hello 8 month old grey with some questions i need help with

[AbductedByGreys]

third time tryin to post this hope it goes through this time

 

So first off HI new here! And im sure like everyone new, they only come here with problems to begin with, such trouble makers we are

 

LIttle background, i got a new grey when he was about 4 months old, he is now around 8 months. He was seen by an avian vet and checked out ok 'supposedly'. He had the expensive blood tests done just to be sure, not sure if it covered 'everything' or not, i assume they only do some things as needed.

 

 

So here are my issues

1. Ive noticed he does 'alot' of head scratching, like an itch on his ear, i mentioned this to the doctor and she brushed it off saying it was most likely just a nervice tick (not sure why i can't spell that right now). When he gets into it, im talking scratch, preeen some feathers, scratch, preen, scratch. other times he can sit content.

 

To go along with that issue, he will enlongate his neck, open his mouth really wide, and do what looks like a yawn. Except he does this 3, 4, 5 times in a row, sometimes with a scratch. Also, most of the time, when his mouth reaches the full extent it can open, i hear a 'click'. And when i hear that click, i hear it every single time he does the yawn. Once in a while i don't hear the click, but that is actually rare. Im not sure if it has anything to do with it but once i was looking under his bottom beak and when i hear the 'click' i also noticed his skin move. If i were to guess i would say its the opening to his crop snapping open or shut, or his tongue flipping against his beak. This is my first medium sized bird so i do not know if this is normal. I did mention it do the doctor as well, she looked in his mouth and said it looked normal.

 

Now to further add onto this issue, when he lets me pet/scratch his head, sometimes he will throw his head all the way back like he wants me to scratch his neck, when im doing that i notice a hard, round, ball on his neck. It feels kind of like an adams apple, i actually thought it was a neck bone but i don't think they have one like that. My next guess was its his crop, for some reason i thought the crop was right below the bottom beak, this ball is kind of in the middle of his neck. Its really hard to find a good 'crop' picture, in the ones i do find its hard to tell exactly where it is. In some baby pictures it almost looks like the crop is on the very top of their chest kind of sagging over it.

 

Basically im kind of worried he has a crop issue, which is causing the clicking, which is causing him irriatation and leading to excessive yawning/scratching. But having basically just been to the vet, and them being over an hour drive away, i was hoping to be a bit more sure about whats going on, as im not even sure how good that vet is. I didn't leave feeling extreemly confident with the answers i recieved. He also has had some bubbles in his poop, but he was also eating mostly vegi's, ive finally gotten him to eat mostly harrisons now and things look normal, to me anyway.

 

 

2. My next issue involves his cage. I had an old cage, decent size, but a triangle shape to fit nicely in a corner. I thought it would work out for him, but he 'hated' going inside it, and would jump from the top flapping to the bottom ect......he just went into panic mode. Quickly i caved in for a safer option before he got the equivilent to shaken baby syndrome, and just let him sleep and stay out all day and night on the top playpen area. However leaving him alone quickly became a concern so i caved and bought the best cage i could, a $650 beast. My guess as for why he hated the old cage was bar spacing, and perhaps he felt it was too small, so i got the bigger end of the 'recommended' bar spacing for greys this is the cage i got http://www.kingscages.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductID=306, there's not really that many places to buy cages from so this isn't an obscure advertizement, infact i had alot of build issues, quality control, and questionable descriptions/specs with this cage so i actually don't recommend them to be honest, but im not here to bash them. So moving on, i went with a little bit bigger bar spacing, my bird still wouldn't go in without being forced, so i put pillows on the bottom incase he did his crazy stuff.

 

What happened is he eventually fell to the bottom, landed on a pillow, and ended upside down with a wing sticking outside the cage, i was in shock and horror. luckly he didn't hurt himself, not sure how, but alot of it had to do with me being in the room when it happened, if i had been gone for even 5 mins, he would have had a broken wing or sufficated to death.

 

Fast forward months later from that incident, ive now determined the main reason he was so panic'd, he was very weak and clumbsy when we first got him. The food he was on he wasn't eating much of, when i switched him to harrisions he gained 30 grams in like a week. im going to assume he just didn't have the muscles to climb the cage and so he was very afraid of it. now he is climbing the outside very well, it took a while but he is now climbing inside his cage to his water bowl. He was eating and drinking on the fold down top door and making a horrible mess everyday on the floor.

 

Anyways enough backstory pillows are gone off the bottom, thought the cage was safe, i have a hammock right infront of the top door that he walks into, with a perch at the back of the cage at the top. So i trick him with treats to go in, close the door behind him, he turns around in the hammock, sees the door is closed, climbs the door, then the hammock, then ends up with a wing outside the dam cage again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

all im thinking is what in the god dam hell........this entire cage is a dam death trap and i don't know what to do about it????? I thought the bigger spacing and the 'recommended' spacing was what he needed, how is a bar spacing that lets his dam wing out of the cage recommend????????? what.........................thats $650 down the drain?