How sweet is your Grey?

[Guest Speak's Buddies]

We have had exotic birds for years, everything but a Congo Grey. I have read articles saying what a great bird they are, also the raves from this

 

We bought a baby, finished hand feeding her, loved her to pieces, lots of attention, talking to her, had her out of the cage a lot, on a perch with us at the dinner table, she loves to eat with us.

The older she has gotten (she is now 3), the less attention she wants.

She will not hesitate to bite my husband, will tolerate a little head rub, and comes out the cage when SHE feels like it, not when you want her to, even with saying Step. She talks only in a gruff voice (male).

I am so disappointed in her. I had hoped for a sweet, lovable bird that I could kiss, hold and pet. The older she gets the less she seems to want to be bothered with people. She has a good variety of food, plenty of attention, lots of toys.

My question is...... are your Congo Grey's what you expected? I guess I shouldn't compare, but after having a cockatoo, this Grey does not even come close in affection.

 

The most beautiful discovery of true friends is that they can grow separately without growing apart -Katherine Mansfield

[Guest phishbook]

All birds will nip occasionally. But if yours wants nothing to do with you, that is unusual. You get out of birds, what you put in, and somewhere along the way, it seems as though you have made some mistakes with her.

What kind of exotic birds have you had for years?

[Guest cyberknock]

Are you in Texas? We were in Texas last winter... saw millions of beautiful birds on the gulf shore between Corpus Christi and Galveston, during spring migration.

[micah]

Hi My name is Steve and I am a Cagaholic.....

My Geordie is just gone 4 years old and she amazes me nearly every day.

The thing that gets me most is how she does and says things IN

CONTEXT.

For an example, do you remember the Antonio Banderas version of Zorro?

Well, in the film, Zorro is supposed to jump off a roof onto his horse but the horse moves and Zorro falls on his rear end. OK, not mind-bogglingly funny but worth a smile. Not for Geordie, she lets our a really loud laugh like the Laughing Policeman record. (did I mention we are so soft that we move her cage in the evening so she can watch

TV?) Maybe coincedence but that sort of thing happens all the time.

I live in the industrial North of England and parrots are not very common here but everyone around knows Geordie. She goes everywhere with me....

Supermarket, Post Office, Bingo, walks in the park, driving (she sits on the passenger head rest with a towel under her rear end, lol)

She has always been MY bird as opposed to my wife's but my wife can get more kisses than me at the dinner table 'cos she has more Fries than me.

Agnes always blows on a fry before geordie gets it to cool it down and there's nothing funnier than watching geordie, fry in hand, making blowing noises at the fry.

Geordie has always interacted well with strangers, especially kids, and it's good to see Geordie wandering from kid to kid saying

"Hello,I'm Geordie, Who are you?"

The best though is if you say, "Geordie dance" and she whistles and dances to the tune of "The Stripper"

Here's her ebay page....

[Guest cyberknock]

I think that so far you are doing not too bad at all~ Your CAG was plucked and now he is feathered... He was silent and now chatters happily away!

Continue to provide him with a happy relaxed home, a calm attitude, a good diet and a nourishing environment... you should see good results.

 

Petting will come in due time. I think he is already trying. His taking your finger in his beak and bobbing up and down is a good sign. He probably thinks your hand is his friend and he wants to hold on to you. I bet that if you were trusting enough to let him take your finger in his beak without pulling away that he wouldn't bite.. .But I agree that it is difficult to do, so I don't blame you for not wanting to. Just continue to pet him through the cage bars with anything soft, until you feel comfortable using your fingers.

 

My Grey is 7 years old and my husband will ONLY pet him through the cage bars! On the plus side, Echo squashes himself against the cage bars so that

Rick can reach and scritch all parts of him! That is their understanding.

It works fine for them. I can scritch Echo outside the cage, but when I try it through the cage bars, he grabs my finger and feeds me.. He thinks my hand is his mate/companion! Birds sometimes will do that to someone they love. It appears that they do not take in the 'whole person' as a unit: to them, the face is a person and the hand can be something else. I have even heard of people whose bird likes one hand and is afraid of the other!

 

Let him take the initiative.. let him decide what he is ready for at his own pace. I am willing to bet that It will turn out OK for you in the long run.

[Guest goose]

Lorraine if you don't mind sharing I don't mind reading. I can talk bird all day. My friends think I am nuts. My husband tells me he wishes he was as loved as much as my children.

Did yours like to be held like a baby. My cutie will snuggle up with me if I put her in bed with me. I got cutie on Dec 23, 02 day before I was due to go to surgury. That nite I cried like a baby, but it was because I was so happy. Cutie had a amazed me so much. Plus I had already been telling my husband no more birds. For over a year. I already had four. I thank God we did get her. We had already seen cutie a couple of times, but

I kept saying no, but what got me was when I held her and she roled over.

She was like a baby in my arms, so cute.

PS TOLD you I could go on about birds

[Guest phisherman519]

Mac is my CAG. He is 7 years old now and a very very loving and affectionate bird. He loves to cuddle, give kisses, and wrestle with my daughter on the living room floor. He climbs onto her chest and flaps his wings in her face and yells out uncle! The more she laughs the more he does it. heheh. I did not read up on their behaviour or expectations BEFORE getting him. My reason for this was that I did not want to get in to it with any pre-conceived notions. Mac does have his occasional "bad feather" day as we call them, where he wants little to do with his people, but still has to have his before bed cuddle even on those days.

[Guest goose]

That was so cute. I tell you what I did with seagull and vulture problem.

I would start telling cracker to say hello. We live by the beach and take them out ever once in awhile. The first time cracker saw seagulls he yelled. So after that I knew I had to get him to act like it was a game.

The thing with the vulture is if he see's through the window or if he saw them while making a trip. So I just started telling him to say hello. Now our bb we took him to the beach and he let us know for 24 hours that he was upset. He just didn't talk for 24 hours. I will still work with them at the beach, just not right now. To many mosquitoes out right now.

I am glad that you did find a good home for Caro. Like happy ending's

Lee and Trish

[Guest cyberknock]

We didn't have any problem with Caro and wild birds until the seagull actually stole his dinner from him.. We also 'talked' to the wild birds, and 'waved' to them ( spreading of wings) etc. We had Caro for 5 years so he had seen seagulls before that episode...

 

We just couldn't figure out any way out of this new development. We tried all we could to get him to quiet down and accept seagulls again, but he really kept a grudge! Ducks and geese and others he accepted easily as 'part of the great outdoor' ... but not the seagulls after they stole from him~

 

But I am glad that you are working out your problem with your own birds.

Just make sure you don't feed your B*G where there are wild birds who could steal his dinner ! LOL!

"The first time cracker saw seagulls he yelled. So after that I knew I had to get him to act like it was a game. The thing with the vulture is if he see's through the window or if he saw them while making a trip. So I just started telling him to say hello..."

[Guest bennyguy]

Mom came over and went through the biting thing again... and then she said step up and he did! She was holding him but he was still trying to bite her hand. I went over to tell him what a good bird he was for stepping up and he stepped right onto my forearm! I was just waiting for the approaching chomp, but he just sat on my arm and whistled! After three or four minutes

I put him back on his cage door and he was fluffing his feathers and bobbing up and down. For the whole rest of the evening he was happy and talking.

It was fantastic. Unfortunately, we didn't know how to get him back INTO his cage, so he was out all night. The floor has been quite decorated but not as much as my Too would have done... anyway, long story, I know, but I'm excited. LOL. This morning I walked right up to him and scratched his head for a few seconds!!! I stopped when his head turned. I'm afraid he's going to think I'm teasing him if every time I reach for him and he reaches that beak out I pull away. If he would just lower his head we'd have a system.

[Guest cyberknock]

Blue and gold CAN be cuties!

It it weren't for a very unusual situation we would still have ours, named

CARO. I won't bore you with the story, which is funny in a certain way, unless you really want to hear it.

[Guest cyberknock]

ok.. I will tell you...

 

Caro was the most amazing companion bird I ever had. It would take a whole evening to write about him... We had him for about 5 years at the time the problem developed. Here is the problem:

 

We used to take the bird boating with us... You heard me right! I have photos of Caro on my husband's shoulder while he is piloting the trawler...

Well, our routine early in the season that year, was that we left on

Thursday evenings to go to the marina for the week end, to get the boat ready for a trip we were planning, and we used to stop mid-way between

Toronto and the Marina, to eat a dinner of hamburgers at Harvey's ( Canadian chain: Better burgers than Burger King or Wendy or any chain. Individually made in those days at least.) Well.. ( don't chastise me!) we used to buy a baby burger for Caro. ( It wasn't the mainstay of his diet, just a weekly treat in the summers only!) Well, we ate outside at the pick-nick table so that Caro could eat with us. That was at Barrie, Ontario, right on Lake

Simcoe. You can imagine the number of seagulls at that place.. Well, one night, we were happily eating our burgers and so was Caro. He had a piece of it in his talon and a part on the paper plate on the table, when a seagull came sweeping down, screeching his heart out and STOLE the burger right out from Caro's plate! Caro really objected and screeched and screamed in a panicky manner, louder than he ever had... after a while he quieted down and all seemed OK ( I gave him a piece of mine, same as any respected mother would do! LOL!)

 

Well, the problem came after that.. from that day on, Caro kept a grudge against any and all seagulls... and you can imagine that there are always seagulls near a marina! Or anywhere we were boating, in fact... It was a good thing that summer that we decided to take a trip around the Great

Lakes, ( Huron, Erie, Ontario,) so we were never more than one or two nights at any one marina...! I am sure we would have been asked to leave!

 

Every time Caro saw a seagull he would call us, scream in a panic and screech at those damn thieves! He was trying to alert us that the enemy was coming and when they arrived, he was trying to send them away.. and protect us from the enemy, I guess..

 

It was a case of selling the boat or selling the bird. We had no choice but to sell the bird since boating had always been our main hobby and our planned retirement included a lot of boating!

 

I took my time finding a home for Caro... I finally found a nice gentleman who already owned a B&G. I felt that was the best as he knew what to expect ( and he was not a boater and didn't live near the water!)

 

I wrote nearly a whole book about Caro's likes and dislikes, about his food, about his vocabulary, about what he understood, about what he would do, etc.. and I made a video of him under normal conditions, showing what kind of bird he was, what he liked to do , etc since it is sometimes difficult to get a bird to do anything in front of strangers... We sold him with all three cages ( a day cage, a sleep cage and a travel cage) also a carrier for the car, and a play post, a swing, etc etc... all his toys and bowls etc.

We needed to take our station wagon ( estate car) to deliver everything to the new owner!

 

Well, he was not far from us so I kept in touch... I called at least once a month to see how things were and how well he adjusted to his new home... I felt REALLY guilty about selling him. ( We had bought him from a previous owner when he was 15 months old and he was now over 6 years old).

Eventually, I could sense that all was not so well between Caro and his new owner, so I asked to go visit him. When I saw him I realized that he was not all that happy.. he had started plucking feathers on his chest ( an unusual occurrence with B&G). I talked to the owner and tried to figure out what was wrong with Caro.. I found out that he had bought Caro thinking that he would be company for the original B&G that he had... when in fact he ended up with TWO birds asking for attention! He now regretted his decision and was thinking of selling BOTH birds... Anyway, I felt really guilty so I bought Caro back , cages and all, for the same amount I had sold him to them six months earlier.

 

It took me a couple of months to get him back in the shape he was in originally and I kept him another 4-5 months until I found a REALLY good family for him.. Again, I kept in touch until I satisfied myself that he was truly loved and happy... Then I said a final good bye with a tear in my eye.

 

That was the story of why we ended up having to sell our B&G. It is a sad story .. parting is always sad.. but as I said it was funny in a way about the seagulls, but you would have had to see/hear him to fully understand.

I have photos and a VHS tape of him showing how he was, all he liked to do..

and how well he related to people.. You wouldn't believe a bird could be like him! ( I think he is a she but his name when we got him was Caro and not Cara. ) I still watch the tape a few times a year and shed a tear or two because I still miss him/her.... But I know he is happy and loved. And

Echo the CAG is certainly no problem to take on our boat...

[Guest Speak's Buddies]

Thank you for your comments. That was my point in post. I do not think it is possible to have a sweet, loving, Grey. It is just not in their nature. I would not trade my 3 year female Grey for anything, and I love her for being her, but she is not a bird to be trusted as far as biting goes. My husband, who is the one who has tamed many, many birds does not feel comfortable even touching her as she will let you rub her around the eyes and then, turn right around and bite you.

I keep working with her and 'hoping' she will change, but I am sure that it really not going to happen. We have no plans on selling her, but....if the day ever came and we really could not keep her, I have no idea who would want a bird that you have to be careful of possibly getting a painful bite.

 

My wife and I had a grey, hand-fed from egg-hood. After a couple of years, it started being aggressive toward me for no apparent reason. We interacted with him frequently, although my wife more than I. After several painful bites, I basically stayed away. A couple of years later, he started being aggressive toward my wife as well, even though she would interact with him continually during the day - his cage was in her office, in constant visual contact with her 8+ hours a day, plus "playtime" where he would come out, walk around, play with toys, chase me around trying to nip at my toes, etc.

We eventually had to give him up, to a bird sanctuary.

[Guest cyberknock]

I must say that going from a Cockatoo to a Grey is a major change!

 

For people who want a cuddly parrot as a 'first' priority, the 'Too' is probably the bird for them, provided that they can live with the constant demands for attention...

 

For people who are looking for a 'family fun bird, a clown' the macaw is probably for them, provided that they can live with the noise levels...

 

But for people who are looking for an intelligent, talkative, sensitive bird which is also RELATIVELY quiet and not UNREASONABLY demanding of continual attention, the Grey is definitely THE bird to share one's home with.

 

In that light, my seven year old CAG ECHO is what I am looking for in a companion bird.

He is all what I expected and a LOT more!!!

 

the above statements, as it is their right to do, but in no way will I be drawn into an argument!)

"She will not hesitate to bite my husband ..<snip>.."

 

In terms of your bird suddenly nipping your husband here is my opinion FWIW:

 

A) I assume from the above that you were the main hand feeder and are now still the main feeder/keeper, preener, etc, and the bird has even regurgitated for you on occasion...

 

B) I assume that your husband only has limited interaction with the bird, as compared to you...

 

C) If I am right so far, the fact that he nips your husband is because you

PAY ATTENTION to your husband ... attention that your bird is not DEMANDING noisily, but feels HE/SHE would rather have instead. A bit of jealousy..

"She talks only in a gruff voice (male).."

 

D)The fact that your bird speaks in a male voice, probably imitating your husband, is because the bird notices that you do pay attention when your husband speaks to you.. Your bird imitates your husband's voice thinking that you will pay more attention to her/him if he uses the same voice.

 

E)The voice gruff because your husband sometimes has arguments with you? In that case your bird is maybe trying to 'protect you' if he/she sees you as his/her 'mate' or at least a loved member of the flock... and hence the biting...

 

My opinion is that your husband needs to spend more time chatting to your bird ( in the cage is OK, so that he won't get bitten) and try to develop his own routine. This is a time investment that will pay off if you and he are patient. It may take a year... Eventually you will notice that your bird will develop his/her own relationship with your husband. The important thing to remember is to develop a ROUTINE meaning something that the bird can depend on... such as a last scritch at night before covering the cage..

or let your husband be the one who will remove the cover in the morning and spend a couple of minutes talking gently to birdie.... Or maybe hubby can give birdie an after dinner treat. He can sing or whistle to the bird or he can play music to him. Whatever he wants to do, as long as it is an activity that both your husband and your bird enjoy and that it is an activity that is special to them both ( meaning that it is NOT something that you will

ALSO do with your bird) and as long as your bird can DEPEND on it...

 

Again, this is MY opinion, based on personal experience, studies and general reading as well as common sense and intuition, which I absolutely do not feel obligated to list/ discuss for the group to try and pick apart one item at a time!

 

If you feel my suggestions have merit, then by all means try them! HOWEVER, if , as you say: "I am so disappointed in her. I had hoped for a sweet, lovable bird that I could kiss, hold and pet..." Then, if you do not wish to alter your expectations of, or change your interaction with your bird, then maybe it would be better both for the bird and for yourself to find a new home for your bird before serious damage is done.

 

Good luck either way..

[Guest cyberknock]

"..They have a hard time recognizing how much they hurt when they bite.

BB will give kisses but has a tendency to give them to hard, we are working on that.."

 

I am not quite convinced that they do not know how hard they bite! For example, ECHO my CAG will nip my finger just hard enough to let me know he has enough scritching ( when I am distracted and am not reading his body language)

 

What tells me that he "knows" what he is doing is that he then looks at me and says:

"Shame! Shame! "

 

You see, that is what I used to tell him whenever he nipped as a baby.. ( I used to say: "Shame, shame! gently now!" )

 

Well, you might think that in his mind 'Shame' might equate 'Bite' but NO!

I had first hand experience that he knows EXACTLY what "SHAME!" means!

 

One day I was getting a bit late to go to the vet and was in a hurry.. I wanted him to step up out of the cage, but he wanted to play his favourite game of 'catch my tail if you can!'.... Out of patience, I bodily picked him up out of his cage... and..

 

He said to me, loud and clear: "SHAME! SHAME! GENTLY!"

I laughed so hard I was late for my appointment...!

 

He also says: "ZITA, SHAME! SHAME! GO TO YOUR BED, RIGHT NOW " any time our Viszla dog barks! Any time I hear him respond that way to the barking,

I answer: "thank you ECHO!" ( The dog listens MOST times)

"..BB will let you know if he doesn't want to be loved on..."

 

You seem to know how to deal with your bird in a 'grey manner'... I congratulate you, Trish, on having learned to read your grey's body language, or at least in continuing to learn, and also on working patiently with him... The rewards are more than worth while!

[Guest goose]

Lorraine while reading your response my husband pointed out that bb does know because there's this sound that I make when he bites me to hard and after he does bite to hard he does it.

Yes I will continue to learn, they are my kids. I also have a greenwing macaw and blue and gold. Believe it or not bb can put them two in there place. It is funny when we see them run from him. BB has earned the name vulture from my husband. He stands guard over everything like a vulture.

My greenwing got the name big read headed chicken because he use to bite my husband and run. They both come to a understanding. He tolerates him LOL

Blue and gold only has her name cutie.

Hope all works out for you and your bird echo

Lee & Trish