Jane08

Another great place to go for advice from experts is to the world parrot trust website. You can ask the experts there these sort of quesiotns and they are really helpful and have a lot of knowledge. They helped us get our 2 greys into the same cage. Be careful what you try out reading all the books. I know we read them all and tried things and then realised that it was not the way to train our bird and he hated us for it and we had to build the trust up with him. I got quite angry at the books for suggesting it, but then again I had a feeling it wasn't right from our greys reaction so really it was my fault for trying it.

Must admit I am one of those people that have them flying around the house during the day and have to clean up the poop. Basically they have places like perches that they fly between and poop at and then I have paper under it. If they are on the sofa with me our female lets us know she needs to go and then we just lift her to where she can go. I guess we are trying to teach them to let us know when they need to go and not to go on command. Of course they have accidents and I don't get mad at them as it's not their fault that I expect them to poop in certain places.

Must admit I am one of those people that have them flying around the house during the day and have to clean up the poop. Basically they have places like perches that they fly between and poop at and then I have paper under it. If they are on the sofa with me our female lets us know she needs to go and then we just lift her to where she can go. I guess we are trying to teach them to let us know when they need to go and not to go on command. Of course they have accidents and I don't get mad at them as it's not their fault that I expect them to poop in certain places.

What sort of times during the day is he making a lot of noise? If it happens at certain times you can try and preempt it with giving him something to take his mind off making the noise, something to occupy him for awhile.If it is later in the night we turn down the lights and this is their cue to get ready for bed and they stop making a noise. I know ours make a lot of noise in the morning and I now have a routine where they sit on the table and help me prepare breakfast and then come to the shower and they forget about making a lot of noise. I also give them a palm nut to keep them occupied. In the evening they are off again and I know I have to get them dinner by a certain time otherwise they start making a huge noise. This is the time I also play with them, quite active games to get them tired. We also live in an apartment and I know how worrying it can be about the neighbours. We actually asked out neighbour after a year if they heard anything and they said no. I am sure one of the neighbours must though, they do get pretty loud.

We started to buy stuff about a month before as well. We had to also drive 6 hours to pick ours up. We just used a dog travel cage which worked fine. The only thing we found was that when it started to get dark our grey got really fidgety and didn't really like it. We had the inside car light on, but didn't really help. Also they were very very tired when we got them home from having to cling to the perch for 6 hours, which couldn't have been easy. Needless to say they slept a lot when we got home and we just left them to it.

Depends what training you want. We brought Barabara Heidenreich's DVD's and we have found them really good. I think though that are are aimed more at teaching us how to actually train our bird and what is the best way. She worked wonders in helping us learn how to get teach our grey to step up and then we used the same technique to train other things.

Yes we have just been through that problem as well. What we did was not feed them fruit or veg in the cage at all and I cleaned the cage everyday to make sure there were no traces of food residue. We only fed them dried stuff in the cage. After every meal I cleaned the fruit and veg out and washed the bowls. We also never left any fruit out and put it all in the fridge. Lucky summer is over now and the problem has stopped.

Our 2 have never flown into the TV and don't seem interested in it all all. To be honest I never really thought of the TV as being a problem. The windows are another thing. Ours have done it a couple of times when they were quite young, but they learn't pretty quickly not to fly into the windows. Once they become really good at flying it is amazing what positions they can get out of. Our female gets up on the cupboards and rolls on her back with her egg carton and wrestles with it. Once she rolled over and right off the cupboard and I watched her falling to the ground and just before she hit the floor she righted herself and flew off. I was absolutely amazed. She has no fear and I think the reason why is because she is such a confident flier that she knows she can get out of most situations. Many times I have seen her fall and easily fly to safety.

Oh god I am so sorry, what am awful thing to happen, the worst nighmare ever. He was such a young bird as well. Is there any chance Caesar got caught or hit something when he fell or something freaked him out as I know if our female gets scared she turns into a scatter brain and her excellent flying/climbing skills go out the window.

I have never heard that it is cruel if you don't have an outdoor cage of that size. I have a hard time believing that as everytime I watch my 2 fly around the house they have a look of pure joy on their faces. They fly from the kitchen up the hallway into the bedroom, back down the hallway into the living room. The joy is evident as they swoop down screaming away. They have amazing body control as well and are such confident birds. It's great to read everyones opinions and experiences which makes this a great forum

It takes patience and time to gain their trust. Imagine if you were suddenly in a strange place with strange people, you would also not be sure what is going on. Give him time to settle in, watch the routines that go on in the house. Just sit by his cage and talk to him, give him treats. Over time he will settle in, but you are expecting a bit too much after just 5 days. Be patient, calm and gentle with him and he will come around. I must admit they do have a long memory. On the positive side they do forgive as we made some mistakes when we brought our male home and lost his trust, but he did come around after we learnt to respect what he wanted and not force him to do things. Bribery works just as well.

We have a bilingual grey, he speaks Swedish and English. We just speak our native languages to him and he seems to pick it up and I really think he knows what one word is in another language. He says "good boy" in English and then straight afterwards he says it in Swedish. At the moment he is much better at Swedish than English.

It does take a lot of time to find what they like and teach them to bath. Only after a year can I safetly say that our male grey is ok having a bath once a week. We started off slow and at first showed him the spray bottle, sprayed the bowl we bath him and had some fun. At first he was not interested so we never forced him. We did it constantly every week until he thought this looks fun and he suddenly junped in on his stomach and started flapping his wings. Now every weekend without fail I get the bowl and spray bottle out tell him it's shower time and he hops. Now our female we have had since April and we are slowely teaching her. Only once has she had a proper bath and the rest of the time she hops in on her belly and hops out. We spary her and she races off, but thinks it is fun and comes back. She is slowely learning that baths are fun. We have never forced her as in time I know she will learn and I want her to find it fun instead of this big ordeal every week which I am sure would stress her out as well as me.

Mine is the same as laurie. My boyfriend wanted a grey since he was a kid and finally did all his research and got one. I was not at all a bird person and was actually a bit against it. I then thought oh what the hell it's his bird I won't have to do anything. Lo and behold this creature fell in love with me which surprised and shocked me. The grey and I would look at each other and all I could think is I have no idea what to do for you or what you need. It was then a steep learning curve for me as this grey was not giving up and wanted me. Definately didn't see that coming.

I know this sounds crazy but when I give our greys new toys I actually show them how to play with it and what to do. I start off by making a big deal over the toy and play with it myself and make it look like I am having fun with the toy. Say if it's a ball I sit on the table and throw it up and down, roll it across the table etc. They then get curious and really want to join in or have the toy. So our male stands on the table and bashes the ball with his beak and runs after it sort of like he saw us doing it. It does take a lot of time figuring out what toys they like though and they only way to do that is to try everything that you can. Unfortunately they all don't like the same thing. Our male plays ball and our female hates playing ball, she prefers to sit and chew on something, like my hair tie that has a metal piece in it.

The funniest thing scared our 2 yesterday. Someone was outside blowing bubbles and this huge bubble headed towards the window and I saw our greys bending and both looking out the window and the bubble is getting closer and their eyes just went wide and they freaked and flew off.

Of course Dan it completely slipped my mind that men work hard all day, I mean how else would everything get done and this world function.....LOL What confuses me is that I am the male greys favourite person but he picks up no words from me and learns everything from my boyfriend....I guess the boys stick together.

Of course Dan it completely slipped my mind that men work hard all day, I mean how else would everything get done and this world function.....LOL What confuses me is that I am the male greys favourite person but he picks up no words from me and learns everything from my boyfriend....I guess the boys stick together.

LOl, sounds like Elmo is the mum in the family telling everyone what to do, or not to do. We are also bossed by a small fluffy grey creature. He sits in his cage and says "can I come out", "can I come out". If he wants us to pick him up he goes "up" "up" "c'mon up" and then I walk over and pick him up. He has wings and can fly the lazy little man. Also if you have something and he wants it he will say "come" "come". He even says it to his toys and I remind him that his toy is not going to walk over to him and he will have to move his butt.

oh yes I know that screech our female has it and our male never had it. When we first got her home she did it but now seems to not do it so often as we have been persistent in teaching her a specific whistle instead of the screech. She does it when she thinks she is not getting enough attention from my boyfriend who is her favourite and also when he is not there she does it if she doesn't know where our other grey is, or if she wants to get close to him and he won't let her she uses the screech. If she can't see us she uses it...now being replaced by the whistle that she is learning. She does it if she doesn't get her own way or get something she wants, or when she is frustrated. I also tell my boyfriend she is a typical female....wants constant attention, wants things her own way and done when she wants them. She is a very demanding female. Be careful as our male started to pick it up as well and I swear he does it sometimes just to wind her up, not to mention us. I hate to say this but it has taken 4 months for us to reduce this noise that she makes and replace it. It's not completely replaced yet either, although now she is starting to talk which is making it better.

Well I must admit we still hand feed our greys as soon as we get home from work and they are 18 months and 10 months. It has really helped us with the bonding process for both of them. Of course later on when we have dinner they also get veggies and a bit of what we eat. Ours also made those sounds you talk about paticularly our male. He would sit on our shoulder and make those noises and just wnated to be petted and close to us. They have both grown out of making that sound now though.

We had that exact problem and solved it with our male. Our male hated my boyfriend so I just backed off doing everything for him and he soon learnt that if he wanted something then he could also get it from my boyfriend. So my boyfriend fed him, gave him treats, started to train him and all the time I was in the background just watching. I even stopped petting him for a time and then at night when he was settled my boyfriend would go over to him and ask if he wanted a sratch. After a time he would put his head down and let my boyfriend scratch his head I would aslo stand beside my boyfriend and if our grey wanted to come to me he had to fly to my boyfriend first. When our grey flew to my boyfriend he would then immediately get to come to me for a hug and a kiss and then we put him back on the perch and repeated the process. This way he learnt to that it was ok to fly to my boyfriend. It took about 3 months of constantly working with this to get to the stage where our grey is fine with my boyfriend and will go to him as well if he wants something. Of course I am still the favourite person, but it is a relief to know that our grey likes my boyfriends comapny as well.

We use a terracota plant base that they bath in, although they won't do it in the cage but will happily jump in if it is on top of the cage. Our male loves to jump in belly first and then spin around and splash water everywhere.

We use it sometimes with both of our greys. We look at one of them and say what does a dog say and before she can answer our male butts in and goes woof woof. We then praise him. Again we ask her what does a dog say and she makes a noise and we say no and then turn to the other grey and ask him and he goes woof woof and we praise him. Finally after her seeing this a few times she gets the message and says woof woof. We haven't done it much, but we have sure noticed the competition between them and we use that to our advantage.

LOl, she probably saw the red hair and mistook it for a red tail and thought she had found a male grey and that it was her lucky day. Glad you got her back though.