Jane08

I also think our birds dream. I have slept the night with our two in a room a few times and I always hear them making noises and they sound like dreaming noises. MIT have also done some interesting research on animals and dreaming. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/dreaming.html

I call ours when I am away and have them on video so they can see me and I talk to them. Makes me feel better to see them and they know it's me as well and seems to work to let them know I am okay. You might see some sulking when you get home, our male is very good with that when I come home after traveling. He won't look at me or come to me and just ignores me for awhile. I can see on him though that he is excited to see me but trying to contain it. So funny as he can't hold out long before he is flying over to me for a cuddle.

I feel for you we went through this with both of ours when they were young. It got so bad we had to think up new ways to out smart them. I was late for work so many times when they were young. The most creative thing we did was put a treat on the open door of the cage, our male would fly to the perch and eat the treat and we had a string tied to the door and as soon as he landed we pulled the string on the door and closed it. He thought he was ok there as he was still outside the cage and didn't see the string that closed the door. haha. Another trick I used was have them on my hand and when we go towards the cage I turn my hand so they can't see the cage and are facing me and then I lean over them a bit, basically to cut down on the chances of them flying off and have them close to my stomach and just as I get to the cage I turn my hand and put them in and give them a treat. I also started talking to them when they were young and tell them beforehand what is going to happen and why they need to go in. I say to them that they have to go into the cage now as I have to go shopping, work etc. I give them a reason every single time I put them in and spend a few minutes explaining to them. I also reassure them that I will be back soon so they know. I even do this now after 6 years. I know they understand as when I say I have to go to work they now say back to me " go into the cage" and I know they understand. Basically every time I want them to do something I talk to them and tell them why and explain it. It probably sounds crazy but this has really worked for us.....not a quick fix, it took years but it's really worth it. Now it's a piece of cake to get them in.

With our male it was love at first sight. He was a baby sitting there fluffed up looking all majestic and he let me scratch his head. With our female it has taken about 5 years and now I feel that towards her. It has taken that long for her and I to come to a place where we both feel comfortable. She now gives me the best kisses and my heart bursts with love when she does that.

You can get them online in Sweden from here: http://www.djuraffaren.se/index.php?route=product/search&keyword=harrisons%20pellets

I also don't think you made a mistake or damaged your chances. You will be surprised how adaptive they are. We also have a male and a female and they were about the same age, we got the female (who was 3 months then) a year after the male and wanted them to live together. We had them in separate cages when they came home and let them out together at the same time. Our male was a bully to her but she just learned to fly away from him. After 3 moths we noticed that they seemed to get on and one day the female screamed when I put her in her cage and when I took her out to see what the problem was she wanted to go to the males cage. I let her in and sat there for an hour and watched them. She checked out his cage (seeing if it met her standards to move in, hehe). I then took her out and put her back in her own cage. Over the next week we increased the time she was in his cage with him everyday until finally they were happy to be together full time. They now live together and are bonded together, but they are also bonded to us. Like you say just let them work it out for themselves, you do have a good chance as they are so young just give it a few months.

If you need any help with the investigating let me know as I live in Sweden. The info Birdhouse gave comes from the Swedish Agriculture Department and is the latest information as I also checked it in Swedish.

Interesting, but not something I would use on our parrots. Predatory birds have very strong legs to be able to deal with the prey they capture and our greys don't wrestle with food that fights back so their legs are for standing on their perch and climbing. I would be afraid something would happen to their legs as they are not strong like a predatory bird.

Check out this video that another member posted, so you can see what it looks like when they are bonding. http://www.greyforums.net/forums/showthread.php?196082-What-does-this-mean&highlight=regurgitating

aaww, he is saying he loves you.

LOL yeah they are a couple of pigs they eat anything. Yes maybe I need to say big boned. The picture is also funny because one day he put his whole head through the hole and was the stuck and couldn't get his head out. After a lot of coaxing and gently pushing his head we got him out. We were at a bird meet a couple of months ago and this person was in front of one of our birds looking at her and then I hear them discussing how fat she was. I didn't know what to say. I then went up to our bird and starting to tell her how beautiful she was.....I sing that song to her "your beautiful it's true, there must be an angle with a smile on her face when she thought up that you should be with me". We took them for a health check up as I was concerned but the vet said they were fine and she actually likes to see them with a bit of meat on their bones.

Wow I must have a couple of fatties, mine are both 500 and 510 (Cags).

I think it is good to get another early on if that is what you want and can handle. We had our male and when he was just about one we got him a girlfriend. We felt sorry for him being home all day alone. We were lucky and they got on, so 3 months later we had them living in the same cage together. We have never had any problems with this and I don't see any reason why they can't share a cage if the cage is big enough and they get on. Ours are bonded to each other and do all the mating rituals but they are also in some way bonded to us and make the mating noises with us as well. Of course we went through stages of the normal grey challenges, screaming, biting and both were different in this respect. I can say it is rewarding with 2 as you really see how happy they are together and do things together that we could never do with them with regards to playing, preening and even learning from each other.

We have closed bands on ours and if someone found them or stole them they would need to be very dumb to try and cut off a closed band. I could also identify ours by the things they say, they know our names and where family lives and they say these things all the time. Even if they were traumatized I am sure they would scream for us. Of course you could also show it by being the only one who could touch them. Its like that one in Japan that flew off and after a few days started saying a phone number and it turned out to be the owners phone number.

I also give ours egg, boiled and they really like the egg shell so I leave some egg in the shell and give it to them. Chicken is a big winner in our household, they love it. They don't like tuna, but salmon is another story, love it to the point where they take huge bites of it and I think they might choke on it.

Maybe if you start a bit simpler. I have 2 very good foragers and I started out small. I got their favourite treat and placed it in a paper coffee filter and then tied string around it and hung it up. All the time I let them watch me, I showed them the treat and what I was doing. Now it is their favourite thing to hunt around the cage for treats tied up in coffee filters. The next step was getting a bell pepper and cutting small holes in it and the placing food inside it. They love to rip open the pepper and pull their favourite food out. Even simple things like a kebab stick with food on it and hung in the cage. This is all easy foraging and then from there you can make it more complicated. After all the simple stuff I then started with the more advanced things like boxes with food in and a container where they have to lift the lid to get the food. Another one where they have to turn the wheel and a treat drops out. The most favourite though is the coffee filter, I even tie it outside the cage so when they are in the cage they have to try and pull it through the bars to get it.

Congrats on the success. We also use her techniques and it really works like a charm. Of course you also have to have patience and be consistent. We had many issues with our 2 when they were young and we always turned to her techniques to get through them. They were issues that nearly every young grey goes through, biting, not wanting to go in the cage, step up, and Kea had her special problem of screaming all the time. It took time but using her methods we solved every issue, so I highly recommend her books, videos and if you can go to her workshop that was amazing.

Don't worry it will get better and it won't be the last phase she goes through. It's also hard when we first get our birds and want to make sure they are happy and we want to spend as much time with them as we can, picking them up, touching them. We forget that they might not want the same thing and when they try and tell us we don't listen so they bite and then we get upset. I found this out at a very early stage with our 2 and I had to really restrain myself from overdoing it and being all over them. I learnt that Rangi liked sitting in the kitchen by himself for periods of time just talking and he wanted to be alone. It took all my will power not to go in and try and interact with him. I also learnt that if I want to do something with them I have to ask first,even with step up I go over and ask them if they want to step up. I then look for the body language for the answer and if it's no I just walk away. I think it's more of a friendship that you build with them respecting each others wishes and once you learn to read them it is really easy to know what they want or don't want. Good luck.

They constantly go through phases and this could just be a phase. I know our female Kea is going through a phase now where she flies at me and nips me.I just ignore it because I know she will get over it, she has been through so many other phases and got over all of them. I know it's not nice when they are like this and you worry if something is wrong or of you did something, how long will this last. I just try to focus on all the other good things with Kea and nice times we have and be patient with her when she is in the flying and biting mood.

All greys are different and you should just see what works for you and both of them, I don't think there is a set answer for this. Have separate cages at the start and see how they interact together outside the cage. I personally don't think there is anything wrong with having 2 greys in the same cage. If the cage is big enough or a divided cage they will easily have their own space. We have 2 greys and they live in the same cage and we have had no bonding issues, we have only experienced positive things.

Huge breakthrough, congrats that is great news. Tell her to keep up the great work.

Another one here who had a similar problem. Our male wanted nothing to do with my BF and would sit in the kitchen when my BF was in the living room, if BF went into the kitchen he would fly into the living room. I could see the scared look on his face and really tried to get away from my BF. This really was a phase our grey went through and he did get over it. We also thought if our grey didn't like my BF coming to him then my BF had to find some way of having Rangi come to him. We all know how curious our greys are and they can't help themselves. My BF would have things he knew Rangi liked and would stand just where Rangi could see him and then make noises over the treat or object. Rangi loves plastic bags that make noises like chip packets so he would stand and make noises getting into the packet. He would really exaggerate it all and you could see Rangi looking and this internal fight going on with himself as he decided whether to go over or not. In the end he couldn't help himself...curiosity got the cat...and he would go over to my BF. My BF would praise Rangi and make a big deal out of it. My BF did this with all types of things until Rangi willingly would come to him. Now when my BF comes home Rangi is the first one ot fly to him and welcome him home.

No nothing odd about that both of ours don't preen until they are dry. When wet they just sit on their perch and once in awhile give themselves a shake to remove excess water and then preen when dry.

LOL sorry for laughing but this sounds exactly like our female Kea, so i know what you mean. She is also a pest (I actually call her something worse than that, but not where her ears can hear it) and for us we have found that we have to give her something to do, she seems to get bored easily and this is when she becomes a right handful. It might just be something wrapped in paper that she has to get out, some puzzle that she has to solve, but it definitely has to stimulate her intelligence or foraging instinct. Sometimes I even give her my hair tie that has a metal bit on it and she sits there trying to get the metal bit off. The latest is a towel that she has taken a fancy to, we make it so she can go under the towel and role herself in it...she can spend ages with her towel. She is also all over my BF and has an obsession with him. I guess we are lucky though in that we have another grey and she plays with him as well to give us a rest, although I am sure he wouldn't see it that way as her way of playing is not what he would call playing.

We play the same game as Dan. Run around the house and yell peekaboo and have them fly after us. We are lucky in having a double level house which is totally open plan so they have to fly from the kitchen up to the second level of the house. They also fly out of their bedroom up the first level to the kitchen do a circuit in the kitchen and then to the second level. It's quite amazing seeing them having to quickly gain height to make it up to the living room on the second level. They do the circuit in the kitchen just to gain enough speed to make the climb up, it's quite incredible.