Jane08

You know I thought I also caught our 2 eating paper as well, but when I really looked what they did was have it in their mouths for ages rolling it and rolling it until it was so small that you could hardly see it and then drop it. It was so small that I could hardly see it and thought that they had swallowed it. They even play with other toys while having this paper in their mouths and seem to hide it which made me think that they ate it, but they didn't they just rolled it really small.

We house our 2 greys in the same cage. We got our 2nd one a year after our first one. At the start they were in separate cages and then gradually we socialised them to be in the same cage. It does depend on the birds though. There has been no problem with them bonding with us.

We house our 2 greys in the same cage. We got our 2nd one a year after our first one. At the start they were in separate cages and then gradually we socialised them to be in the same cage. It does depend on the birds though. There has been no problem with them bonding with us.

I hear your frustration and you are not a nut case. I have this sometimes with my boyfriend over the birds, I get so tired of taking care of them all the time as he travels a lot for work and I feel sometimes he doesn't do enough to help when he is home. So I would say your bird is feeding off of this turmoil as I know ours get upset when they know everything is not right and then they mis behave. The only way is to change the circumstances that you are in to reduce the stress that you have. Your grey can feel the stress and tension and he deals with it by screaming and other behaviours.

No there is no problem with keeping them up past sunset. We also work full time and come home after the sun has set and let them out for 3-4 hours. They love to be out when we get home and are very active. They go to bed between 2100 and 2200. I wouldn't use an electric blanket as these are not designed for birds. Some people use heat lamps which are bird safe or even heat panels.

We actually had this when we took ours to a free flight day. They were out with about 50 other birds, probably 20 or so greys. I was nervous that we wouldn't know which one our babies were. Anyway it turned out there was no fear of not knowing them, our male I knew from his body movements. I guess I have spent loads of time learning his body language. He was also the naughty bird and wanted to make friends and would fly to the others. Of course the talking as well, everytime he would fly somewhere he would praise himself and and say you are a good boy, good boy. Our female was easy to spot as well, also from her unique body movements, which is odd because I would never have thought I could tell our greys apart purely by body movements. She was the grey that freaked when she came out and flew to the rafters and sat there getting used to everything.

I think another name for it is persimmon. To me it looks like a tomato but is orange.

I tried a sharon out on our greys and our female can't get enough of it, it's her favourite. I even hid it at the bottom of her bowl and she dug until she found it. She even runs over to our males bowl and steals his Sharon. Has anyone else tries a sharon on thier birds? I must admit I was very surprised she liked it. It's like now when she sees the sharon coming out of the fridge she can't wait to get to it.

We give them fruit and veg for breakfast and some seeds that have been soaked in water overnight. Then they are in their cage for the day and get dried seeds/fruit/pellets. When we come home they have a hand feeding of formula or sweet potato, about 3 teaspoons which does both of them. At dinner time they have veggies/soaked seeds and also a bit of what we are having for dinner. They then have a bedtime snack of pellets or a few seeds, very small portion.

We take ours with us and we have since we got them when they were only a few weeks old. We travel 5 hours and then have a break and then drive another 3 hours. The one thing we try to do it during the day as they seem to get really restless when it is dark with all the lights flashing. They are also so tired when we finally get there as I can see that they are tired from hanging on for all that time, so make sure your perches are suitable. Our female has one food on the horizontal perch and one foot on the vertical perch and she is right at the front of the cage looking out between the front seats. When she tries to rest she then also grabs the bars with her beak for extra support.

Our male is given leeway when it comes to bedtime. We used to be lucky and he would fly into the cage at bedtime, but when we got our second grey he stopped that. Now when I tell him it's bedtime and I will be here in the morning to see him, he puts his head down for scratches and stretches the time out. I talk to him gently and don't rush him because I know he knows what is going on. Then after maybe 5 min he lazily steps up and lets me take him into the cage where his treats are waiting for him. Our female who is one year doesn't get leeway really as she is still young and learning. We usually bribe her with treats to go in. She can be stubborn and sometimes I wait until she is settled on her spiral and then unhook it and open the cage door and she steps into the cage.

Maybe it might have something to do with the brightness of the sun and he is not used to it. So he gets into the sun and his eyes are like wow what is that and he backs off. I have watched our male when he is outside and his eyes go small and big and he runs under the shade to get away. Our female on the other hand turns into a sun bather and laps it up.

Oh yes sounds exactly like our female was with my boyfirend. She wanted his attention and by damn she was going to get it and she started with this scream that would drive us nuts if she didn't get it. I also thought she was a sandwich short of a picnic because she didn't get it either when we put her in the cage for screaming. We also did the ignore thing and I know how hard that is but really it is the only way. As soon as she made any sort of nice noise my boyfriend would lavish her with attention. We did this for I would say 2-3 months before she finally understood that oh if I talk or whistle I get lots of attention and if I scream I get nothing. I hate to say it but perseverance perseverance perseverance. Our female doesn't do it anymore and I am so happy went through 2-3 months of hell trying to correct her rather than years of hell trying to learn to live with something that might have become a habit.

We attended one of her workshops and we found it really worth while. We were new bird owners then so for us it was invaluable. She helped us with a lot of challenges that we had with our grey at the time. Our male was only 6 months when we went and he changed so much after that workshop. I think he changed because we were taught how to actually look after him in terms of training.

Our female likes to stroke herself with her foot in that area under her chin and we thought it was a sign of contentment because she only does it when she is relaxed. She also sits on my boyfriends chest at night and raises her chin up to his nose and likes him to rub up and down in this area.

Thanks Dan, believe me it wasn't easy there were a lot of tears shed. I swear we have been through everything with our 2, screaming, not bonding to the other person, biting, not wanting to go back in cage, one of then not wanting to bath. I just assumed this was what you had to go through when you get young greys and that it is our job to teach them how to behave. I had no idea that some people have none of these problems with their young greys and I have to say these people are very very lucky. Must say I am quiet proud we have solved nearly all of these problems with our 2, but I am sure between them they are cooking up another plan on how to test me.

I really feel for you, we went through this not so long ago when our female was about that age. She would scream and scream and I would get so stressed that I would go from the room and burst into tears. It also started to affect my relationship with my boyfriend as I told him I can't take this anymore. Well I can now say that I hung in there and all is ok now, she has stopped screaming and is talking more. Not sure what we did to change things. I guess we ignored the screaming and I tried to stay calm as I am sure she would scream just because she knew I hated it. When she would scream I also tried to take her attention away from the screaming, so would get her interested in playing so she would forget about screaming. When she made any other noise that we liked we would both give her so much praise and you could see her get all excited which I am sure helped her to stop screaming as she started to make the nice noises more because she got loads of attention for it. I made sure that I still gave her everything like her evening spoon fed formula as you can't take that away for them just for screaming. I also think it was an age thing as well, that she was young and needed a lot of attention.

I use Avisafe to clean the cage, great stuff as well

We also had those feelings before we got our second grey. We were so worried he wouldn't like her, or he would be mad with us and hate us. For us we were lucky and it has turned out to be a blesssing. We did exactly like you said and made sure he is top bird and to do everything for him before the second bird. This turned out to be a perfect strategy. They are the best of friends now and he has changed in positive ways from having a second bird. He has not become less loving towards us, but more happy, more active in his cage while we are at work. It gives me a lot of pleasure to see them playing and preening each other in ways that we as humans could not do it for him. Our second bird was definitely a great decision for our family and I am sure it will be for yours as well. It seems like you have done your homework and I really think that is important. Good luck

At the beginning of the year we got friend for our male grey and we socialised them and they are now in the same cage togther. I really think they know that they are the same bird and accept each other. It is so cute to watch them play together and they still like to spend heaps of time with us. We took our 2 to a free flight day where they could fly around in these huge glass houses. Our grey went out right away to make friends and he found that the only birds willing to let him sit next to them and beak them were the greys. He tried it with the Amazons and bigger birds and they all chased him off. He seemed so happy to be out making friends. Our female just sat in the rafters with 2 other greys and watched everything.

Sounds as though you are trying to train him at times when he doesn't want to. You have to find the times that he is receptive, like when he is a bit hungry and will do something for a treat. If he starts to bite then it is definitely not the right time for him. You could also try another treat that he really wants, it could even be a toy that he goes mad over and use that as the treat. I know with our 2 they are not always in the mood to be trained and I wait until they are showing signs (this even includes when I am playing with them and suddenly they really want a toy from me and then I turn it into a training session).

Our female also has these insane moments where she flies like a crazy girl all around the house screaming her head off. She also does it about once a day, usually in the afternoon. She has never had an accident at these crazy moments or landed on us although she will swoop down quite low and you think she it going to crash into you but she never has. She is 1 year old and has great flying abilities, much better than out male, but then again he is a much better climber than her.

Our 2 also growl and it really does sound like a dog growling. I must admit I don't like it and really try to avoid them feeling like they need to growl.

Our male grey is 1 and a half and he has just started with the nipping (he doesn't actually bite) but will land on me and nip. I am sure he thinks it's a game. I take him off of me and tell him no. I just assume it is a stage he is going through as I have seen many stages in both of our greys and they don't last for long. Like our female went through a screaming stage and is now oevr that.

Oh poor thing and the tongue must hurt real bad as well. Our male got his tongue stuck in a toy and the toy was just hanging off his tongue and he was freaking out. I had to grab him and pull the toy off his tongue and he just sat there with his tongue hanging out. I did the only thing I could think of and got the ice out and put ice on his tongue. He seemed to think that was a good idea and licked the ice for awhile. It helped with the swelling and the next day he was back to normal.