Erik

Thank you all for the responses and advices, I hope me and Zaky can work something out I thought about that too but I didn't change anything at all on myself recently, though the weather is getting better so he has seen me in my motorcycle gear for the first time a few times back and he didn't really like it so I avoided appearing like that in front of him again, I don't know if that could have caused it. The only change in environment could have been that my father was home a lot and he couldn't let him out of the cage, Zaky rarely sees him cause he is only home at weekends, he broke his leg a few months back though so he had to lay at home for a while, usually at the same room Zaky is kept in I don't know if that could've frustrated him. Also I'd like to add that I recently found out that he is also on bad terms with my father now, but still nice with my mom and sister, seems he only has problems with the male member of the family, I don't know if this is just a coincidence though.

Hello, I'm wondering if anyone would have ideas on how to resolve our situation: We had our african grey Zaky for just a few months (he is about 5 months old now), but he really seemed to get along with us fast. He is nice to everyone but he especially was good friends with me, I took him out of the cage all the time and he always flew to me if I asked, or even if I didn't, fell asleep sitting on me etc. And never tried to bite me. Recently though he started being VERY hostile with me, and I just can't seem to understand why. I never abused / hurt / screamed at him for anything, even if he did something wrong I just asked him to stop it and fly to me, it usually worked. But now, while he is still nice to everyone else in the family, and this is really weird cause they also thought that he really loves me but now he seems to be really angry with me for some reason, he wouldn't even let me take him out of the cage, if I try to get him to step up or just go near him he bites me as hard as he can. I might have spent a little less time with him the past few weeks cause I had a lot of finals coming up, but it's not like I ignored him so I don't know if that is that reason, and I want to spend more time with him now but he won't even leave the cage if I open it. I just can't think of anything that could've caused this, does anyone have any ideas?

Hello there, I am pretty new to these forums, a couple months ago I posted about losing our grey and being helpless, after that I wasn't too active, since it was hard seeing all the content related to greys while the loss of Lorka was still so fresh. Things have gotten just a little better after a while, we still miss her and having a bird around, so our family decided on getting a parrot again, we were not sure if we would want a grey again because of the resemblance, was thinking about the blue fronted amazon, but at the end we still ended up being charmed by a grey. We brought him home 2 days ago, (couldn't figure out a fitting name for him yet) and he is getting used to his surroundings pretty well, he is extremely friendly, already on the way to home he climbed into my lap instead staying in his carrier. Now any time we are near he keeps twittering endlessly, even while eating. We are really looking after him and his nutrition as much as we can, but since we never owned a bird this young(we got Lorka when she was around 4-5months old, because her previous owner had to move) there are a few things I'm not sure I understand yet. He is around 11weeks old, we still feed him with his formula once a day, he already started eating seeds, and the breeder told us we should give him less and less over time so he can stop needing the formula. He also told us he can't overeat, but I just find this sometimes unbelievable, because he eats A LOT, though I guess he really does need the nutrition. All in all I plan to become more active in the forums now, and I hope all goes well with our newest family member, I already learned a lot of useful things reading the sticky topics, but any advice about what we should or should not do with/for a baby grey would be appreciated. I've uploaded a few cute pictures but they seem to be pretty big so I'll just put the links here. http://i45.tinypic.com/20syvxg.jpg http://i45.tinypic.com/f9fgd3.jpg http://i47.tinypic.com/34y1s9t.jpg

Thank you for the kind responses, they really help. If we are to have a parrot again sometime we will sure double check everything we let her eat, although we thought we were doing good, since no vet we knew suggested otherwise, or even warned us about this thing, they and we assumed that food packed specially for greys was good for her. Seems this is one of the drawbacks of living in a country that's way behind standards on these areas. We really did try to keep her well, was careful about what she could eat, didn't suspect that this food would do her harm. Called the vet as soon as we suspected something might be wrong, but still it wasn't enough. Well, sadly it's too late now, all I can do is spread the word about it here since not many people know it, I could count on one of my hands how many grey owners we have in the city, but I'm sure they are also unaware of this fact and definitely need to be warned. Although these are all excuses, and are not going to bring her back, or change a thing, I just really hope she is at a much better place now.

Hello all, I just found this forum using google, so I'm not really sure what topic to post in about this. Also please excuse my English, it's not my native language. So here's our story. Our parrot Lorka has been sick for around two weeks, she was the most cheerful being I've ever seen and never showed any sign of illness, until three weeks ago. We noticed how quiet and sleepy she was one morning, which really isn't her since she always kept taking to us and singing constantly. We though it was because my sister had stayed up late, but when she was also sick next day we contacted the local vet who examined her then injected long-term antibiotics and told us to wait and see. After a while there still was no change in her behaviour, we were terrified and contacted a local vet who had a really good reputation with birds and was not available at the time we first wanted to check her out. He told us to feed her a certain medicine cause there is a problem with her digesting, some kind of infection, but he can't say any more because he doesn't have the proper equipment (we live in Eger, Hungary, no bird clinics at all), but he wouldn't recommend going to the capital with her because he is sure that this is her problem and putting her out to the stress of driving to the capital wouldn't be advised right now, and if she won't heal it'll be too late anyway.. So after still no progress we still decided to take her to the capital for examination, where the clinic was more advanced and the doctor was obviously more experienced. We had to leave her there for care, the doctor said he might be able to save her but he also told us she has really slim chances of survival at this point. After two days she passed away at the age of five. Right now the whole family is devastated, especially my mom since she spent all her free time with Lorka on her shoulders, but if I had the time I would also play with her whenever I could. I think she really was happy, she rarely had to spend time locked in her cage and we paid as much attention to her as we could, I can only hope she is in a better place now, though the thought of her passing away in a clinic scared and surrounded by strangers hurts me the most... We don't really get much sleep since then, and the loss of her presence made this house so empty it's horrible. We still do all the reflexes that came with having her around, always scared of opening the window or not shutting the door instantly, only to realise we don't have to anymore. The doctor told us that even if we brought her 2 weeks earlier, knowing what her illness was he still couldn't have said for 100% that he could save her. She had some kind of fungal infection, that infected her almost everywhere, including the liver and lungs, he told us we couldn't have been really prepared to this, since any food could have caused it, but he thinks it is most likely caused by peanuts, which is actually in her pet food we kept buying since it was made especially for greys.. A week has passed and nobody's better yet, which is not surprising cause she really was like family to us. I don't think we can ever feel better about the thought of losing her. After reading about similar stories, and advices I don't know if we should consider getting a new parrot after a while, because I feel it would insult her memory making it look like she can be replaced, while I think that's impossible. Also the vet told us that this disease is getting more common amongst birds, and if there is really no way of preparing against this kind of illness, I really don't know what we should do, because if this would happen again I'm sure it'd break us even more. Any tips on what we should do or any information on this illness or avoiding it is appreciated, because we really don't know who to turn to or what to do at this point.