SRSeedBurners

With a weaned baby you have no idea what you are getting as they are not developed yet may or may not be important to you. A rehomed older bird is already set in their ways and you can actually see if the bird even likes you, if so it will probably stay that way. Babies can switch, some do, some don't. My girl has always been my baby once she got over her stand-offish ways a few months down the road. Huey our male is a rehome and he doesn't much care for me, even on day one, and will attack me on occasion. I believe he sees me as competition for the love of his life, my wife and I'm fairly certain he was abused by a male early in his life as he will flinch when I make certain moves - sad. Huey has pretty much stolen my wife with all his affections towards her. Also, we have seven birds currently and have had 2-3 others that have passed on. In every case, the males are attracted to my wife and and vice-versa with our female birds. Our female hawkshead will go after my wife if given any little chance or will go around and around in her cage making threats non-stop. Goofy girl. This is a non-scientific, N=1 sample here but it's very peculiar that they have lined up like this.

I'm having a bout of stupid and cant seem to edit my previous post but since I'm not from Ohio I'll just throw my $.06 in (inflation, sorry) about their pros/cons. I consider Greys at or near the top of the heap when it comes to intelligence levels of animals. That comes with a lot of possible baggage. If they are mistreated, abused etc they will remember and may suffer consequences. Lots of FB posts about 'why is my bird plucking'. No one really knows why, some find solutions, many never do. My first Grey lives the over-pampered, meticulously cared for life and one day I went into their bird room only to see a pile of feathers on the ground and my precious Grey girl sitting there looking ragged as hell. It broke my heart as I thought, here we go, never thought it would happen to me. Thankfully she stopped after a few months and the only thing we can attribute it to was a hawk encounter. She is prone to freaking out when she is not with me. Yes they can become very co-dependent. It worries me when I see someone with only one Grey. I feel like they do need a companion for when you are not there. That's sort of how we got Huey, our #2. I think a good Grey parront is - patient (you'll need a lot of this) - hard-working (they need good servants to clean up after themselves) - a great cook (a varied diet is best) - moderately wealthy (hey, they need toys and stuffs, vet care, cages, foods etc) - always there (whatever plans you had, cancel them, Greybie wants you, Greybie needs you) They are a HUGE commitment if you treat them as they should be treated. Lots of people lock them up and throw away the key because they had absolutely no idea what they are getting into. I see tons of rescue stories where I'd like to find the culprits and beat them. When I was younger I wanted a monkey. I thank God that I was too poor to ever go through on that stupid impulse. I see videos of pet monkeys occasionally and can't fathom what it requires to care for one of those. Greys aren't anywhere near that commitment but they are a time-sink. This says it all so beautifully....

Oh wow, I completely forgot about AA. I may have to go back for a visit...or maybe I got the boot from there and can't go back 🤣

ahh, you laugh now, but when they're done and nothing is built correctly, they're going to blame it on Alfie and his mis-measurements 🤣

GreycieMae is an excellent whistler. She gave up on any kind of talking very early. Her greatest talent is rattling off a very nice tune with her whistling and then finishing it with a fat juicy fart noise. She does it because she always gets an absolute riot out of it. She sleeps in our bedroom on the handle of a ladder because she used to get terrible night frights when I had them in a bird room. I was sure I was going to wake up to find her dead some morning because she was trapped in there freaking out slamming herself into the side of the cage. It happened way too often so she got moved into our bedroom and now hasn't had one single episode. Anyway she also makes the cutest coo'ing noises in the middle of the night when she hears me moving around. It's such a sweet little sound I have a hard time not reaching over and giving her a cuddle and a kiss.

Our household is polyandrous: my wife has two husbands. Her main man, Huey and then her servant husband - me. Huey has lived here going on four years. In that time, he has learned to talk like me, act like me and basically does everything I do centered on Marietta. He wants her sole attention and has learned to basically take on my persona in order to get her attention. He tells her to 'calm down' in my voice. When she calls out 'Babe' he ALWAYS answers her with a 'Yeah'. If she asks me from another room if I want this or that....Huey will generally answer with an "ok", "no", "what?" or something appropriate for the question, always in my voice. What's really cute is that I have convinced him that Mommy loves big muscles. I have taught him to 'workout' in front of mommy. He will raise his wings and bring them down and do a 'whoosh' sound. He'll generally do this 4-5 times while Marietta oohsss and awwwess over him. Huey also constantly asks for a 'shower'. A shower is basically, Marietta gets in her tub, and I bring Huey to just outside the entrance of the bathroom and put him on the floor. He will then puff up and strut into the bathroom where he gets lots of ewwws and awwwwss. He then proceeds to hang out next to her inside the cubby hole under the sink and bangs around like a construction worker. It really sounds like he's busy building something in there. One day I made the mistake of getting in the tub and quickly found out that was off limits. It's one of the few times that Huey has launched an attack across a room and nailed me. I'm not allowed in mommies love tub as we call it. Huey does get me into trouble a lot because he will get short with her and smart off in the exact same way I do. He's always telling her "oh Marietta...." or grumbling in a low voice like I do when I've had about enough talking for the day. Marietta LOVES to tell me, "you see how you talk to me sometimes" Ok, thanks Huey, I don't really need help getting myself in trouble.

Tinkerbell is doing fine now. She's back to biting me and giving me strong corrections. Conures do tend to have big-billy-bad-a** syndrome. Gram-for-gram though, the scrappiest fighter of all my birds is Toby my Caique. He will take on GreycieMae and has won that battle a couple times. I don't let them all have fight-nights but sometimes the idiots will find an opportunity to get it on.

The facebook groups are too big and too full of drama, although I do remember when there was a bit of drama here too. I only frequent them looking for cute videos. There was one I found the other day of a Grey singing to some childrens song and his singing was absolutely terrible, it was so stinking cute I couldnt' stop watching it. But this place is always my favorite.

She can't mix with the others. We had an incident a few weeks ago where my Tinkerbell (conure) got out and came flying in to fight with Nikki and get her off of me. Nikki bit Tinkerbells bottom beak and I thought I was going to lose Tinkerbell. It took her a week before she could apply any pressure with her beak. I was syringe feeding her to keep her weight up. I think we're out of the woods as she's eating and preening now on her own. The whole reason we took Nikki in was because she wasn't allowed out around the macaws and then this happens. We're getting the patio glassed in soon and I should have their outdoor aviaries built by spring time.

She has had a bit of a name change. No matter how much I want to be able to say her name 'Muneca', it doesn't roll off the tongue very easy. I started bastardizing her name and calling her 'Moo-Nikki'. Now I just call her Nikki. And since she is the biggest DIVA I have ever witnessed, her altered name goes well with the song lyrics "Hey Nikki you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind HEY NIKKI!!!". She gets to hear my cover of that song quite a lot. I'm glad she can appreciate my singing 🤣 Other than that she has taken a HUGE dislike to my wife. She will attack her any chance she gets. I know it's because she has claimed me as her very own man and Marietta can just get the heck out in her view. The only positive to this is we get to see her HawksHead flare quite a lot. She can really spread those war dress feathers and looks very stunning. But the BIZNATCH is coming with it so we all better watch out. She also makes this huge annoying sound all the time when she wants something. I realized the other day it sounds like the starter on her car has gone bad. I'll have to get it on video sometime. Now that I've heard it as a bad starter in a car, I can't unhear it. 😆

Great to hear from you. I love hearing abour HRH Inara. She's a real character. I don't think it would be such a bad thing for her to be incorporated into another flock. Huey is quite the talker and has adapted well from being an only bird to the big mouth of the flock here. He sits in there all day long and tells everyone to 'calm down' and then proceeds to stir them up and then has to drink coffee (BIG gulps), call for a shower, call for his love 'Belle' and around and around it goes all day long. Oh and don't forget the constant fart noises. He LOVES doing fart noises.

The picture I have in my head of watching all this go down is quiet funny. Dorian sitting there all relaxed after his delicious chocolate foray and you flustered giving out credit card numbers, calling anyone that will listen. Bad Dorian...bad bad bird. So naughty.

I'll bet he loves that. Throw a few loose almonds in there (if he's into that sort of thing). That'd keep mine coming back for more and probably making a bigger job putting everything back in.

C'mon Alfie, you have to treat your hooman better than this. I know it's super fun to fling food and act like a spoiled brat but you gotta eat something besides junk food.

Mine are just the opposite. If they're in my office with me when I'm working, they're quiet as little church mice. Huey will fly down and attack my headset occasionally. He's a little weirdo about that.

They are the best. I have my fuzzy lil dinosaur planted on my arm right now. I think she's becoming an appendage 🤣 Happy Birthday Corky!

Time to bust out the fermented apple cider!

These Greys have the patience of the Gods 😆

I doubt your house is too cold for a Grey, or you'd be pretty uncomfortable too. They're fine as long as there are no hard drafts on them.

Never really heard of anyone being successful with potty training. Their natural instinct is to go wherever. Mine will even try to sneak one knowing that if I sense the wiggle I'll come a little unglued and she flies off. She still tries to sneak one out on me.

They are big sooks in the evenings. I can always get away with a lot more in the evenings.

Sounds like you're doing everything correctly. My GreycieMae was a very headstrong independent chick. When I went to the breeders to first look at her, she really didn't want nothing to do with the two-legged creatures in the house. Her sibling however was a love bug and that's the one I wanted but she was already spoken for. It took a few months, maybe even more than a year to really get through to my grey but over time she's become the little love bug I always wanted. I just couldn't help but persist to get into her good graces. Now all she wants to do is hang on my shoulder 24/7. They are very malleable at this age so you've got a nice little lump of clay there to work with (analogy). Persistence pays off big time with these greybies.

Murfchck is trying to get out of the bird rescue operation. Both her and her husband have developed breathing issues from having all those rescue birds in the house with them. She is trying to find homes for most of her birds now. Over the years I've taken three birds from her, a conure (Tinkerbell), a whitecap Pionus and now Muneca. I would love to take all her Greys if I had anywhere to put them. Anyone want to donate a wad of cash so I can build a Greybie party barn? 🤣 She also has macaws and cockatoos that she needs to re-home. I cannot deal with those last two types of birds as they are too big, too loud and too dang destructive.

Meet Muńeca! She's a 21y.o. hawk-headed (red fan) parrot. DNA female hatched and raised at Kookaburra bird shop right here in Dallas. Some of you all may remember a member here that hasn't posted in a long while, Murfchck. She recently just asked if we'd be interested in giving this girl a new home where she can get out of her cage more. I didn't really need or want another bird but my wife said years ago that if a bird like this ever became available to us, we'd take her. Well, here she is. Going to take good care of this girl. We're not sure what to make of her yet. I've read that these birds don't make good pets, are territorial, can be very mean. I'm trying to go slow with her and back off when she warns me to. But that feather crest is too much to resist. I keep trying to give her scritches and she keeps snapping at me. She'll come around I'm sure, persistence always pays off 🤣

Prepare for a long holdout 🤣. Huey will sometimes go into his hangout and stay there all day.