistles what I do it will get me to come to her every time, lol I have been trained.

Thanks! The blue geckos are very cool. We have had 2 hatchlings in the past week so tiny you would not believe it. I have to share what happened this morning. I was cleaning the cage and letting Zoe do her thing in the room when I felt a tap on my elbow. I turned around and found Zoe sitting there on the arm of the chair staring at me. I scratched the top of her head and put her on her perch a few feet away. I went back to finish cleaning and heard her flutter over to the table where her toys are. I looked up a minute or 2 later and she was standing at the end of the table with a plastic ring in her beak staring at me like a puppy with a ball ready to play! I reached out my hand and she ran over and dropped it right in my hand. I was so shocked I had to stop what I was doing and play fetch with her for another 15 minutes.

I am checking weight every couple of days a few times during the day and it seems to be fairly consistent. We tried leaving food in 24/7 and training progress ground to a halt and out of cage time became more stressful than I could have imagined. Even cutting out all high energy foods barely made a dent. She bit 2 new people and started biting us every time we would try to put her back in her cage. With the current plan, she actually eats more and throws less on the floor of the cage and is eager to train or just hang out and is much more manageable. The other advantage is that she has no problem going back in the cage. I see nothing but benefit with managing the amount of food that she has access to. She seems much happier and we certainly are. I did not undertake this with no research. I am following a known proven method that I studied before implementing.

Thanks Nancy! I have already gotten step up and step down pretty much mastered. I use step up to get her out of the cage and to move her between perches and to put her back in the cage. I am still treating regularly with step ups that don't involve a nip or a fuss. The issues with step up are getting fewer and farther between though and are mostly because she does not want to go back into the cage. I also use target to get her to fly to me. She really is the sweetest bird.

Food management has proved to be incredibly effective for training and everything else. Here is some video from today. Zoe is learning quickly! We had a bit of a struggle for a few weeks when we stopped managing the amount of food she had access to but after getting that under control she is incredibly sweet and very receptive to training.

I am brand new to birds in general and have had a grey only a month but I started early with target training. This involves a small stick and a clicker. I first introduced the clicker with simply a click and give a treat. Just an entire day of only that so our grey got to the point of looking for a treat when she heard the clicker. After the clicker is working by itself to get her looking for a treat, I present the small stick and say "target" and click when she touches her beak to the stick. Then present a treat. From this seemingly simple exercise you can then lead your bird with the target stick onto another perch, onto your hand, anywhere you want really. The stick takes focus off of your fingers and seems to be the simplest way to get your point across. Ours really appears to enjoy our training sessions too. Plenty of praise with each new milestone no matter how small and they love it. Thought I would throw this out there.

How often do you give red palm oil with pellets or drizzled on veggies? is there any concern of over doing it with this? I have some now and tried some on our timneh's pellets today and she loved it.

I have been able to get our baby Timneh Zoe, DOH -02/06/15, to learn a pose taking advantage of a natural movement she did after she gets out of the cage. She would stretch her wings so I started saying the word "stretch" , clicking and treating when she did this. She will now stretch her wings when we say stretch. I have applied this to a motion where she scratches the side of her head by saying "wave" and motioning with my hands and that has taken hold too. I will work on getting video of the wave as well. I am in awe of how quickly these birds can learn! We picked Zoe up last Saturday. I wanted to share this incase it would help someone who is trying to train a baby or adult. Learning how to use the clicker is no more than clicking and giving a treat a dozen times until the bird looks for a treat when they hear the clicking sound. I do notice that the attention is short on some days and its best to quit on a good note and not push.

I thought the same thing, Echo's mom, so we have been letting her get some time in between the out of cage time with both of us sitting in chairs in her room. She already flies back and forth between us and to a perch in between. I do have one question about bathing. How long should we wait to introduce a bath for her? I want to try and get her to like the shower for this but dont want to push it and do too much too soon.

Here is a little of what we are experiencing with the new baby

Whenever you guys have time you are welcome! We will have to plan a day next weekend to have you out for lunch or something.

I cant stay away from her cage. We are both in awe of her! She comes to the front of the cage and steps up right away if we offer our hand. I can't say enough good things about Lea and Bob at 5oaksaviary. They have produced a baby that is well rounded and able to be easily handled and loves cuddling on the first day. She is getting more bold this morning but we still barely hear anything out of her. She does little chirps and vocalizations when we are handling her but is otherwise completely quiet in the cage just munching on her pellets and climbing around. I will post updates as we begin training. Thanks to all for following along on our journey!

Its been a long wait but Zoe is finally home and in her cage! She is so sweet and could not be a more beautiful Timneh Grey. She loves head and beak scratches and took to my wife right away. She got pooped on a few minutes after meeting Zoe which made her feel special I'm sure

From what I hear from Lea in recent weeks, she is already used to climbing the bars and perches in a cage so I think she may be pretty steady on her feet already. I will put a towel on the bottom when we get her home this morning just in case. I have a loud stainless steel bell that I got on amazon that I will hang in the middle of her cage. The black shower curtain is big enough to cover the entire cage. The room lights are on a timer so bedtime will be fairly consistent every night. Thanks so much for the suggestions. We are only a couple hours away now!

Sorry about the sideways pics of the cage.

So I have a last minute request. Can you all take a look at these pictures and let me know if anything needs to be changed? The last one is the carrier we are going to pick her up with.

I just ordered a few rolls of vetrap off amazon so should be here by Thursday. I plan to use this play area for when we are in the room together during target training and our initial training sessions. I will keep an eye on the bells and see what happens. I have another bell that I bought separately and was going to add that one later. Its a lot heavier and louder so wanted to see how she reacts to what we have now before adding anything else. I might take one of the items there now out and add it later after she is introduced to the area. This will be where i add new foraging toys and other items to keep things changing so she is not surprised by changes in general. Thanks for the advice!

We are less than a week away from getting our Timneh baby and can hardly wait. I had an area that used to be a closet in the main room where her cage will be so I wanted to do something functional for her. This is what I came up with. I have some storage under the black curtains and the beige surface is laminated rolled edge counter from lowes. I got a damaged one for $25 We found a cool wall mural on amazon that is applied like wall paper. I clear coated it will acrylic coating so we can wipe it down easily. I used stainless steel chain and put 1 1/2" PVC pipe on the top to keep her from climbing all the way to the top. I wanted to be able to add and take out toys easily. It makes me want to climb on and play on it already but I wanted to get some opinions on what you all think.