thenabrd

does this also apply to the fluorescent curly cue light bulbs? i used one in the past with athena and she became a biting, angry, irritable little green monster!!! i only used it for a little while before changing back to an incandescent bulb and she was quickly back to her self. if this is a problem with the curly cue bulbs, what should we do/use when the "green" laws take away the incandescent bulbs?

kallie says "hi kallie" to everyone! we've tried to teach her mommy, daddy, athena, etc. we're all kallie now, hahahahaha!!!

the way she said "what?" just had me almost in tears, lol! it was this pert, short one word that seemed to express her displeasure at the piece of paper and at the same time sound like she was thoroughly disgusted with our amusement and laughter at watching her put that piece of paper "in its place"!!! hahahaha!!!!

luvgrey, athena has been on meds for her plucking in the past. it wasn't prozac though, i forget the name, sorry. the initial treatment is a shot, then we had a choice to take her for a shot on a scheduled basis every 6-8 weeks or use drops daily. we chose the drops, since she's very aware of who her vet is, lol!!! she's always worse at the vet than any dog i've ever had!! we had some success with this treatment as at that time she was plucking all the time and was just taking the bright green feathers off her chest. she left the grey down and didn't mutilate any skin. we took her to the vet to be checked out, everything was fine, but that's when we finally ran dna (she was 2 and had reached maturity) and found out athena's really a boy! now it seems to be once a year in the fall that she plucks off the bright green chest feathers, even though the lights are on a timer all year long. so we've chosen to not do this while it continues to be just a once a year thing. if at some point it becomes all the time, we'll reassess at that time. some birds do great, others it does nothing for, its just like with people, it works differently for individuals. the first day or so, athena was very quiet and calm, a little sleepy, but that's it. she ate well, played, etc, just wasn't her loud conure self for a day or two. after that, she was her normal self, loud, energetic and a typical conure. like i said, if at some point she starts doing this constantly again, i have no reservations or problems using this treatment option for her. we do run a humidifier in the winter, increase spray baths and have even more shredding options available during the winter.

last night kallie just cracked us up! i posted before that she was playing "scientist" by being so interested in watching shredded paper falling. she'd watch and ponder each piece as she dropped it before continuing her fun. well last night i think she had her first "well crap" moment, hahaha!! she tore off a big piece of paper and let it fall. it landed in her water bowl. she shook her head in a "double take" and her body language was the equivalent of "well crap, that's not what it was supposed to do!". she literally charged angrily over to her water bowl and jerked the piece of "offending" paper out of the water and dropped it again, but it landed in her play bucket! she fluffed out her feathers and glared at it! so she took it from the play bucket and dropped it again. this time it went where she wanted it to. but she stayed where she was, staring at it for a few minutes almost like she was "daring" it to move! then she looked at us and said "what?"!!!! she doesn't say many words, but her body language, the way she moves, and the way she'll angle her head over different things says it all, lol!!!

i leave the grate out. kallie rarely goes to the bottom of her cage. if that changes someday, the grate can always go back in.

absolutely right!!!! i watched it on tv and still remember it and still get goose bumps over it! he was an unbelievable horse and i wonder if i'll ever see another horse even come close to him in my lifetime!!! thanks for posting this, it was great to see it again!!!!

i break them up with a mortar and pestle for athena, there's less waste that way. kallie's i cut in half for the same reason!!

i have no experience with craigs list. we heard about kallie's situation through our avian vet. i had told them that i'd be interested in rehoming/adopting a grey. several years passed and i'd about given up when the vet's office called to see if we were still interested in a grey. kallie's original owner passed away and the woman's family wasn't able to take in the 3 birds she had due to health issues of their own. we went through a screening type process and got to visit kallie often after they decided we were a good fit for her. 1 bird found a home right away. kallie and the other bird had never been an "only" bird, so we held off bringing kallie home until the last bird had found a new home and both birds (kallie and the other one) went to their new homes the same day. as to your situation- i don't know that you could judge the bird's personality in a true way if it's put up with a bad situation. it would be reacting based on what its been through. the big question is, are you willing and able to work with the bird that may very well have issues? if you can, then i say go for it. i say this based on the fact that over the years, we've had "rescue" dogs in our lives. they each came with problems and issues, but with love and patience, they turned out to be loving and great members of our family. you'd have never known the dogs had come from less than ideal situations with the way they transformed.

kallie was 2 1/2 when we rehomed her, so we missed the baby stuff. she's just about 3 1/2 now! she is quite the character, very brave about new toys and people, has some very definite "opinions" on things, and we love her to pieces!! we just wish she wasn't sooooooo stubborn and bull headed, lol!! i know that's a good thing for a grey in a way, but it's also a bad thing when it comes to teaching her how to step up! unfortunately, she was never taught that basic skill but was allowed to fly to her previous owner's head. kallie is learning, ever so slowly that isn't what she should do and is learning to land on the back of the chair. i know, she's still a very young lady and has many years to learn, its just hard sometimes to be patient!! i don't know if this is "terrible two" behavior and attitude or not. if so, hopefully in time it'll pass, but then i have a feeling, she'll be in puberty!! aarrggg, hahahaha!!!!

athena used to do that too when we'd vacuum!! we always reassured her everything was ok, etc, but she'd go into peach front conure alarm mode!! over the years, we've had several different brands/colors of vacuums (we had huskies, so they wore out fast, lol). the vacuum we have now, she "accepts", no more alarm mode, not a peep! i don't know if its the brand or the color or what exactly that caused the change for her!! kallie doesn't mind the vacuum at all, but we do have to explain other loud noises and tell her its ok, ex. thunder, hammering, strong wind, sounds from the basement, etc. she's doing better with the loud inside sounds, but still gets nervous with the sounds from outside. she's learning though!

i understand about raw garlic. once in a while, we'll give the girls just a little bit of spaghetti sauce on their pasta for a change of pace. is that also harmful?

don't forget about cast iron!!! when seasoned properly, its fairly "stick free". i love my cast iron and stainless steel both, but for some stuff, i prefer my cast iron!!!

maybe you can look into any bird fairs in your area. they usually have lots of things/ideas for toys for our birds. foot toys are great. i use a plastic kid's beach bucket hanging in the corner of kallie's cage to hold her foot toys. i get practice golf balls (small whiffle balls) at the store, they're fairly cheap. i also use plastic pen caps, plastic bottle caps, etc. also, since took seems to like "shiny" toys and bells (kallie LOVES shiny things) maybe you can find stuff like that. kallie figured out she can remove the clapper in a traditionally shaped bell, so i have to get the bells that are more tube shaped for her. we took a stainless steel water cup my husband used for hiking, straightened the handle, took some stainless steel chain to connect a couple of the shiny keys i found at a bird fair and hung that in her cage. she loves it!!! its shiny and noisy so its now one of her favorite "battle" toys. have you tried "keep away" with toys? i know sometimes that works to get a bird to try new food, it might work with toys.

years ago, athena totally tripped out when i got a perm!!! i had the curls when i got her, then about a year later it was time for a new perm and when i got home, she freaked, lol!! it took her about a week to not go into her "alarm" mode for awhile whenever i came in the room! i tried wearing a hat, pulling it back in a ponytail, etc, but she was having none of it. i'd talk to her and reassure her i was mommy bird and things were alright, but she'd look at me like, you sound like mommy bird, but you sure don't look like mommy bird, what'd you do with the mommy bird!! of course this is the same silly girl that has a conniption fit if the vacuum is a certain color, won't touch a yellow pellet to save her life, and some how thinks that fruits and veggies somehow taste infinitely better when my husband gives them to her than when i do, hahahahaha!!!

apparently, nilah simply hates the color pink, lol!!!! i laughed my rear end off!!! mom, mom, mom, help, help, help hahahahahahahaha!!! thanks for the fun! has she calmed down yet?!

absolutely true!!!!!!

i feel for you! athena can be very jealous of my husband!!! she likes him much more while she's inside her cage than when she's out of her cage. in her cage, he can scratch her head and back, she makes a different "kiss" sound for him and speaks in a higher, gentler voice to him than she does for me. out of the cage, it's like she's "protecting" me. she's bitten the crud out of him when he's approached me while she's out and tried to interact with her or me. if she's out of her cage and i'm not in the room, then she actually flirts with him, lol!! over time, this has lessened somewhat. she's still jealous/protective, but doesn't go on the "attack" like she did when she was younger. kallie is a different story. having a grey was a dream of mine, my husband went along with letting me have my dream. well kallie has decided that my husband is the be all, end all of people! she lights up when he comes home from work or even looks in her direction. kallie likes me well enough, but will try to sneak a bite once in a while, reminding me that i'm "ok" with her, but not the "chosen" one. i can give her scratches, feed her, do the things she needs done, but no matter what, my husband is the apple of her eye. does that "hurt"? it did at first, but i'm so happy she's found one of us that she cares about so much. maybe in time, she'll look at me and decide to get closer to me, but if not, it's her choice and i'll love her either way! i know you're trying so hard to be accepted and so far you're the object of less than favorable attention. i hope you can figure out how to make things better for you. the bird doesn't "hate" or "dislike" you, but might look at you as an interloper/threat to their "chosen" person. but bad behavior shouldn't be "rewarded" in any fashion by anyone. athena was always told, no bite, that's not nice, whenever she was going after my husband and praised like crazy when she was good with him.

athena has one of those preening toys with the cone. she loves to "feed" the top of the cone, lol! i don't know why, but she's done it for years. i've tried moving it to a different place in her cage, but she freaks out, so i end up putting it back. its the one thing in her cage that has a permanent place, everything else we can move around! she doesn't preen it or play with it, just "feeds" it. she's such a little nut sometimes, hahahaha!

when kallie's doing athena, we respond to her just as we do when athena is saying the same things. when kallie says things in "her" voice or makes sounds we respond to that as well. i talk and do my best with sounds (lol) with both girls on and off during the day since i'm not working right now. kallie at this point doesn't sound like my husband or me, she has her own soft, gentle "voice". it's not really female or male, somewhere in between. my husband doesn't mistake her for me, i don't mistake her for him if you know what i'm trying to say. it's the weirdest thing that she isn't imitating either of us, but does have this pleasant voice. even the lady we got her from, hasn't heard her mother's voice from kallie (who owned kallie from weaning until about 2 years of age before she passed away). we love them no matter what!! like i said, i just didn't know if this was normal or if we were doing something wrong since kallie speaks "athena" more than anything else!! of course, athena is a chatter box most days, hahahaha! thanks for all the info everyone!

athena has a couple of small mirrors in her cage that she can spin. she plays with them but not overly so, she much prefers ringing her bells and shredding phone books. athena is intrigued when we take her to a mirror to see her self. kallie loves shiny things, any shiny thing, lol!! we don't have anything with a mirror for her, we've been thinking about a small one though. she doesn't seem to care about mirrors if you take her to one to let her see herself. she does have fun with her food bowls (stainless steel) sometimes, if the light hits them just right she can see her self to a point. we have a few stainless foot toys that she likes to play with too.

thanks! we are very happy she talks and makes sounds. speaking ability wasn't our major reason for wanting a grey. they're just awesome birds, speaking or not!! i just wasn't sure if this was a phase or was because she's intrigued so much with athena or something else all together. i didn't know if others with multiple species of birds had greys that preferred to use the other birds' voices over their own or if we were doing something wrong that wasn't encouraging her to use her own voice. it's nice to know other's greys speak in their other feathered flock's voices and that we're not discouraging her in some way!

i guess time will tell how long kallie will prefer to speak in "athena" versus her own voice, lol!!! i don't mind that she does it and it's funny the way it fools my husband. we're always so surprised and pleased when kallie does "herself", so at the moment, i'll just treasure those times more!!

thanks! i really appreciate the info.

i have a question and i'm not sure there's even an answer/solution to it. kallie is 3 years old and we've had her almost 1 year. she doesn't have a huge vocabulary, which is fine. she communicates fairly clearly in lots of other ways. we didn't get her for the speaking ability (to us that's just an added bonus), but because greys are truly interesting birds, she needed a home and we were in a position to give her one. currently she LOVES to say everything athena does, exactly like athena does. kallie also likes to do sounds and has a few things she says in her own beautiful voice. i'd love for her to speak more in her own voice though. we'll ask her "can you say it in your voice" or "can you say it in kallie's voice" and sometimes she'll say what she knows how to say in her own voice. she doesn't use her own voice to say the things athena says, she uses athena's voice. whenever she does use her own voice, we make a big deal over it and praise her over and over, telling her how much we love her beautiful voice. we don't put her down for speaking in athena and respond to her like we do when it's athena talking. is there a way to encourage or teach kallie to speak more in her own voice? like i said, its a beautiful voice, soft and gentle most times, and sometimes a bit deeper, but always with lots of emotion/humor and emphasis included. i'm hoping this is a phase. kallie does watch athena a lot and i know takes "hints" about situations, new people and experiences from her. thanks!