SRSeedBurners

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.

Talon is so smart. She lets you all go get eaten first and if that doesn't happen after so many tries, it must be safe to go in there.

That little dish they are eating from reminds me of a post I saw somewhere of people planting bird safe plants, mostly stuff they can eat in those. Keep several in rotation to give them fresh options. Have you ever done that? You look to have the perfect setup to try that.

I don't have first hand experience with African Queen but I did put in a lot of research looking for another African species which she has. She is a very highly regarded breeder. Never found anything but good remarks about her.

Might try grabbing the mid-bird sprout mix from sproutpeople.org and their sprouter. It's too damn easy to make sprouts this way. They are incredibly healthy and couldn't hurt. We use it here.

I should have mentioned - it happened the week following us bringing baby Rio home. Toby lost his mind and all he could focus on was getting a good licking in on the baby. This went on for a week, he had my wife saying maybe she made a mistake getting a Caique. I had them under supervision in the bird room with me one day and I had my back turned playing with Rio. Greycie slipped over onto Toby's hangout and got him before I knew what was happening. They fell to the floor and rolled under the cage. Before I could separate them she had pulled several of Toby's feathers out and given him a good arse beating. I thought I was going to have make soup out of all of them at that point. So Toby sulked for a day and a half and I thought Greycie had ruined him. As suddenly as he got beat and started sulking, he snapped out of it and was back to Toby normal - which is to say 10ft tall and bullet proof master of Caiquey Jiu Jitsu but he wasn't so laser focused on beating the feathers out of Rio. Greycie actually did us all a favor in hindsight.

It was from being wet. She's also molting really heavy right now. So far I haven't noticed any plucking/chewing. She did pluck once: she went after Toby and got him on the floor and pulled out several of his feathers. She's too pretty to pluck herself you know.

We learned a lot from the breeder where we got our last bird. She fed four types of pellets outside of the fresh fruits/veggies. She even had us buy some of the colored brand that is specifically blended for african birds. The little bird we got from her will practically eat any of these pellets along with his fresh veggie mix. I think it's probably a good thing to get them eating a variety and let their natural instincts choose what they want to eat that moment.

IMO: If you have your pick of the litter, pick based on the personality. Don't limit yourself to the sex. I've seen really good birds in both male and female. A lot of how they turn out when older will be up to you.

That's a good point too, do Grey females get hormonal? She's 20 months old - too young? Btw...she chased Rio into the window again tonight. Our problem is we're a cage free house (i.e. only in the bird room). She ended up in the bird room for 10 minutes after that ala my wife who was pissed she chased her baby boy into the window once again. I've never been a proponent of clipping but I've never seen this new clip the breeder showed us. Right now Rio has that clip and it's slowing him down enough that Greycie can strafe him. May have to even the score just a bit and I don't believe it will affect her much, just take the top end off her 0-supersonic in nothing flat.

Yeah, Terrible Twos are relative. GreycieMae was a sweet little thing until the nipping and bitey started. She's also gotten very aloof. Where she used to want to come and get all in my business all the time, now she just wants to sit 'over there' and stare evil thoughts (at least that's what it looks like to me). The worst part is, she won't allow me to play with the other birds. Toby loves a good hand wrestle and the new baby needs handling but Greycie sees any of that and she has to come over and run them off and then go back 'over there' and be aloof. She's really selfish right now. I have to wonder if this is related to her molting? She's molting really bad right now and this behavior is very sudden, although we did just rock the boat four weeks ago bringing in Rio. Another tell-tale sign: sometimes she gets into a situation where she would normally fly to me. This happened twice this morning. She lost her grip playing on her chain and recovered her flight about 1ft off the ground. She circled and as she was passing me, her instinct was to land on my shoulder but I saw her switch her thoughts and flight-path to purposefully avoid me. It actually took extra effort to alter around me. What a flying turd! I'm fine with a Grey growing up and not wanting to be soft and cuddly anymore but I'm not going to allow her to control the house and stop me from playing with the other birds. She's developed a bad habit of aerial bombing the other two when she notices them playing with their toys. She'll fly across the living room to bomb the baby if he makes any kind of excitable racket. Toby is the same. Our breeder we got Rio from showed me how she barely trims the flight feathers to slow down her strong flyers. They still get around just fine but it takes the fighter pilot out of them. We might have to do this with Greycie but I'll give her a few months to sort this out first.

This morning I was washing some of the disaster my wife created making birdy bread for my babies. Greycie Mae decided to jump into the pan I just finished cleaning, so I put some water and ice cubes in and let her go at it. She won't really take a bath unless I put the ice cubes in - weird. I've decided, that if she keeps giving me that 'terrible-twos' garbage, the next time this happens, instead of ice, it will be carrots, potatoes, peas and some seasoning. There's not much action, and the first part of the video is shakey as I was still trying to clean with one hand. Towards the end she does her classic lay on her side and paw move that I think is cute. [video=youtube_share;XMJKSGwVToI]http://youtu.be/XMJKSGwVToI

Until I got our Caique, Toby, my BFA Tigger was probably the most playful, energetic bird I've ever encountered. I'm pretty sure he was wild caught and dragged across the Mexican border too. He never really 'tamed down' or learned to trust me, but at 19, I'm not sure I was trust-able. He used to ride on my beach bike, hanging upside down with his wings flapping out of sheer playfulness. Only my Caique has matched his robustness when it comes to playtime. Amazons are fun fun fun. If I didnt have a three bird limit, I think I'd be talking my wife into an Amazon. Also, I've had two separate parrot lives. One well before the age of the internet and the wealth of information it has afforded. Not sure if my Amazon Tigger was a boy or girl, I just assumed based on 'his' personality. 'He' never was aggressive like I now read about Amazons. Shoot, maybe he was a she?!? Do the shes get aggressive/hormonal? He was always the same - very leary of any of us humans.

Kind of in the middle here. Greycie Mae started using a few words, not real clear but we could tell what she is saying. Estimating 7-12 words/phrases. Then she quit learning anything new. Quit saying some stuff she was saying and now only uses a few of her words. I'm on the other side of the fence in that I DID want a talker. We get a hell of a lot of enjoyment listening to her say stuff and will engage her talking almost immediately. Our Caique - same story - learned a few phrases and used them up and now almost nothing. Now our big talker is the baby Jardines. He's really vocalizing and if he keeps going, he will out talk the Grey and the Caique (not known to be good talkers). Not only that he appears to be quietly smarter than both. Also we're dealing with new issues with Greycie. She's pulling away and becoming a touch-me-not all of a sudden. They're growing up!

At 3 weeks old, that's probably a good time to do it as they won't have many hangups about bringing in a new bird.

This is the exact problem we're finding with Greycie Mae. We brought a new Jardines in the house 4 weeks ago and it's changed the dynamics. Greycie barely could 'get along' with our Caique and now I think having the Jardines in the house is cause her to act out. She's gotten very bitey, nippy and hateful in the last couple weeks. She no longer really wants to sit with her daddy, she doesn't throw herself off the front of my shirt and try to give me 'kisses'. It's kinda sad but hopefully she'll get back to me. She gets 90% of my attention but apparently that's not enough.

Welcome to the GreyForums. Heartbreaking to hear how you lost Missy. A house fire is one of my worst fears concerning my birds, with a break-in and being stolen a close second. I love the little memorial you have for her. We lost a much loved Jardines last year and we planted a bush that has orange feathery flowers similar to the orange cap that Jardines have. I still talk to her when I'm out there. Your username reminds me of my managers Grey - Seawee!