Sallas

Is his tail abnormally red for a TAG?

OK, here is a picture of Thorn eating supper.

It was so odd though, he was so quiet for so long and now it is like a flood gate has opened.

OK, now my heart is broken. Betty just called me and told me that Thorn has been saying "Eric" all morning looking for me and she started saying, "He's not here, he is at work", then later would say, "He is not here, he is at work, do you miss him Thorn?". She said after a while of that, Thorn has now said, "Eric, I miss you". Makes me want to run home.

His speech is not totally clear yet as he is just starting, but we could definitely make out what he was trying to say.

It was weird, I thought he was not going to be a talker because he never was even mimicking things. Then last weekend, he just blurted out the stuff we were practicing with Saphira. Saphira talks a little and she is a 12 month old TAG, Thorn is about 8-9 month old TAG, but by 5-6 months old Saphira said her first word, she was mimicking whistles almost as soon as we got her. But, Thorn seems to be a much more controlled TAG. When they are out, he just wants to sit on Daddy, where Saphira like Daddy to chase her everywhere and heaven forbid if she finds a remote control, it is her passion to rip the buttons off the remote controls.

Here is my travel cage, it is not a backpack style, but I love it. It comes in a few colors also. https://www.kingscages.com/cages/aluminum-cages/aluminum-travel-cages/small-aluminum-travel-cage-satin-silver/prod_697.html

Last weekend, Thorn (My youngest African grey) decided he was going to start talking. He started with answering “What does a duck say?” with “quack, quack” and “What does a kitty say?” with “Meeooowwww” and “What does a rooster say?” with “err ah err ah errrr”. Well this weekend he learned my name, so he would say “Eric” and wait for me to say “Yes Thorn?” and then say the word of phrase he was practicing so that I would say “Good boy!!”. Well at one time I was playing CoD WaW (computer game) and had headphones on so I could not hear him (Betty told me what he said). He said “Eric” and waited for me, when I did not answer, he said “Eric” again and waited, then when I did not answer again, he said “Eric, pay attention!”. By this point Betty was nudging me and I said “yes Thorn?” and he then said “laser gun, pew, pew, pew, pew” (I was saying that to him earlier that day).

I have something like that, but I made the bottom so that a square cookie pan fits in the square bottom tubing. Then I just rinse the pan off when the birds are done.

Saphira is one year this month and for the last two months she has been pretty shabby looking, but now she is starting to look a little better (thats good for her birthday pictures!!). Now Thorn is three months younger than her, so I am expecting him to start in about a month.

I am lucky that in the town I grew up in is where the Foster & Smith facility is, so, whenever I go to visit my parents, I stop in and I usually get a bunch of stuff on clearance.

I do not believe that self-cleaning ovens are safe for birds.

I get a lot of toys from the breeder we got our birds from (She sends us these toys that have 5 little wicker woven "presents" with surprises inside them. Those are the birds favorite toy). Otherwise we purchase our food and get many of our toys from the local parrot rescue facility. If there is a place that is going to make profit on our purchases, I would rather it be a place like that.

We always keep a bag of the zupreem baby formula on hand. We purchase 5 or 10lbs bags online. Having the baby formula on hand saved our male sun conure's life about a month ago.

I have gotten 5 birds all together from the breeder I use (Not all of them are my birds, we picked up my soon to be mother-in-laws quaker from our breeder when we got our Sunnies and Saphira, Thorn came three months later. But, I cannot say enough good things about this breeder, she really cares about her birds and if you ever have any questions, she will do her best to answer them. Example: About a month ago, I had come home from work and all the birds were looking fine, my fiancee had gotten up at bedtime to tuck the birds in and found our male sun conure on the bottom of the cage feathers all puffed out (the bad way) wings drooping and he could not hold his head up. She got the bird to me right away (I am disabled). I started talking to the bird and reassuring him, I called the local emergency vet that has an extremely qualified avian vet. They gave me no help as what to do (they just told me that if he lives through the night to bring him in). We then called our breeder and she told my fiancee to check their water bottle to see if it was air-locked and it was, she sent me to the store to get pedialite and corn syrup. She told us to mix up a batch of bird formula using pedialite as the liquid and to put one drop of corn syrup in it. We had to kinda force-feed him the first little bit as he was to out of it to eat himself, but the syrup spiked his blood sugar and woke him up some and then he ate like a baby again. with-in about an hour he was looking to be back to normal, but he slept in the portable cage in between us in bed that night. every two-three hours we gave him a little more formula. The breeder contacted us back in the morning so make sure he was ok, and he was back to his normal cuddly self. So I very much recommend this breeder in the Cincinnati area. www.featheredplaypen.com ***Needless to say, I ordered a new water bottle that day. Now I only trust the Lixit bottles.*** Post edited by: Sallas, at: 2009/03/26 16:39<br><br>Post edited by: Sallas, at: 2009/03/26 16:40

Yes, that is the point of the article, but the point is also that the majority of the breeders are producing CAGs with those characteristics because not enough information is known.

Here is my travel cage. https://www.kingscages.com/cages/aluminum-cages/aluminum-travel-cages/small-aluminum-travel-cage-brushed-blue-silver/prod_698.html

A few months ago I made a post about the same article, but on a different website. Here is my post: http://www.greyforums.net/component/option,com_joomlaboard/Itemid,27/func,view/catid,5/id,105728/ Here is the link to the Article: http://www.africangreys.com/articles/greys/species.htm Anyway, my point is that when I decided that I wanted an African Grey, I talked to my breeder about the two species. She has a few pairs of each species and she told me many of these same characteristics. That TAGs are not as skittish, TAGs do not switch bonded human as often if at all, TAGS do not pluck as often (She said that she has seen a few CAGs pluck, but the only TAG she ever saw that was plucking, had a medical issue (again, this was just the birds that she physically saw herself)). So when I saw this article, I found it very interesting myself.

For the most part breeder birds are human aggressive because for the most part they have never been socialized to humans, and what little they have seen of them, is the human invading their territory. Also, greys will use their break as we use our hands when we lose balance. But to humans that do not understand this, it looks like a bite. (But in your case if Molly was a breeder, she may actually be trying to chase you off from her nest).

Both of my birds will now answer the questions: 1. "What does a duck say?" (both birds will say "Quack, Quack") 2. "what does the kitty say?" (Both birds will say Meeooowwww) Saphira also does that panting noise, my fiancee hates it, but I love it. Oh and Saphira will say, "Daddies girl" and I have to say I like that. The sounds I do not like so much are: The microwave beep at 2000 decibels The garbage truck "Beep, beep, beep" noice when it backs up

I got my cage from https://www.kingscages.com/cages/?ccUser=08084523042eb25ce89b5bcf825efb9e

My two Greys are quiet, I did have them when I was still in my apartment and my neighbors said they could not hear them. Definitely get a proper parrot cage. The way I see it is that we (humans) have teken them out of the wild to be our companions, we owe it to them to provide them with a large enough cage.

LOL, no no a bong is used to smoke wacky tabacky, a boing is a curled rope type perch.

I just got it on Audio CD (I like to listen to audio books when I drive in rush hour traffic, I find i do not get as irritated as i do when I listen to music). Anyway, I had just started the first CD on my way to work this morning.

Well, greys hit sexual maturity at about 5 years of age, so if this happened two years ago, I do not think that it is a maturity thing. I have read that CAGs tend to bond to one person while TAGs are a little more acceptable of a couple people. It may be just as simple as he switch who he was bonded with. When you first got Ollie, did your partner not interact with him much? And then at some point did he start interacting with Ollie more? Maybe when your partner started interacting with Ollie more, Ollie decided that was who he wanted to bond to.