reggieroo

He is now 19 weeks old & doesn't say much yet but he is trying, there is a video in the Nursery of Murphy babbling at 13 week old.

I just wanted to share that with everybody. I've wanted one for 10 years now & I finally have my very own little grey friend. I've had him now for 7 weeks but I still think "WOW I can't believe I have an African grey" I look forward to many years of fun with Murphy.

I think they can all be little trouble makers if given the chance, very curious little creatures Murphy has a thing for remote controls at the moment. If he's on my chest at night having a cuddle he just decides to go a little mission after the remote controls. It's the buttons he's after, he tries to remove them & no matter how many times I say "no" he persists. I just move them to the table & turn them upside down so he can't get the buttons.

Mmmmm margarita, that would be nice. A bit of salsa music & it would be a tropical party .............might be quite an expensive margarita for me though, being in the UK!

I would like some input from people on how they managed to get their grey potty trained & how successful you have been. Can some people just get them to do it just before they take them from the cage/stand & have to put them back after 20 mins or so? Or does your grey understand that he/she shouldn't poop in certain places like your shoulder or sofa? Do they even fly back to their cage/stand & poop (ideal situation if possible)? So far I have tried waiting for Murphy to poop then reward him with praise & then pick him up or sit him on me. After about 20 mins I put him back to his cage/stand where I would like him to poop & reward him with praise if he does ( but that can take ages, like watching paint dry). I read that teaching them to poop on command as I did with my last parrot, an Amazon, that they can have poopy problems by not going as they are waiting for your command. This never happened with my Zon but something to think about. I also never got past that stage & he would poop wherever he wanted after the initial poop on command. So how have people done it & how far have you got?

Your not wrong about potty training being a long road. I think it's one of the hardest thing to train. I had an Amazon for 10 years & I only got as far as getting him to poop before I took him out of the cage. After that he would poop anywhere he wanted So far with Murphy he hasn't really pooped that much on any of us, I only tend to hold him after he has pooped then I put him back after about 20 mins for one & then reward when he does it. I also have hard wood floors so no carpet to worry about. I was going to start a new post about potty training in the nursery to see what advise I can get, I'll do it now.

I thought about a bird shirt but then thought if I let him chew that he won't know the difference between a good shirt & the birdy shirt so decided to try & teach him not to chew any shirt instead. He sits on me at night sometimes for a cuddle on my chest, I use an old towel for poops & if he chews I just push his beak away & say "NO" It kinda works but he keeps trying but other times he doesn't bother. I'm trying to potty train but finding it hard.

He knocked over my wine, my last & only glass He was on Kate's hand last night having a tickle when he decided to fly to me but on his way he decided the wine glass looked like a good place to land...........NOT A GOOD PLACE MURPHY :mad: "Murphy it was my only glass of wine & I was so looking forward to it, why did you do this to your daddy?"

Thanks for the words of encouragement, it does seem that a lot of babies still like to have their spoon feed for quite a while so glad I'm not alone. I've just looked for some of your posts & could only find Issac week 21 but nothing before.

Ok I may have just found a pattern, after speaking to my breeder she said "are you sure he is not screaming for attention instead of food?" I thought not but said to myself bear it in mind that it could be. All day I have been with him, feeding him bits of food, changing his food dishes for different foods & generally giving more attention than normal. He has been eating well all day with no screaming apart from first thing this morning after taking off his sheet. So it seemed after all to be a good day, I was just finishing up on the PC when Kate said can you go check on Ella-Rose as she is crying. So off I went to see if my daughter was ok & actually the first time I have spent any time with her today as all the attention has been on Murphy from me & you can guess the rest. Murphy started screaming, worse when I spoke to my daughter even though he could still see me! Kate said "maybe it is attention" So I went back to the study which is opposite his cage & sat down & Murphy shut up, went back to see my daughter & he started again. Anyway did this about 5 times & the result was the same every time:( Have I got it all wrong, is he actually screaming for more attention & not food?

Do you still like blueberry pie.........lol?

I bet your husband isn't complaining that you have to walk around the house in your cheeky undies to keep Calypso happy

Murphy does this also, only when the door is closed......I call it the chicken scratch.

The growl made my parents laugh as they didn't know what to make of it! I don't live alone, we have quite a big flock with my fiancee Kate, 6 month old baby daughter Ella-Rose, Zeus my German shepherd, Binks & Scratch the cats & a tank full of fish OH & not forgetting Murphy the 19 week old crazy CAG. The neighbours call it the zoo over here

Murphy has done the same thing. My parents came over Sunday & as soon as they walked through the door you would thing they were trying to kill him! He was clung to the backside of his cage all fluffed up growling loudly like a dog, It was then that I knew what the famous African grey growl sounded like :eek: My parents couldn't understand what was going on as Easter Sunday I took him to their house & he was happy as Larry, sitting on my Dads chest having tickles & kisses etc. Then today I put on a blue hooded top (hood wasn't up) & he was not happy, he wouldn't let me touch him, screaming & flying away from me like I'm some sort of predator. I couldn't understand the change towards me all of a sudden. I thought what have I done to make him lose all his trust in me & be so scared? Kate said take of the jacket, took it off & he was fine :confused: I have tried to introduce him to all manner of different environments & people but yet he still gets freaked out at silly things. He was on his harness the other day in the garden with me & the neighbour came over to say hi, off he went again trying to fly off screaming blue murder! I settled him & asked the neighbour to stay a while, keep talking & then try to pet him when he is more settled moving slowly to him, eventually he let him give a tickle.

OK I will try & get his weight every morning for a while to see if it stays consistent. I must admit he looks very healthy, bright eyes, good plumage, lots of tail wags, pruning, flying around & alert. Maybe It's me being over sensitive, I'm looking over at him now & he is hanging upside down looking at me as if to say "what's the problem?"

I managed to weigh him & he is 516 grams. I put him back on top of his cage & gave him some tropical soak mix & he went straight in within seconds of spotting it & is stuffing his face again.

Hi guys, just been out to the pet store & couldn't find any Kaytee, maybe I need to try a chain store, I have never seen it before though. I got him some standard parrot food as a change from his tidymix once in a while to give him a bit more variety & something different to get his beak into. I haven't weighed him before, whats the best way of doing it, can imagine he would just fly off the scales? Since me posting earlier he has been stuffing his face no problem, in fact right now he has his beak buried in the food bowl which I'm glad about (pets always make a liar out of you don't they?). I won't disturb him right now, I'm just glad he's eating.....& mumbling away to me at the same time I'll see if I can weigh him when he's finished.

I have given him some spoon feeds when I first got him using baby rice but was worried about giving him too much & getting swollen crop etc as I did some reading on it & read an amateur shouldn't do it. I also found this article about abundance weaning just now http://www.companionparrot.com/Abundance%20Weaning.htm Is it likely that he has regression weaning as in the article? I was given some egg food by an ex breeder at a local garden nursery a few weeks ago when I got talking to her about some of the issues with feeding etc. I was there looking for some pulses as they sell some types of parrot food. She wrote down a mix to give him instead of formula if I needed too give him more spoon feeds.

I'm beginning to feel a bit stressed out with all of this, I don't know anything about hand feeding & didn't think I'd have to when considering getting a baby grey. I thought I was prepared, I read as much info as I could about CAGs but nothing about hand feeding babies. You think that when you buy a fully weaned baby parrot that you don't have to worry about weaning & hand feeding. I wish that I knew that they can take longer than 12 weeks to wean properly & I would have left him with the breeder for a lot longer. I got him at 12 weeks old & he is 19 weeks old tomorrow.

Hi there Jane, When we got him home, the next day he was screaming for something which we didn't know what. I contacted the breeder who suggested as well as a few other people that I should give him a spoon feed in the eve of something like weetabix, porridge etc as sometimes baby parrots regress in new surrounding & owners. It so happened that we had some baby rice for our 6 month old baby daughter so we gave him some of that. I gave that for about a week & then stopped as I didn't know how long to give it for, then the screaming started again. Contacted the breeder again & was told to give him some twice a day for three days & cut it down to one in the Eve until he refuses it himself. Did that until he didn't really want it one evening, the next day we took him to my parents for the day where he was totally fine & was eating great & not crying for his spoon feed. The next day back home he was fine for a few days then started a little bit so again on the breeders advise we got him some tropical soak mix & that stopped it altogether for a couple of weeks. Then on Saturday he has started the screaming again after over a week of nothing, not even the chicken scratch. I had also contacted a local avian vet the first time he was doing it as I was a little worried & wanted to make sure it was nothing to worry about. He told me his baby grey did the same & it would pass, he also said if I continue to give the spoon feed when begging/screaming I would be in danger of patterning him to beg & scream for food which I might not be able to stop. As Murphy decided himself he didn't want the spoon feed anymore I thought happy days, he's on the right track & feeding himself fine but like I said Saturday he started again for some reason. Today hasn't been too bad but that could be because I have been fussing over him more than normal in a effort to get him to take food from me & eat. I read that I should give him food by hand like parent birds would in the wild, been trying that rather than go back to spoon feeding.

Murphy seems to have turned into the fussiest parrot on the planet & will hardly eat his food. He just picks at it & chucks it all over the cage floor. We have tried all the foods recommended by our breeder inc Tidy mix as his main seed food along with all kinds of fruit & veg in his bowl for the morning. Then in the eve he gets tropical soak mix from Rob Harvey & various tit bits like cheese or something we are eating. We have also tried him on the cooked pulses which like everything else he will eat for a couple of days then won't eat it again. So we have gone through all different foods & just when you think you have cracked it he stops eating it! Now he is kinda screaming/calling all the time which is starting to get real loud & ear piercing. He seems to be going hungry even though he has loads of food in his cage. The food he has is all the food he was brought up with & weaned on by the breeder. Every morning as soon as I take of his sheet he erupts into this screaming noise until I get him a fresh bowl of seed, even though yesterdays is still three quarters full & mostly on the floor. That settles him sometimes for a short while, sometimes not. As soon as he sees me or one of us goes into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, empty the dishwasher he erupts again indicating he wants food. I look in his cage & he has plenty of food :confused: He has done this since we got him home & it was getting better, last week was a real good week & it virtually stopped & than came Saturday & it started all over again, now he's worse than ever.

Well my thinking when I got Murphy was I now have a 6 month old baby daughter Ella-Rose, so the two of them will grow up together as friends. When mine & Kate's time comes, hopefully Ella-Rose will love him so much that there will be no question that she will have him in her life. We're both in our early thirties so depending on how long Murphy lives then we may still all be around in his last days....who knows? Bit sad thinking about all this

My condolences on your loss, shame your first time on here is with such bad news

It seems Murphy is in love with both me & Kate then