danmcq

What a wonderful and inspiring story Graehstone!! I must have missed this during my flurry of weekday work responsibilities. Thanks for sharing this very wonderful and emotion provoking moment in your life and now in ours. This story will never be forgotten!!

Awwwww Berna, what a great story and thing to happen for both you and Sasha. :-) Now, you should probably start working some "OT" so you can bring her home. ;-) Great photos of you and Sasha, thanks for posting them.

Welcome smit9654!! To answer your question directly, if your Grey did in fact decide to "Bond" with a mate for life and become a "Breeder". Neither would be interested in having or continuing a relationship with you. Their world would become centered on the love between themselves and raising a family of their own. They would essentially become a unit of "One". The only allowance would be, you cold still skillfully feed, water and clean their cage for them while trying to ward-off the vicious attacks and bites if you venture into their "Zone" too far. Your side note - Your Grey may nor may not talk more. The only thing that will increase the vocabulary will be how much time you spend talking to him and repeating what you wish him to say. Even then, he may or may not chose to talk much more than present. Why don't you formally introduce yourself and your Grey in the New Members section so others will also be aware of your just joining our Forum? Looking forward to hearing more from you and seeing some photos when you get a chance to upload some. :-)

Morning Graehstone and All!! Cloudy, cooler and still some drizzle here in "Sunny" California, but as long as our "inner" self is shining, who can bring us down? :-)

Thanks for the update Penny. It is great to hear that Talon is back in good health for the most part. You are probably right on the money regarding the light shining in from the side of the cage. Studies have shown that it is not the optimum placement and is VERY irritating to the "Side" of your bird it shines upon. Also, depending on the wattage and UVA/UVB levels, can cause cataracts, eye irritation and blindness eventually. Taking that side light away will tell the story in very short order.

This will ultimately boil down to your Grey's disposition regarding your Mother. Your Grey will step up to your Mothers hand only when offered while sitting on your hand, because your Grey is doing it for you and trusts your judgment. Your Mother, on the other hand going up and expecting him to step up, is a completely different scenario in which your Grey has the choice of stepping up, retreating to indicate "No, I don't want to" or biting to ensure the message gets across. Only more time and patience will tell if your Mother will be able to have a close relationship with your Grey and vice-versa. You have been doing all the right things and so has your Mother. Sharing him and offering to her is a great start. So is the act of your Mother giving him treats and paying attention to him without demanding any physical interaction at times. Just keep up the program and time will tell. :-)

Your right Nychsa!! I did a small study last night for 4 hours before Dayo's bedtime. He received: Start - He received Seeds and Nuts 1 hour later - He received some scrambled Eggs 1 hour later - He received Veggies and Fruit This morning BIG Poop - Very interesting.....It came out as a psychedelic spiral, pretty actually it was in a pattern of first - dark green, then an inch or so of yellow, then an inch or so of light brown and the very last 1/4 inch of reddish color from the grapes. All this was then surrounded by a large clear liquid pond for the Psychedelic spiral to float atop which simulates a freaky movement inducing a trance it was hard to pull yourself out of the "Hippy" days you once enjoyed as a young adult. B) Far-out Man!!!

You Want a Parrot??? With parrot ownership comes the inevitable loss of your spare time, your social life, your money, some blood, the hearing in one ear, your mental health, and everything in your home that is not made of heat-treated metal. While not one of these losses is as devastating as, say, the sudden loss of cabin pressure on a trans-Atlantic flight, you will indeed experience the same need to pray and hug the nearest stranger. And even if you are prepared for these losses, as they mount you will feel frustration, self-pity, and the hollowness of incomprehensible remorse and guilt. Your time Do you currently have four hours of spare time each day? Is your life so stable that you are confident it will not change in the next 20 years? 80 years? Good. You will need to spend those hours interacting with your parrot (and "interacting" is not a synonym for "being with"). Any less than this amount of time and you are cheating your parrot of the companionship he would enjoy in the wild. There are very few captive parrots that get the constant stimulation from human flocks that their intelligent minds require, or that they would get in the wild. The result is frustrated parrots that bite, scream, or pick out their own feathers -- and thousands of sadly abandoned parrots in avian rescue facilities. Add to the four hours of daily interaction one hour to clean the cage, clean the floor, clean the food and water dishes, clean the bird toys, cook food, sponge down the walls of said food, and apply a tourniquet to your finger because your parrot didn’t approve of precisely how you did these chores for him. Add a Saturday (not necessarily the Saturday that you had planned) to visit the nearest certified avian veterinarian, which may be in another town and not well advertised. Locating this rare certified vet may require the skills of that rare breed of person who can be dropped in the middle of any city and find a brothel, a black market money changer, and a reasonably honest taxi driver within an hour. Add a few hundred hours of late night studying to become a scholar of psittacinism and poopology. In your studies you will discover that there is a lot to be learned from bird poop. In fact, bird poop will occupy so much of your thought patterns that you will occasionally forget whether you have put on your underwear. You will be embarrassed when someone at work catches you checking yourself. Then, every waking hour will be spent being vigilant of the environmental dangers to your parrot. You will need to know how each item you bring into your house might affect your parrot. You will find that this information does not work itself smoothly into social conversations. Your social life No matter what kind of social life you had enjoyed previously, you will now be controlled by a demanding parrot. Unless your life included being a slave who felt guilty for never doing quite enough to please his master, this will represent a significant change. Before getting a parrot, your horizons may have included sky-diving, wind-surfing, and mountain climbing. Crowds may have gathered to listen to your latest adventure. After a few months of servitude to a parrot you notice that whenever you start talking people seem to go into a stupor, as if they've been injected with some powerful narcotic. In an attempt regain their interest you insist, “Not everything is about my parrots." You pause, trying to think of something else. "I have a sea shell collection.” “Where is it?” someone asks suspiciously. "Ah, umm." You haven’t seen the shell collection since you stored it to make room for your impressive collection of bird toys that your parrot ignored with near-spectacular indifference. “I keep it on scattered beaches around the world. You've probably already seen it.” As people are backing away their eyes reveal an odd combination of surprise and boredom, as if you were a jazz drummer who had launched into a cymbal solo. “Wait," you insist. "I’m still a fun guy. I like to tease my parrots. Every six months I take them out of their cages and give them a parole hearing.” Still backing away, someone mumbles “I'd love to hear more about it, but I just remembered something.” "What?" "Life is finite.” In addition to the people who now avoid you as surely as you avoid bill collectors and adults who bite, you no longer invite into your home the people to whom your parrot has taken a dislike. This included your boss from work. Your career is now on the fast track to the "Man of the Year" award -- at the unemployment office. To stop the implosion of your shrinking universe before the ultimate Big Bang, you decide to take a short vacation. But you remember that leaving a parrot in a boarding facility can change a parrot's personality for the worse. So you need a bird sitter. But it has to be a sitter familiar with your parrot's special requirements. Instructions written on paper will not work. You borrow a video camera and begin taping your parrot’s idiosyncrasies. There are more than you remembered. About five whomptillion, if your math is correct. You run out of tape. You stay home. You pour some bourbon in a tall glass, tilt it, and let a gratifying quantity leap straight for your liver. After several years of near solitude you welcome a visit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. You don't have money to offer but you have plenty of "like new" bird toys. If only they wouldn’t keep backing away. Your Money A parrot will typically siphon your bank account of the following: Parrot: $900 Roomy cage and accessories: $600 Toys: $25/month Proper diet: $60/month Vet care: $500/year Cleaning products, grooming products: $20/month While many parrot guardians spend significantly more, and some spend a little less, your budget should include the above costs. Your parrot, of course, will demand that you spend a minimum of your credit card limit on bird toys that he will ignore in favor of grooming your universal remote control by removing its buttons. Many cages cost several thousand dollars. Experts say that you should buy the largest cage you can afford. It doesn’t really matter. Your parrot will think it is too small. Large parrots require a three-bedroom house. Smaller birds, such as cockatiels, will do fine in a two-bedroom condominium. In order to stave off bankruptcy you activate the credit cards offered by The Scratch Bank and the Three-Stooges Credit Union. While your credit cards are paying off each other you kind of step aside. For a while, all is good. But eventually your credit becomes so bad that nobody will sell you a small bird biscuit without requiring two picture-IDs and a stool sample. When you walk snappily past the bank the old guard who used to say hello now rests his hand on his gun. Eventually you are seized by the desperation and panic of a drowning man (or O.J. Simpson being asked to show his bankbook). You take photographs of your poop stained, beak chewed furniture. You go to your home insurance agent and report the obvious disaster. But the agent informs your that your policy didn’t include the "hungry locusts" clause. Your Home Parrots love to customize furniture with their nut-cracking beaks. That wooden chair for which you had trouble finding storage space will eventually be whittled into matchstick size pieces that can be stored neatly in the fireplace. Parrots will enrich your carpet with half-eaten food (assuming that you still have a carpet and haven't already been forced to live so modestly that the Amish come through on tours to photograph your home). This natural habit of parrots is to encourage the lush growth of new trees. If no trees sprout, your parrot will chew baseboards in order to admit outside moisture to facilitate growth. The tossed food will bring a regular parade of ants. But you dare not use ant poison. And since fumigation can kill parrots you will need to move into a friend's home every few months. I know what you're thinking: "But I've already lost all my friends!" Yes. This is a conundrum. Unfortunately it is not the reason that you wake up screaming only to realize you haven't fallen asleep. Your Psyche It may change from disappointment to remorse, many first-time parrot owners are disappointed because their parrot does not meet their expectations. Some guardians blame the parrot and keep it in a corner, or they give it away. Some guardians take time to learn the reasons for their parrot's behavior, much too late. Their disappointment is replaced with remorse, and sometimes guilt and depression. The disappointment stems from unrealistic expectations. First-time parrot owners often have had a dog and enjoyed being the Center of The Universe of a pet. But after getting a parrot they learn that the belief that humans are the Center of The Universe is a belief only humans and dogs share. Like cats, parrots do not perceive themselves as being subservient to anyone. As with other humans, a person can't make a parrot love them just by feeding it (my uncle being an exception to this rule). Parrot's are monogamous. Hand-fed (psychologically damaged) parrots will typically select one human to pair with. At puberty (2-3 years old) many parrots will become fiercely jealous of all other beings. Unlike your spouse, who may react to your flirting with others by squealing with laughter and repeated slapping his/her thighs, parrots may attack and bite. Parrots often have an innate sense of what they are looking for in a partner. Logic is not involved. Your parrot may not choose you even if you provide all its care and attention. It may bond with your cable TV guy. Note: Should this occur you must capture the cable guy. I recommend baiting the trap with a cold draft beer. Fortunately, once in captivity his instincts will be less compromised than those of your parrot. It is far less likely that he wants to fly with the wind or that he wants to help raise babies. Other unrealistic expectations of first-time parrot owners: Talking - Many parrots do not talk. Tricks - Most parrots won’t learn cute tricks. No problem, you say. You have lowered your expectations. You have done your homework and you fully realize that your parrot will view you as a slave and will refuse to speak your language. For you, this is no more difficult of a realization then when you first realized that your moral values were at variance with those of the society around you, or that you would never wake up good looking. No problem, you say. Your sanity doesn't depend on a parrot bonding with you (as long as the small plant in the corner of the room continues to be your friend). So, you won't be disappointed. What's the problem? Remorse - In order to keep a parrot captive you will need to curtail many of its natural instincts. Flight - If you don't clip your parrot's flight wings it can fly away, especially if it is startled. Each year many unclipped parrots are lost forever this way. Their guardians experience the heartache of the loss plus the knowledge that their parrot whom depended solely on them probably suffered a cruel death. You will learn that the hardest loss is the death of someone whom you loved more than anyone else loved. Your memory is their strongest connection back to the world they left. If you do clip your parrot's flight wings it will not enjoy its natural behavior. It may become lethargic. It will lose an important defense mechanism, and when startled it may hurt itself. Parrots have no fear of heights, and without flight wings they can land hard and they can get hurt. Family - A parrot will attempt to start a family. Males want to build nests for the person to who they are bonded. A female will lay unfertilized eggs. When no family is created their reactions to this frustration may be feather picking, biting, screaming and other signs of nervousness and depression. Noise!!! - A parrot’s natural inclination to meet the sunrise and other subtle movements with loud vocalizations is not often found on anyone’s list of perfect pet traits. The first time my father was visiting and my parrot screamed without due warning, my father looked completely and utterly startled (perhaps due to the fact that he had just eaten his tie). Conclusion Instead of spending $1,200 and buying a parrot, why might consider spending that money on a plane ticket to someplace like Costa Rica and spending a week or two with wild parrots. In addition to an experience you will never forget, you will be protecting the parrots by showing the local people — who live where the parrots are — that those birds are worth a lot to them economically as wild parrots. If you prefer, rather than buying a parrot, you can get the same experience by camping for a week in the nearest city park and cleaning up all the bird poop, placing your head inside a metal can and asking strangers to bang it without warning, while simultaneously burning a $1000 bill. Perhaps, despite this laborious written text, you still want to share your life with a parrot. I rarely criticize another person's idea of a good time, unless it's to set my trousers on fire, but what the Frack is wrong with you? ;-) If you still want to hold captive a parrot, then please go to an avian rescue facility. It is estimated that there are currently 200 of these shelters nationwide. If you are still reading this far into my text, you must REALLY desire to have a Parrot and are probably a good candidate. So, I also have a special favor to ask. Please don't go into one of these rescue facilities and just pick out a parrot. These parrots have already developed personalities with strong likes and dislikes. Most have been damaged emotionally. Please visit the rescue facility and interact with the parrots, more than one time, and allow a parrot to choose you. Don't question why it chooses you. Just accept the parrot's decision. And smile. From this moment on your attitude is the only thing you control.

I did notice Judy. I know it's rare to find a man that notices such subtle changes, but I am one. ;-) That's what instigated my "Ahem". It gave me the clue that you are in the picture taking mood, have the camera and the ability to do so. So yes, please start providing your "Man" with some eye candy.

Hello Nasy, I am certain that you are desperately doing all you can to ensure your Grey is brought back to good health. I don't believe any of us tried to imply you were not, if we somehow made you feel that way. :-) You are doing the right thing in exhausting every possible avenue to find help and ideas for getting your Grey on the mend. I am positive it took some effort to even find this forum. We love all Grey's and any other critters for that matter and are keenly interested in the health and well being of the critters and the owners mental sanity as well , as they go through these worrisome times. Please keep us posted on the progress and post as often as you like. You will find we are a very caring and loving forum community unlike any other. :-) I like the play on words you used in coming up with "Healp"!!

Hey Judy - Speaking of photos of ones Grey, AHEM, foot tapping. ;-) :-) Well????? B) Pat - Your new signature and artwork is awesome. Did you do those?

Kaedyn, That is some rough playing Rigel is doing to damage all those Feathers. :-) He must be a real active and outgoing Grey. I am uncertain of any difference in strength of young Grey's Feather shafts versus adults. Did your baby have an improper diet as an infant? That seems to be what you are alluding to in your text. Your cage is definitely large enough height and width wise. The 24 inch depth is a little narrow for him to be centered and fully extend his wings tip to tip. But, I doubt that is that culprit. It just sounds as though you have one energetic and fun loving Grey thats as tough on his feathers, as children are are clothes. :-) The others have given good advice on having the wings clipped by a professional avian vet. This should provide the good, clean and even cut to ensure he is not being irritated by them or detecting frayed and rough edges that he will try to preen out and destroy whats left of those offending feathers. Have you ever actually seen the activity causing the damage to his Primaries and Tail feathers? Is he actually slapping cage sides or toys with powerful enough force that you see a feather bent or broken in real-time? Does he sometimes fall and perhaps break a tail feather when landing on the floor of the cage?

What a beautiful and healthy looking Girl Tyco is. Thanks Pat, for going through the pains of "sneeking" in a few shots. More please. ;-) :-)

What a wonderful thing to do for Dorian, to get him out in the sun and a scenic view of the great outdoors.:-) Obviously you love him tons to go through literally all that pain to do so. It sounds like a wonderful hour and just one of many more outings to come, if I am reading you correctly. Reading the determination you have to get him out and about. Along with "forcing" him to submit to the step-up commands with the willingness to "Take a Hit" to get him too, will eventually win his respect and compliance more and more often. You asked: "Is he scared, relaxed, or confused?" Answer: YES

Thanks for posting this Graehstone. I guess being a vet myself, I just bypassed noting this on the forum. :-) Good Poem, a little rough on the politicians, some deserve the ridicule, some don't. Many have served in the armed forces and were exceptional in their performance. JFK - PT 109, General Dwight Eisenhower, just to name but a few. Thanks to all the Veterans on this forum!! DanMcQ - U.S. Army Air Defense 1971 - 1978 Vietnam Veteran ...

LOL Acapella - I think he only does left hand turns due to watching so much NASCAR racing and the Indy. I will have to find a figure 8 Pan. :-)

Nycsha - EeeEewwwwwWwwWwWweeeee "I should get alarmed if it looks like puss (greenish puss or yellow) or blackish (that is when she didn't eat blue berries - when she eats blue berries she has blackish poop)." Too much information. ;-) Judy - I think we have all became familiar with the ancient art of poopology through first hand up close and personal inspection. :sick: :pinch: :laugh:

Glad I brought a smile Pchela :-) As you probably know, we all watch the poop for any long term changes (2 to 3 days) for abnormal changes that we know are not due to some change in the foods they have just recently consumed. Siobha - If both your Grey's are eating the same items, their poop should be fairly similar. The exception being if one consumes more water or veggies and fruit than the other. This could at times result in a lot of water passed along with the poop and no "White" Urine portion which Dayo does also due to the amounts of fluids he consumes.

Well, poopology tells us that Jalapeños and Grapes and raw Carrots certainly cause a serious change in Poop color and consistency once chewed, mixed and compressed in the Crop and then jettisoned out the rear. The change is probably just do to the new food items being ingested. Veggies are also watery and will make the poop have a looser and watery appearance.

That sounds like a wonderful toy, Pat. Your description paints a good mental picture. A photo or video would be even better though. :-) Maybe you good snap one from far off using the zoom on your camera to get the shot? LOL - "Steal Her Soul"... it's been a while since Ive heard that. VERY SCARY!!!! ;-)

Glad you all enjoyed a little afternoon fun. :-) Dayo is camera shy too. Thats why he was standing in the first few frames staring at me with the camcorder. I have tried bigger and deeper pans about the size for a Turkey, but Dayo would not commit to jumping down in it and he certainly was not game for me to try and place him in it "Ouch Ouch Ouch" from me is what resulted from that non-filmed episode.

It has turned cold and wet here in California this weekend. Dayo decided since he was not going out in his Cage for a good soaking, would take the issue into his own Talons and started trying to bath in a very small water bowl. Kim (my Wife) quickly whipped out a 12 inch pie pan and thus resulted the following video .......

Good Morning everyone, lets roll!!! :-)

It could be jealousy, since it occurred with your husband sitting down next to you. It's really hard to say though. If I remember right, he has bitten unexpectedly since you got him a month or two ago. Being 3 years old when you got him, also means he has "baggage" I suspect that you may be unaware of. Being bitten unexpectedly that close to the eye and with such force is very alarming. Looks like it is going to take more than just a couple of months to get Sammy and your family all adjusted to each other. Maybe a firm "No Bite" and caging him after it, would help get the message across that it is not an acceptable behaviour?

Ok, I'll follow suite on the cuteness of parrot love :-) This is one of the photos when we first brought "two" greys home the first day.