SRSeedBurners

Happy Hatchday Inara! That's funny she likes you to kiss her toes. Greycie likes it too and I get the sense that the Queeny is holding court while her serf pays tribute when I do it.

Can you get a weight on your bird for us? (grams if possible). Just from reading your post it sounds like your bird may be too hungry. Apples are not good in bulk, and by bulk, you mentioned you give her a whole apple 3-5 times per week. That's a lot. I'm guessing you are feeding pellets? (what are crumbs?) I'm assuming you got this bird from a breeder, do you know what type of hand-feeding formula this bird was on? Are you still offering it? My Grey was on the formula for quite a while even though she was eating pellets, veggies (some fruits) and sprouts. Just from what you've written I'm getting the feeling your bird is starving a little. We need more info on the feeding habits.

Far upper left corner there is a link 'New Posts'. If someone has replied to any posts (including yours) those posts will show up in a list. Your post is in the 'Blogs Comments' sub-forum and should probably be moved by an admin. Link to post

Why the resistance to separate them? All it takes is one good fight and you may lose one or both birds. Inside a cage there is nowhere to escape if someone gets the upper hand on the other. You could get one of those macaw type cages where they are side-by-side. It may even help to win John Wayne over by watching you interact with Asia from his separate quarters. He'll see the fun he's missing out on - maybe? Does Asia get a lot of time outside the cage? It would scare me to house two Greys that didn't get raised together in close quarters. I've seen my little hand-raised baby do stuff that I never thought she would do (like wait till my back was turned to go rage on another bird). A large aviary is a different story to some extent. At leas there may be room to escape. Ditch the gloves - you are going backwards with JW when you show up with those - especially since you know he's been handled badly while wearing them. Learn to read his body language and respect it. The fact that he's softly mouthing you says he's already somewhat trusting of you. Getting him out of his cage is probably just going to be a matter of time tempting him by playing with Asia and treats. He'll respond eventually. One trick I used was attaching a perch to the door of the cage. It took around two weeks to get the bird to trust me enough to open the door with him on it but he eventually would stay perched while I opened the door and he was 'out of the cage'. Another two weeks and he would climb on the outside of the cage to come get treats.

Your bird is quick. GreycieMae is nearly two years old and just said her first sentence today: "step up. Good boy". Of course she heard me say it earlier to Rio. She has said both of those phrases independently for a while but she finally put them together today.

Oh, I meant the pre-sprouted seeds. I had mine sitting in a lock box (don't ask why) in my garage for the longest time. This week I went to go get another batch for sprouting and...damn worms. I bet if I let them go they probably become moths. My chickens scored big as I sprouted the whole bag for them.

Make sure you freeze/fridge the bag. I opened mine up yesterday: worms. Got to expect that with all organic.

You got a great bird there. GreycieMae is an expert flyer and will not fly to me unless it is in her utmost best interest. I see Megan back there completely ignoring the come on commands. That's my GreycieMae. Turds....

GreycieMae went out with me today and 'helped' build the fire we used to grill the 4th of July hot dogs (she got tofu dogs). Love taking her out with me. It's worth the pain in the butt to train them to accept it. She kept making her standard fart noises...love her.

IMO parrots are a blessing, so you got one more! Wish I had room for a 'zon.

They are such beautiful birds. I love Greys.

That's funny, we have the same 'standards' in our house. I take it to the next level though, if good food gets thrown on the floor, I'll eat it, but I won't let any of my parrots eat it.

Greycie chews on hers most of the time. I had to get a reinforced version because she was getting the fabric welds apart.

Any update on how the baby Grey is coming along?

You might try stopping the Kaytee Exact formula. We're feeding a baby Jardines and I started giving some to Greycie twice a day as she was begging for it. That's about the time she started acting out real bad. We put up with her behavior for about two weeks before I decided to try and remove two items from her diet: Kaytee and a junk bird food mix that we were using as a treat-time snack. She calmed down after that and I pinned it to the Kaytee formula. It's only a theory in our house but we're going with it because we did see a noticeable change. You can probably replace it with an oatmeal treat - Greycie will beg for that even more and I've never seen her react to it.

hrmmm...never thought to mix in the Red Palm oil with the soak & simmer!

Harrison's recommends that African Greys use the 'High Potency'. Some breeds they recommend to shift to the 'Lifetime' formula but certain species are recommended to stay on the High Potency (including Greys). We have found the 'coarse' size leads to a lot of waste. Using the smaller size, 'fine', my other birds can eat it and I don't find big 3/4 and 1/2 size of chunks wasted on the floor. When Greycie cracks a coarse size pellet, most of it goes flying - very wasteful.

Raisins are good. Just saw that one on the Parrot Pantry. One of my birds will eat loads of raisins. As for peanut butter - some say to stay away from peanut products. I suspect it's because of the aspergillosis threat? We have an almond butter we use for the birdys however I do give them peanut butter as a not-to-often treat or in their oatmeal treat.

It might help too if you could capture some video of the problem and post it.

What a cute boy. And smart too. Used a toy to close his door, nobody takes Arnie out of his corner - haaahaa.

When i wrote that other post...there was a fourth 'item' in our rotation that I couldn't remember. We picked up these at the last bird fair we went to. Super easy, one easier than the other: Volkman Birdeez Buffet 15 Minute Soak&Serve Greycie doesn't much care for this one but my other two like it - plus is takes more effort. Volkman overnight soak and cook With those four items in the rotation I almost don't run out of options.

Yeah, I forgot about sweet potatoes. Greycie will gulp those too. The key with her is - warm. Make it warm, she'll most likely eat it. She won't eat cold birdy bread, warm it, it's gone. Our microwave gets used a ton. The frozen veggie mix is warmed in the nuke box. I'm like you, don't have a lot of time in the morning, so I have limited time to get their skool bags packed. These birds are my problem so I try not to overwhelm my wife with their care so she doesn't order us all out. If you do want to have a go at baking your own bread, I try to stay away from the corn bread mixes (I'm anti-corn filler). Florida parrot rescue has a really good easy recipe, if you can find the ingredients. They use barley, oat, rice and buckwheat flour - hard to find. Bob's Red Mill has a 10-grain flour I'm hunting that has: whole grain wheat, rye, triticale, oats, corn, soy beans, barley, brown rice, millet, flaxseed. Also a pancake mix (I will fix Greycie and all of us pancakes on the weekend occasionally). Florida parrot rescue birdy bread PDF I never cooked a thing until I got these babies - go figure.

We must have cross posted: I posted this in your Isaac feather update. link

Focusing on diet and no time to be a stay-at-home cook - here's what I would try: Sprouts - you got that coming in. You can leave them in all day - we do. They get a little dry and crackly by the end of the day but that's better than wet and moldy. Hanging foraging cage - use that to put vegetable wedges in for him to work at. My birds will spend at least an hour or two digging all the goodies out. We have several of these Birdy bread - Get a good birdy bread. Our birds get bored of the same ol shat. Good birdy bread provides another vehicle to get the good stuff in them. Bored with sprouts? Switch to birdy bread. Can't remember who or where I saw this posted but if I didn't have a stay-at-home wife, I'd be cooking this stuff. Frozen veggie mix: I got this great tip from our Jardines breeder - quick and fast!!!. Use a frozen veggie mix (corn, carrot, greenbean) from the store as a base. Then mix in one or two somethings to change it up- we tend to use the following: frozen - lima beans, chickpeas, peas; fresh - brocolli, okra (Greycie LOVES okra), banana, jicama. Basically I'll raid the veggie isle looking for ideas. The sprouts and the birdy bread are expensive but I find they last a long time so cost is reasonable. We tend to rotate through the birdy bread, veggie mix and sprouts to keep their diet interesting. I've had problems with them getting bored and not eating so I learned to switch things up. Every now and then as a treat I'll bust out the GreycieMae Oatmeal recipe I have. She gulps it down.

You might try finding a local bird club and asking them.