Jane08

I have Mr Jabber jaws and he talks non stop all the time. I swear he doesn't give those jaws a rest. He even manages to talk with food in his mouth and whilst playing with his toys. Even when he goes in the cage at night he mumbles to himself before he is finally quiet. He is quiet all night until the sun comes up and he starts the day with a "good morning did you sleep well". They both scream probably a couple of times a day for maybe 10-15 min or so and this happens when they are playing with toys, flapping their wings, spinning on the spot and having general fun. This can also turn into what I can only describe is a couple of Banshee's chasing each other around the house.

Hhmm ok this looks familiar, do you work for birdtricks? No offence but I am sick of Mr Birdtricks and his quick fixes *sigh*

Great news that it went well. Isn't it the best seeing them meet other greys, I get so excited for our 2 when they meet others and they get so much joy out of it. Lol, watch out for the falling in love, our female fell in love with another grey on first sight and they wouldn't stop preening each other. I call her a minx as she is in love with our male grey and my boyfriend. Of course all 3 males have goo goo eyes for her. I look at her and think she must be one fine looking grey.

Oh that sounds like fun. When we take ours on playdates we get to the house and put the cage down somewhere where they can see everything and then wait for them to take it all in. Then if they seem ok we bring them out of the cage. Usually they won't go anywhere and just sit on our hand or shoulder and we show them around and introduce them to the greys. Our 2 are quite outgoing so after about 30min they will be more forward and will start to fly around and interact with the other birds. We have never had an problems with any aggression happening, even with greys they have never met before. Have fun and let us know how it went.

I remember the nerves we also had when we brought our first grey home. Our grey sat in the cage and looked at us and we stared at him and thought ok what happens now. My heart would drop everytime he took off trying to learn to fly in case he had an accident (which he did many times). He must have thought I was nuts because everyday I would closely inspect him to see if his feathers were alright, to see if everything looked normal. One little thing out of place and I would be worrying. Now I just think that it was all natural, sort of like a new mother who just wants evreything to be alright. My bf is also allergic to dogs/cats and he has had no problems with the birds. The only thing he does have problems with is the dust, but we have an air filter that helps with that. Good luck with Chimay.

Oh Larry is such a little man, what a cutie. I guess with the credit crunch hitting pets might be the first to go. They do say that parrots are the second most expensive animal to own. I still can't believe the number of resuce places that exist. I think I am a bit sheltered here as we don't have anything like that. I hope you find a good home for Larry, he seems to be such a sweety.

Could be the fact that you have a cue that your bird knows for stepping up. So everytime you raise your hand up to him that is his cue to step up and he has learnt this cue. Sometimes with our male I don't say anything and I raise my hand for him to step up and he is the one who says "up" sort of reminding me that I didn't say it. Our female has also taught me with a cue as well. She waits until I am looking at her and if she wants to go somewhere she raises her foot and this is my cue to go over and pick her up. Our training works both ways in our house, they trian me and I train them.

When we take our birds on play dates it is usually with people who use the same vet as us and have done training courses through the vet which requires everyone to have an up to date vet cert to say your bird is healthy.

Our female (who is bonded to by bf) used to be like that with me and we have finally become friends, all on her terms of course. I started off by giving her treats everyday and praising her for good things she did. She then started to trust me and then I started to train her with step up, retrieving a ring for me, spinning on her perch etc. This is where she thought it was fun to be with me and the trust grew even more. It even got to the point where my boyfirend would put the ring on the table and tell her to fetch and she would run after it and bring it back to me and not to him, hehe. Now we are at the point where she lets me touch her and she is so gentle with me whereas before she thought nothing of lungung to bite me.

Lilosmom has hit it on the head. Everything you teach your grey should be fun for the bird. Once it stops being fun you need to stop. You need to let your bird make the decisions while encouraging her with treats and praise. If you scare her with the towel for example she will really begin to hate it and be scared forever. Like Lilosmom said play games with the towel, make a tunnel and put treats down leading in to the towel and praise her for even looking or touching the towel. You will have to do this is baby steps. This could take months to achieve and that is fine, don't rush it take your time and go at the pace that Ash is comfortable with. It might take longer but in the end you will have a happy bird that is eager to learn new things. I am clicker training our 2 at the moment to wear a harness and I am using baby steps, so they got praise and treats for looking at the harness. Then praise and treats for me being able to move the harness closer to them. After 3 weeks I can now stroke them all over with the harness. Baby steps and time is the key, it will pay off in the end.

I just take the toys out and then put new toys in. I make sure they have seen the new toys sitting on the table for a few days though, just so they are comfortable with them.

We also have 2 greys which are not bonded to one another but get on really well. You do have to watch the jealousy thing though and make sure you do everything for Macy before the second one. Believe me Macy will be checking on that and taking note. Our male lets me know in no uncertain terms if I accidentally give something to our other grey first. He is always watching and no matter how sneaky I think I can be.

Our male is a darker shade of grey and our female is quite light

I also move perches around. Alot of our perches are parts of trees that we get when they are cut down. We moved perches last at xmas and will do it again in the spring. So basically we replace them all and put them in different places, sort of rearrange the whole cage every 4-5 months.

Maybe it's the case that he has come into your life at just the right time, he is adorable. Things do happen for a reason sometimes, fate....maybe this little guy is the one to help you through the difficult time.

Good to hear how you did it. We are training our 2 at the moment with the harness. I have just started by touching them and stroking them with the harness and treating them for it. I also target them to put there heads through the opening. It is going real slow, but hopefully they will learn in a few months.

It was a movie that we rented. Here are some previews of it. The footage is amazing. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1471216/winged_migration/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqGY3uNR4ko

I watched this movie last night call winged migration and it was so good. The footage of the birds was incredible. They showed the macaws as well. They showed them flying first and then in cages on this boat going up the river. They zooomed in to show a macaw and he lifted up the lock on the cage, climbed out and flew off. Obvioulsy they are trained, but it was great.

I also don't see a problem with it. Ours are big cuddlers at night. Our male perches on the back of the couch at night and tells me he wants cuddles when he comes down to where my head is turns around so his tail is facing me and bends down. I then stroke his back and he turns his head around and rests it on my hand for some head rubs. If he is really enjoying it he moves up under my chin and really pushes himself against me and rests his beak on my nose. Our female sits on my boyfriends chest every night and has cuddles, she rubs her chin up and down his nose.

If it's a baby it can also be scratching to try and remove the poop from the nest. They do this when they are still in the nest all together. Our female did it when we first got her home, just ignore it and she will stop.

We have 2 greys a female and a male. We had the male for a year before we got the female. They are now 2 and just over 1. We got the female as company for the male as I felt bad about leaving him alone all day while we worked. We have had no problems at all with the 2 of them. The get on fine and share the same cage. They also interact with us no problems. The big thing we saw when we got our female was the activity that started in the cage. With only our male we used to get home and you could see he hardly did anything in the cage all day. Then when she arrives he became more active in the cage during the day. Now when I get home it looks like a tornado has gone through the cage, lots of playing and activity. I think I know we did the right thing in getting another one when I see our male drop his wings, get excited and making those eeeeeeee noises and race after our female to get some lovin. Our female loves the preening and she loves to play with him and roles on her back for him. I tell you it is the cutest thing ever and I wouldn't wish anything less for both of our greys.

For clicker training you only need the clicker which doesn't cost much, you can use a dog clicker. We have taught our female to fetch and bring back a ring, our male to hop on the scales. I know this sounds like it has nothing to do with the problems that we have with our greys, but for some funny reason it really does help with these problems. I am not sure if it is the fact that we are giving them structure so they know exactly how things should be done, or challenging and stimulating them as they are so intelligent and really need a challenge. When I train I watch our female and I can see her little brain working and she is so focused on getting that treat and trying to work out what I want from her to get the treat. When she does the right thing I click and give the treat and I see her eyes light up like ah ha.

We pretty much do what Lisa does. Put them with their food on their perch and if they fly to us I immediately put them back. I also wait until they have been sitting on the perch for a couple of minutes and then get up praise them and give them a bit of what I am eating. If they fly to me 3 times then they are straight in the cage. They are pretty good at staying on the perch now.

From reading your post this really seems like our female and what we have been through with her, she turned one in Nov. It started with the screaming (for attention from my boyfriend), which we ignored (yes I know it is hard and I was in tears from frustration listening to her scream). Everytime she did a nice noise we praised her and praised her. When she screamed some times I would just leave the room and wait around the corner until I heard a nice whistle and rush aorund the corner and tell her how good she is. So after about 3-4 months of doing this she stopped the screaming and now talks and whistles instead. Yes it was months of hell and patience and consistentcy, but better that than years of screaming. The biting started with me as she is bonded to my boyfriend. I swear it has taken me the whole year to make friends with her. One word sums up how I did it, bribery, bribery, bribery. Everyday I would hand feed her treats and then I started to train her to step up using the treats. I swear this worked so well. So now she steps up for me most of the time. If she is stubborn and doesn't want to (usually when going into the cage) I ask her to step up on the stick, because there is no way I am putting my hand there and getting a bite. As soon as she is in the cage I tell her what a good girl she is and give her a massive treat. Now she expects it and goes in the cage and waits at the door for her treat...so cute. She is now an angel for me at going back in the cage in the mornings, which before was a nightmare (to the point where I wouldn't let them out in the morning because I couldn't get her in). She has now started with the biting my boyfriend when she is on him and we are going through this now. He puts her back on her perch as soon as she bites and goes into another room and closes the door. She also likes to sit on his chest at night right up in his face and sometimes can bite him. He removes her straight away and places her on her perch. I think she is now learning that she gets no attention for biting and is ignored instead. I have now started to train both of them most days and I have noticed an improvement in both of our greys. We started with the clicker/target training which they love (our male has learnt to hop up on the scales so we can weight him). So this might be an option to start some training with him.

I must admit we have some sort of air purifier. My boyfriend has dust allergies and we were told to make sure it was a HEPA (High Efficiency Particle Arresting) as this removes particles as small as .3 microns. So this means bird dander can be caught in the HEPA and it also needs to run 24 hours a day. Some of the zoos use these in their aviaries. So it does need to be in an enclosed space that the air purifier is designed for.