monax

Thanks everyone. Jay - I didn't have a chance to read your original post before it was deleted. I did consider the possibility that this was Toby's way of showing "inappropriate" affection...but I thought that perhaps he was a little young for that. I limit petting to just the head and neck, based on advice in this forum. This is my first parrot (actually, my first pet of any kind), so I'm looking to learn as much as I can and hear all perspectives.

Thanks, Sarasota! He is 9 months old, so I guess that qualifies him as a baby. The way he guzzles pellets, I'm not sure how he could possibly be hungry. :-)

Toby often grabs my index finger with his beak and while holding on, bobs his head back and forth with wings slightly flared out. I assume that this is a baby bird feeding motion, but I thought I'd check with all of you. Is he trying to tell me that he's hungry? I wonder because this happens even when he has a full bowl of food in front of him. Thanks!

Dave- thanks! Will give aloe vera gel a try.

Hi there, We noticed this raw patch of skin on Toby today (photo in line below)...it could be that he scratched himself (he's molting right now) or just banged himself up playing with one of his toys. He's still active and behaving normally. Should we be concerned? Any treatment we can give him at home? We did give him a shower, followed by aloe vera juice. Thanks.

It's hard to tell how much a parrot actually eats, since there's so much waste. I feed my TAG about 2 1/2 tablespoons of Harrison's High Potency pellets. Twice a day I give him a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh veggies, cooked grains, a few teaspoons of sprouts, a couple of nuts (e.g., almond, pine nuts). Occasionally, I'll offer a grape during the day or a couple of blueberries. He will devour the pellets completely but will pick through the bowl of fresh veggies, grains, and sprouts. I figure by offering a lot of options that I mostly have my nutritional bases covered. As Judy suggests, get a scale so that you can weigh Timber periodically to see if he's gaining or losing weight. My TAG is consistently around 315 grams (he was 295 grams when I first got him 3 months ago).

I've noticed that Toby gets watery droppings a few times a day. I think that this is attributed to a couple of factors: 1) I've observed him drinking more water since switching to a water bottle - perhaps because of the warmer weather, even though the air conditioning is on, and 2) eating more fresh veggies (I serve very little fruit, except for 1 grape or 1 blueberry a day). Most of his droppings are perfectly normal. He's active, vocal, no changes in appetite. Is there any cause for concern? I saw from one of Dave's stickies that watery poop might even be a sign of good hydration, but I'd rather be more paranoid than not when it comes to Toby's health. Thanks!

Toby is about the same age (8 1/2 months old) and also started molting recently...our place is covered with white fluffy down. Just yesterday we saw his first molted gray feather. Everything I've read up to this point suggests that it might take upwards of a year to fully complete the molting process.

Thanks for the advice...glad to know that he can't injure himself too seriously, and I'll definitely take the advice to mark window and glass doors.

Toby is almost 8 months old now, and he seems to really love to fly. When we got him 3 months ago, he already had his wings clipped (5 primaries on each side). However, that hasn't stopped him for trying to fly on a daily basis, whether it's across the room, or on one occasion, down the length of a driveway. The problem is that he tends to crash into things, whether it's the wall, or a window, or sliding glass door and I'm concerned that one day he will really hurt himself. In the long term, we might consider keeping him flighted based on the advice from many folks on this forum - but it's going to take a while for him to molt his flight feathers. Is there anything that can be done to keep him safe in the meantime? He tends to just take off without much warning. Thanks!

I have a 7 month old TAG (Toby) that I've had for about 2 months. There are a lot of very helpful and far more experienced folks on this forum that can give you great advice on diet. For what it's worth, here's my 2 cents: When I brought Toby home, he was on a seed mix diet, and also seemed to be picking out just sunflower seeds. My avian vet recommended Harrison's High Potency pellets, so I transitioned him very quickly away from seeds. It took a few weeks, but he's a pellet junkie at this point, and I'm trying to tune his diet to give him more fresh vegetables and legumes. In the last couple of weeks I've been experimenting with sprouted seeds. I use a mix of organic seeds - including mung beans, lentils, green pea, clover, alfalfa, broccoli, and radish - and he took to this almost immediately. I notice that Toby will moisten his pellets and drink more water with pellets, and less so with fresh food. I assume he gets fluids from veggies.

Thanks for the support. A quick update....took Toby to get checked out by his regular vet yesterday, and he confirms that Toby is on the mend. We're continuing with the antibiotics just in case, but the probable cause here was that Toby had a piece of food get stuck, which cause the regurgitation (entirely plausible, as he seems to be a bottomless pit where food is concerned). Lesson learned for us to chop the food more finely. Giving the medicine, so far, has been fairly straightforward...he doesn't seem to mind it too much. We can tell that he's not quite his normal self. He's not vocalizing much, or playing much, and the vet attributes it to the whole regurgitation incident as being very stressful for him. We have noticed since he came home that he is simply ravenous all the time...in fact he has gained another 10 grams over 2 days to 320 grams (when we brought him home a month ago he was at 295 grams).

Thanks everyone. So far they are mystified about what caused the crop to get distended. Could be that he caught some infection while being boarded, or maybe he ate a piece of food that was too big for him that got stuck somehow...or maybe he impacted the crop somehow while playing. The vet recommended antibiotics in case there is an underlying infection that is causing this. We chose not to do xrays at this point since it would have caused even more stress, and there's a risk of asphyxiation if he's still regurgitating. Any tips on how to administer antibiotics? If I understand correctly it's a liquid and will need to be administered using a plastic syringe.

Thanks. We ended up taking Toby to the emergency vet overnight. When we saw that he was still regurgitating on his sleeping perch we decided it was the safest thing to do. Also, noticed that his droppings were unusually dry, and I was concerned about dehydration. The vet kept him overnight, and they were concerned when they saw that his crop was distended. They gave him medication to keep him from regurgitating. The update this morning is that his crop is less distended and he's eating well and has kept food down for the last 3 hours. We'll be hopefully bringing him home in a few hours and starting him on antibiotics....and then bringing him to our regular vet in the next couple of days for another checkup. In retrospect, I should have been more tuned to the fact that Toby wasn't acting like himself when he got home, but I attributed that to him getting used to us again after being boarded. I have to thank the folks on this forum for all the great information. I've been reading this forum each day, and learning about behaviors, abnormal droppings, etc. lead me to take Toby to the vet earlier rather than later. Hoping at this point that he'll be ok.

After dinner tonight, Toby (6 month old TAG) started to bob his head a bit, and fluid came out of his beak. He did this 3 times and we figured that he was regurgitating. Otherwise he was behaving normally, eating normally, playing, etc. The unusual behavior was that he was constantly wiping his beak on us, more than normal after eating. After hanging out for a bit with him, we put him in the cage for the night. An hour or so later, I went back to check on him and was alarmed to find that he was standing on top of one of his toys, with a stream of fluid coming of his beak onto the cage and the floor of the cafe. We took him out of the cage, he continued to wipe his beak all over us. He took a drink of water, and threw that up a few minutes later. Should I be worried here? A few more things I should mention here: 1) We had been out of town for a few days and boarded him at the avian vet. He got a clean bill of health and weighed the same as when we brought him in. He was quieter than usual being back home, and far more affectionate. We spent a lot of time with him the last couple of days. 2) He was incredibly ravenous today and seemed to eat more pellets than usual throughout the day. For dinner, he had a purée of veggies, including bell peppers, carrots, green beans, corn, and peas, all of which he has had before. 3) He started vomiting started after we gave him a piece of boiled whole wheat spaghetti. He has had pasta before with no issues. Our hypothesis is that he had an upset stomach from over eating, or perhaps that one piece of pasta. Any thoughts? Obviously we are worried and will be watching him carefully over the next day. Is there any comfort food or easily digestible food we should give him tomorrow to help him recover from whatever he has? Last I checked he is back on his normal sleeping perch with nothing coming out of his beak, so hope he is ok. Thanks.

Yes, I have used a steam cleaner and find that it works really well on crevices and dissolving dried on pieces of food (e.g., the sides of the seed catchers). However I do give the cages a quick rinse with water as well afterwards.

LOL...thanks. Just making sure that I wasn't missing something. I don't suppose this is something greys grow out of? yeah, didn't think so. Thanks again.

I have been reading with great interest all the threads on fresh vegetables and fruits and recipes for mash and chop. I have a more basic question though....any advice on how to manage the mess? I know that parrots are inherently messy eaters, but as a new parrot owner, I guess I have been caught by surprise. Toby is my 6 month old TAG, and I have had him for about 3 weeks. I've been progressively introducing new vegetables every other day, and trying everything from chopping the veggies down to different sizes, using the food processor to mash the food up, warming it in the microwave, serving it raw...but regardless of what I do, the food gets flung far and wide. I usually feed him on the cage playtop, and we eat with him in the dining room as he seems to like that. Toby will drop food all over his play too, and then climb down from the perch to retrieve what he's dropped, even when there is plenty of food left in his bowl. The food also gets dropped in the seed catcher, all around the floor around the cage, and occasionally a few feet away. I have taken to putting newsprint around the cage at feeding time just to try to make the cleanup easier. I would appreciate any tips....where and how do you feed your grays? Any particular way I should prepare the food so that it gets eaten and not thrown? Thanks!

Thanks everyone for your quick response and great advice. I will definitely look into the red palm oil. This forum is a tremendously helpful resource!

I just got a 6 month old Timneh African Grey about 3 weeks ago. He had previously been on a seed diet, and our vet suggested that we convert him over to pellets along with fresh vegetables and fruit. I have him transitioned to Harrison's High Potency coarse pellets, but I notice that a lot of it ends up on the bottom of the cage. The pellets seem way too large for him to hold and a lot of it crumbles onto the ground as he tries to eat them. Harrison's sent me some samples of the High Potency fine pellets, which are significantly smaller. The fine pellets seem easier for him to eat, and I'm noticing that I'm not refilling the bowl as often as probably more of it ends up in his stomach than on the ground. However, the fine pellets are not exactly the same as the coarse in composition (the fine pellets have higher protein, less fat - which may or may not be appropriate for an African Grey). I could use some advice here. Should I stay with the coarse pellets and cut them down to a smaller size, or should I go with the fine pellets? I would add that he's not exacting wasting away here...has gained about 12 grams in the last 2 weeks (to 308 grams), so either way he's not starving. It would be nice to avoid unnecessary waste, but more important that I feed the best food for him. Thanks in advance!