Jane08

I woke at 5am this morning, hearing suspicious bird noises from the living room. I got up to see what was going on and found our male grey sitting on top of his cage. I was shocked as I definately put him in when I went to bed and when I examined the cage the door was closed. I looked everywhere around the cage to see how he got out and it turns out he got out through the water/food feeder door. There are 4 of them and we only use 2 of them. He must have flipped the latch and hopped out as the latch was off the one at the back of the cage. I have watched him practice this from the outside of the cage, he runs down the outside, flips the latch and opens the door to get a drink of water (instead of actually going inside the cage to drink). I am now at work thinking what is the worse that can happen if he gets out and what would he get up to. I made sure I closed the latches properly and I put a toy in the way to discourage him. Everyday it is something new with these 2 monkeys that we have.

Smoke from burning food and overheated oil will harm them. They have a very efficient respiratory tract which means they move oxygen from the air into the bloodstream very quickly. This makes them very susceptible to toxic elements in the air.

Everything was so perfect in your photo, on first glance I actually thought it was a stuffed bird sitting there and not a real one. Topaz even looks perfect, not a feather out of place.

Our little man wakes up at 0430-0500 as soon as the sun comes up and I hear him say "Good Morning, did you sleep well". He then just starts jabbering away and wakes our little girl grey up. They wake up at this time 7 days a week. They don't get much sleep at night because the sun doesn't go down until about 2200 at the moment and soon it won't go down at all. So at the moment they get 6-7 hours of sleep at night I am pretty sure they sleep during the day though to compensate for the lack of sleep at night.

I use painters brown paper. It comes in a big roll and I just cut the amount I want to fit the cage. I also put it on the floor in places where they eat and it is perfect.

Oh bless, poor little man. There is a good article on the world parrot trust website where an expert tackles the question about plucking. http://www.parrots.org/index.php/forumsandexperts/answers/C5/ Just scroll down, it's the 2nd to last article. It might give you some ideas.

The biggest change I found when I got ours was getting up earlier in the morning, 6am (I'm not a morning person) to feed them (fruit, seeds, veg) and give them some exercise, clean the cage before I head off to work. At the moment it is even worse because the sun comes up about 4am and they wake up straight away and start talking. I find it very hard to sleep through it, so usually get up. Just the thought of the 24 hour day light in a few weeks makes me wonder how they are ever going to sleep. The other biggest change I found was the cleaning that I had to do everyday. For a small animal they can make a BIG mess. No more coming home from work at 5pm and relaxing on the sofa. I also found they wanted a lot of attention when I got home, which is natural for a baby grey. Now they are getting older it is getting better. I also found that I have to keep my eye on them wherever they are to make sure they are not up to mischievous, just like a child I guess. At night we feed them veggies and whatever we are having. During the day I leave pellets and seeds (if I leave fruit and veg it smells quite bad by the time I get home in the afternoon if it has been a hot day). I have a sigh of relief at about 2000 as they start to settle down for the night, although lately their body clocks have been out of sinc because of the sun not going down.

When any of our greys fly to a position that they know they are not allowed and refuse to get down I always find something that is funnier for them and they get down quick smart because they are so curious. For our little girl I show her food and she hops right off onto my hand. Our boy grey doesn't fall for the food trick, so I go to another room and rattle a bag, talk loudly to him telling him oh look at this wow come on come and see and act like I am having fun. He can't resist and flies to see what I am doing.

Just my personal opinion, but I don't use this method because I feel the reason they try to bite is that they are trying to tell you something and they have warned you enough and you haven't listened so you get bitten. I find that reading their body language can tell you heaps before you get to the point that they bite. I don't see the point of holding my hand there and opening myself up for a bite (you might have your fist there, but in a flash they have found somewhere to bite), I would rather not get to the point of them actually biting. Now this isn't to say I haven't been bitten by our greys, but when I have I learnt from it and think ok what did I do to cause that and then I know for next time what they were trying to tell me and I learn from it. Our male grey doesn't even get to the point of even wanting to bite me anymore. When he has had enough he moves my hand away with his beak and I know if I don't listen the next move will be for him to bite. So I watch for the warning signals and avoid the bite.

Oh yes ours does that as well. He actually picks the foot toy up, looks at it in surprise like how did you get there, get off my foot, screams at it and then waves it up and down hitting himself in the head and beak sometimes. He also hangs upside down and grabs his bell, screams and gives it a good whacking. Very normal behaviour.

To help ours to talk we have routines. So when we go to bed we say the exact same thing to them every night. Then suddenly one day our male bird started to say good night, sleep well. When I get up in the morning I always say good morning and then one day he started to say it back. We also ask our female grey (who is not talking yet) questions and then someone else answers them....usually our male grey yells out the answer. I can now hear her trying to get out the words and practising. When our birds are also very excited when playing they pick up words as well. So we play ball with our male grey and associate words to the game. Silly me though when we taught him to step up I would say c'mon up...now he has picked that up and he sits on his perch and waves his foot at me and says c'mon up...his way to tell me I need to come and get him. The lazy bird is fully flighted, so I swear he does it just to wind me up. Of course it works I walk over and pick him up.

I totally understand what you are going through. Our new baby grey who we have had for a month does not like me that much (she loves my boyfriend and our male grey). I still let her out of the cage and the way I get her back in is bribe her with her favourite treats. I hold the treat up to her, slowely put my hand up for her to step up.... a lot of the time she reaches down with her beak and bites, but now I have taught her it is foot first. When we are in the same room together she will not play with me and our other grey. I go up to her and speak to her and hold toys up for her to play with which she does take occassionally. Sometimes when I go up to her I see the look of panic in her eyes and I back off. She basically sits and watches the other grey and I play. I am of the firm belief that over time, a lot of bribing with treats and with patience one day she will come down and play with me. Oh yeah one thing don't teach them to step up by touching them on the chest so they lose balance. We did this with our first grey as all the books told us to. Anyway he hated it and we lost alot of trust with him which took months to re build. We use positive reinforcement to teach them now, so with their favourite treats teach them to step up and this works. great. Under no circumstances tap them on the beak...the beak is sensitive.

Siobhan I think you are right about the 2 points of view. I had no worries about them loving each other more than us, I actually hope for that because they are birds and that is what they deserve a life partner they can love in the bird kind of way. There are a lot of things I will never be able to do for my boy grey (who loves me) and the female grey will be able to do all that for him. My enjoyment will come from watching them being happy together and giving them everything I can. They like to spend 24 hours a day with each other as they are flock birds, so I have no worries about them in the cage together.

We bought our 2nd grey a month ago and introduced her to our other grey who is 1 year old. We didn't do the keep them away from each other for a certain period of time. They have separate cages and feeding bowls though. On the very first day she was out of her cage meeting him. We just make sure we do everything for him first and supervise them. Every day we let them both out together and we have done this for the past month. The are both flighted so if they don't want to be near each other one of them flies away. Now after a month they get along great and have just started to nuzzle with each other and become friends. It is the most amazing thing seeing both of them flying together. We are now working on getting them into the same cage...progress is great, she flies to his cage and plays a bit up the top, he climbed into her cage for a look around as well.

Our baby does that to my boyfriend. Like clockwork at 8pm she flies to him and snuggles under her favourite blanket on his chest for an hour and he then lifts her into her cage. She is so relaxed or lazy that she rolls on to her side and sleeps and then sometimes onto her back.

We have been introducing our new baby girl grey to our other boy grey for the last month and finally all the patience is paying off. They were in the kitchen together and started to play together. He put his beak under her wings on her back and then around her neck and nuzzled her and she also did the same. She would then roll onto her side and then on to her back. They also started to regurgiate for each other. It was the cuttest thing ever. It has happened for the last 2 days and we are thrilled. I now think to myself if we hadn't got the other grey our little boy would have been so lonely. I had tears in my eyes just watching them together and how happy they looked. The next step is getting them in the same cage together....should be a challenge.

You are right god knows where they get some of the noises from. Ours started to make a noise like a donkey (EEEEE O, EEEEE O) and I used to call him my little donkey...now we sure don't have a donkey as a pet so no idea where he got that from. He finally stopped it because everytime he did that noise I repeated a word to him that I thought he might be trying to say. He now uses the word instead of the donkey noise

Sorry one other thing we used the love the bird had for me to train the bird. So I would stand just behind my boyfriend and we would do step up training. As soon as the bird stepped up onto my boyfriend, he then passed the bird to me for a cuddle and kiss and then I would place him on the perch again. My boyfriend would then do it again and he would step up and then get to come to me for a cuddle and kiss and then back to the perch. So we rewarded the bird with time spent with me. The bird would then sit on the perch and wave his foot at my boyfriend to step up because he was so desperate to get to me.

Our boy did this as well. He decided I was the one and he was my boyfriends bird. What we did was have my boyfriend do everthing for the bird and I was sort of in the background. So he feeds him, cleans his cage, gives him treats, trains him. I also give them alone time so that they can play games together to bond, games that I do not play with the bird. I also stopped cuddling the bird and he finally learnt if he wanted cuddles my boyfirend was good for them as well. Now everything is fine. Of course I am still the one, but the bird now spends time with my boyfriend and he cretainly knows where he gets his food from and then he can be the most cuddly bird ever to my boyfriend.

Our grey also wakes up early at 5am because it gets light here at that time. We have had no problems with him not getting enough sleep as he sleeps during the day when he is tired. We leave it up to him to decide when he wants to sleep. At night he flies into his cage about 2030-2100 to go to sleep.

I know our vet said to us when we made the appointment about the possibility of having to give the bird a mild anesthetic, but she would wait and meet our grey before she made the decision. Anyway we got there and she was able to handle him with no problems (she has a Macaw herself so is experienced), so we didn't have to do the anesthetic. Maybe you can ask your vet to meet the bird before he/she makes up their mind about the anesthetic.

Imme it is probably a bit to soon for them to be saying words. You will hear a lot of noises though while they practice and even noises that sound like words. I know our other one was shy and would go to another room and practice his talking. Then when he got confident he did it in front of us. He was about 5 to 6 months when he first strated to talk. Kea has started to make other noises than her baby ones, but I don't expect her to talk for awhile yet. When I hear her try to make a noise that sounds like a word I then repeat the word to her and I do that everytime she makes that noise. Also when they are playing and get excited is the best time to start associating words for them to learn. Rangi's first words were "Rangi, get down". He used to fly to the curtains and we would tell him to get down and he thought that was so funnny and then would just fly up there and tell himself to get down.

I also hated birds and couldn't think of anything worse than owning one. I worked in a pet shop when I was young and I dreaded it when someone came in and wanted a bird. I would suit myself up ready for battle to get this bird for them. My boyfriend always loved birds and had budgies as a kid. He feels bad now though as he only fed them seeds at the time and of course we know now they need veg and fruit. He feels he killed them with the seed only diet. He always wanted a parrot and last year talked about it a lot, while I happily ignored what he was saying. Before I knew it he had contacted a breeder and we were on our way to look at baby greys. Well as soon as we got there I fell in love with our boy who was standing on his perch as proud as punch, chest out, vey majestic. He let me scratch his head and then it was all over.....we picked him up a month later. Our grey is our best friend and makes me laugh everyday. He is so intelligent and even this morning for the first time he used a new sentence. I was going out of the room and I said to him come on and he replies back I'll be there in a minute. Classic!

Oh that is fantastic news. Well done

Lovelylew you are doing perfect. You are giving him time and space to get used to everything which is what he needs. Just think about how many years you will have the pleasure of his company, so a few weeks or even a month of having patience is nothing compared to the rest of the years you will have with him. Patience is the key. Even though he was hand fed, he has now left home and is in a completely starnge place with new routines and strange sourroundings, so it will take time. What we did with both of ours was to still give them their formula that the breeder used. We feed them it once a day from a small spoon (we bent the sides of the spoon just as the breeder did) when we get home from work and have found that this was a great way to start the bonding process. They recongnised the formula and now everyday when we get home they call to us and can't wait to get out and have their formula. It will not hurt him being in the cage and not coming out if he doesn't want to, just make sure you don't force him out. Continue to sit with him, talk to him, read to him, open the door and do as you are offer him treats.