terryspear

I hope you have a wonderful trip. Fingers crossed that when you return, everybody settles back into peace!

I forgot to ask! Anyone else have ideas about toys that Greys like?

Hi NewMamma, I had to replace our Grey's cage at the beginning of 2022 because Corey was starting to bite the paint off her cage. I was very concerned that this paint could be toxic to her and it seemed she immediately recognized my reaction to this new development which made her more prone to bite the cage bars. I didn't want this to be a way for her to get attention. This meant I had to look for a stainless steel [SS] cage. As others have pointed out, SS cages can be very expensive. Kings Cage has very nice SS cages but they were more expensive than what we could afford. Here is a link to a SS cage I found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N94VTHF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 This cage was called: Prevue Pet Products Large Stainless Steel Play Top Bird Cage This cage is made in China but since it was made from SS, I wasn't too worried about the metal or paint it was made from. It has held up well for the last 2 years. The only thing I don't like about the cage is that the bars are a very small diameter but Corey has learned to navigate the bars just fine. My husband modified this cage with a few parts from her old cage so Corey wouldn't freak out when we got her the new cage [and fortunately she wasn't interested in eating paint from these parts]. The old cage and the new SS cage were exactly the same dimensions. Our bird doesn't really like change and the last thing I wanted was to spend $800.00 and have her reject the new cage. After my husband assembled the new cage [including adding a few parts from the old cage], we were able to switch the old cage with the new cage. Corey knew something was different but it wasn't THAT different and it all worked out. Good luck with your Grey, they are wonderful creatures. Corey's Mom

In the last few years, I have taken to saving paper brochures and magazines and making them available to our CAG, Corey. Corey bites and shreds the pages of these paper “toys”. They are easy to replace and if she poops on them, I just tear off the page. We let her stay on one of the counters in our kitchen so she can be with us [not the counters where we are preparing food] and I put these magazines/brochures on the flat surface there. When she tears them up, I simply sweep up the paper pieces. Also, I put them on top of her cage and fasten them there with 2” binder clips. [See picture/you can only see a small section of one of the binder clips that fasten the brochures to the top bar of the cage] When she wants to be on top of her cage, I frequently find her just resting flat on the brochures or magazines [if she’s not tearing them up]. I have never seen Corey actually consuming any of this paper material so [at least for Corey] this seems perfectly safe. Corey's Mom

That's an interesting idea, Kevin! Corey might be willing to try something like that. Corey's doing OK now. She's a little wobbly when she's first gets on your hand but if you move her toe back, she's better. Wow, coming from the Middle East, that's wild. I'll need to look here on your website to see if I can find some background. Thanks for your idea!

Funny, SR SeedBurners! I did think your explanation was "strange" but I didn't get the humor at the time. And, thanks again for more photos!

Wow SRSeedBurners, Huey looks great! I had no idea that they could adapt this well. Thank you for post and especially the photos. Like you, we've tried to push her back toe where it "belongs" but that doesn't last long. Corey continues to improve. She has probably figured out how to adapt to the change in the conformation of her left foot. We have an easier time of getting her to step-up and she doesn't seem to "ball up" her left foot as much when she moves. Thanks again, everybody!

Hi Everybody and LNCAG, I thought I would provide a bit of an update and it's good news! Corey seems to have done better these last few days. I'm not sure if it's the pain meds OR if it's that she is adapting to the rotated toe [to the front of her left foot]. She is much better when she comes to "step up" on our hand . It's kinda like she can get a better grasp. And, she seems to be vocalizing more normally and being more of her playful self. When we realized that she had a hard time perching [couple of years ago], we modified her sleeping cage and now the perch is only a few inches above a soft layer of newspaper. She seems to be doing pretty in this cage now. As has been pointed out to me, Greys are smart and thus adaptable. I am much less stressed now that I was a week ago. Thank you so much, Terry

Hi LNCAG, Thank you for your input: a ground perch! Who knows, we may have to go to this in the future. I have been thinking about how to fashion something that allows her foot to slope forward. She might not have a choice in the future. I do have to write that she appears more comfortable on the pain med now. Maybe, if we are lucky, and the sudden drop in her ability to perch and walk was a result of a bad fall [that we didn't see] we can more or less go on as we have been. Now, Corey doesn't seem so uncomfortable with the daily activities of life. Thanks for posting!

Hi Greytness, We have been thinking about how we can arrange her cloth perches in her sleep area. We now have a double cloth/braided perch to more mimic a flat surface. She clearly wants to be suspended in the air but as Timbersmom wrote: they can shift to something different. Thank you. t

Hi Timbersmom, Thank you. You did have an insight that was very useful for me: that given time, we might see Corey accepting a flat place to rest.

We’ve had our Grey, Corey, for about 20 years. We found her for sale in an aquarium store where she had been left by her previous owner. When we brought Corey home, we could tell that her tail was off to one side. We took her to see an avian vet and he told us that it was likely that whoever hatched Corey did not feed the parents or the chicks an appropriate diet and her bone deformity was likely a result of not getting enough calcium/vitamin D. These skeletal problems are obvious and even if Corey got a perfect diet going forward, the damage to her bones is permanent. The reason I am posting now is that she is having a harder time walking and perching. Normally, Greys have two toes forward and two toes behind. Recently the smaller, rear toe on her left foot rotated to the front of her foot. This new development worried me a lot. I think this is because her twisted spine has caused her left foot to twist so that it is rotated away from being parallel with her other foot. See photos. We took her to see the same avian vet who saw her many years ago. He did a physical exam on her left leg and determined that the joint right above her foot was “lax” but he did not think that ligament on that leg was out of position and there was no sign of a broken bone. I am sure that this is a result of the amount of pressure her twisted spine/hip has exerted over the years on this joint. He did not seem overly concerned about the back toe rotating to the front of her left foot. He said she might have injured in her left leg recently [we haven’t seen any serious falls for quite some time]. We really didn’t want to have her admitted to his clinic for imaging tests because I didn’t want to leave her there AND I just don’t think it would have told us anything his exam didn’t reveal. He gave us some pain meds [meloxicam/tramadol] and told us to keep an eye on whether she seems more mobile and comfortable. I was wondering if [when our vet saw the rotated toe] he would recommend removing the toe but that topic never came up. So here is my question: has anyone else dealt with this type of problem and was there anything you can recommend? For years we have tried to remove the perches in her sleeping cage so she can sleep on top of towels but she is just frantic/miserable when we have done that. We do have a “play box” we put her in for some time during the day that has soft fabric to stand on but she doesn’t want to sleep in this box. As I am sure everybody understands, I really don’t want to stress her out any more. Thank you for any ideas. Thank you for any advice or insight you may have. Terry

I would like to echo what everybody else wrote. I very much appreciate all that Kevin has done to keep this board alive AND I love the signature quote at the bottom of his posts. Thank you, Kevin!

So funny! I don't think this choice of words is merely coincidental!

Years ago, I had read some information about a parrot owner who so strictly "potty trained" their parrot [I don't think it was a Grey] that it died because it had been out of it's cage so long and hadn't been given the command to "potty" in a humane time period. I can hardly believe that someone just made this story up but who knows? One thing we did with Corey was to train her with the request: Go Potty. We did this by saying Go Potty whenever we saw her doing the "potty dance" and then rewarding her [when she went potty] by saying: Good Bird! The way that this helps us is that when we take her to any place in our house where we can't easily clean up a potty, first we take her to her cage [or any other place where she is comfortable going potty] and ask her: Go Potty. Often, she will go potty for us and then we know we have around 15 minutes where we know we are probably safe. If she doesn't go potty when we ask, it's not a big deal. We don't press the issue. It's not a perfect solution but it's something.

I share my office with Corey [a CAG]. She is usually talkative during certain parts of the day. Normally, Corey is not too loud but she can certainly increase the volume to get attention [or if I have a video playing on my computer that she feels she has to compete with]. A couple of months ago, my husband suggested I buy a set of noise-cancelling [it cancels the outside noise] headphones. I splurged and bought a nice, comfortable set of headphones that have wonderful audio. Now, I can escape the Grey chatter when it get too high by listening to some nice music. Totally worth it!

Here's another thing to think about: could Peko have developed some food allergy? We had always heard to move our Grey to pellets and the best pellets were Harrison's. I think Corey did not do well on Harrison's pellets.

Totally loved this!

I just went to the Medical Center for Birds website to get the advice they give to their clients on feather damaging behavior and feather care and attached the two articles. Peko looks very good in your video. I'm very impressed that you can get Peko into a harness! No way could I convince Corey to let us do that. Feather Care 2018(1).pdf Feather Damaging Behaviors 2018.pdf

I see that you do have a sleep cage and I think that is good. We changed Corey's sleep arrangements when I realized that the night time was hardest for her. I think it has to do with the fact that birds, when they sleep, are very vulnerable because they can NOT fly to get away from danger. This is generally all birds, not just pet birds. I could be wrong but I think it's a built in fear/behavior instinct that most birds have. So, the first thing we did was create a "night time" cage for her in our bedroom. I have a sense over the years that Corey clearly did want to be with her humans at night. Except for the very front of her cage, we cover all the other sides of the cage with towels. And we keep this cage very clean: vacuum out all the dust and any feathers [not when she is close to this cage]. However, if changing your Grey's sleeping cage is bothering your Grey, I would trust your instincts. Then, we have a low night light in the hall [probably 8 feet from her cage]. I think this is also important so she can look out and see that she is safe. The other thing that I think helps our Grey is giving her showers. Luckily for us, she trusts my husband and goes willing to him [on a basket] when he showers. [She probably gets up to 1 or 2 showers/week]. He puts her under the shower spray until she's very wet and then hands her to me to be dried off. She used to let me gently dry her with a hair dryer but now she will only let me towel her off before I return her to her cage. We do this during the day when it's still warm in the house so she doesn't get chilled. You might try to order the "Pluck No More" product from Kings Cages. Hopefully, they will ship to your location. If that doesn't help, you could consider contacting The Medical Center for Birds in Oakley, California and seeing what they would recommend. I know that most Vet hospitals are busy but they might tell you what they would recommend in your situation. Maybe your Vet could obtain and prescribe what the Medical Center for Birds recommends. It's worth a try. You might need to push because sometimes the only way you get what you really need is to be not only informed but also kind AND insistent. I do think it's worthwhile to try to reduce stress for your Grey. I know this is not easy. We have a small space that we take Corey to play. It's private and quiet. She asks to go there by saying: "See Your Box" and she calls to us when she wants us to come back to her regular cage or other places in the house. I know that you do not have a lot of space but maybe you could find a closet your Grey would like. One thing that gave me ideas of how to engage our Grey was watching YouTube videos of an African Grey called: Einstein. Einstein and his family live in Texas, USA and they frequently film Einstein going about his life. If you searched on "African Grey, Einstein" in the YouTube search bar; I bet you would find videos. I am sure people will point out that Einstein also displays effects "feather destruction" behavior but I think Einstein's humans do a good job of living with him. Continue to try different things: slowly and methodically [one at a time]. Introduce things slowly. Greys do not like a lot of change in their life so you have to move slow. I really hope that something I wrote can help you and your Grey. Greys are amazing creatures and they deserve the best chance of a quality life.

I'm sorry to hear about this. As you know, this is not an easy problem to solve. When we started to see this problem in our Grey [probably more than 15 years ago], Corey, we tried a number of avian vets. I was NOT happy with most of the solutions we heard about [or tired] until we got Corey to see Dr. Brian Speer in Oakley CA at the Medical Center for Birds. He said that this problem was just beginning for Corey and that we basically needed to engage her more. We were both working full-time jobs at the time and she was being left alone at least 9 1/2 hours a day for 5 days per week. Lucky for us, our work status changed and we could spend more time with her after about a year or so after this started. At the time when this problem was most severe for Corey, Dr. Speer was treating Corey with a pain-killer [I don't remember if he specifically determined what was causing her pain] and probably what amounts to a mild, avian tranquilizer. They were both liquid solutions. I don't remember specifically the names of those drugs. These drugs [and spending as much time with Corey as we possibly could and trying to do everything to reduce her stress] we managed to bring her feather destruction habits under control. If you look at her pictures now, she looks fine: fully feathered. I have heard of some avian vets prescribing drugs to control hormones in female Greys but we never had to do that. Corey has never shown any interest in laying eggs [even though we know she is a female]. Over the following years, whenever it looked like this problem might be coming up again we tried Kings Cages Pluck No More. This probably doesn't work for all Greys but it did seem to help Corey. Fortunately, we haven't had to use it in the last 10 years and that might be because Corey has us so well trained to take care of her in the way she needs to be cared for. Here is the link: https://kingscages.com/pluck-no-more/ As other people have written, it's good you are seeing a vet but you probably know that you need to see the correct vet [an avian specialist]. I wish you the best of luck. Best, Terry

Dear Shanlung, I am so grateful to see your recent post on Greyforums! I had seen some of your previous posts on a different forum years ago. Now, I know of one concrete "good" thing to have come from the Covid19 pandemic: Vorona found a home with you. My husband and I also have a Grey, Corey, who was never allowed to learn to fly in that magic early time period when they are young. I can't say Corey can fly as well as Vorona BUT she now can land safely most of the time. Thank you SO much for writing about Vorona! Terry

Wow, oh Wow and congratulations! I'm glad Acappella posted on this thread because I otherwise probably would not have seen the description of your property. Thanks for posting all the information/photos. What a perfect property. Clearly, you do an amazing job of integrating GreycieMae into your life. I'm impressed that you can get a harness on her so that she can join you outside. Given all your critters, you've got to be busy but I am sure it is a totally rewarding lifestyle. I wish you the best of luck!

Like Greytness, we use a cotton, braided rope perch for Corey. We have different sizes so she isn't forced to keep her feet in the same position all the time. I captured a picture from the internet and pasted it into a document [attached] so you can see it. Corey really likes these perches. She also has a manzanita perch in her cage and she will go to that perch sometimes. RopePerch.docx

Thanks for the replies of keeping your Greys entertained. We also try to keep Corey with us during our normal day [sitting on cardboard boxes or on John's shoulder]. Is Timber's seizures related to low calcium or do you know? Years ago, Corey had seizures but when we supplemented her diet with calcium, she stopped having them.