Travelling with your grey - my experience

[Christina]

I thought it would be nice to post about my first experience travelling with my grey. This is a long post, sorry. We decided to go away for a weekend and take the birds with us (Finnigan - TAG and our B&G, Loki). They have small travel cages for going to the vets and in event of evacuation (we live in Florida). They are both familiar with the small cages, but they are not suitable for staying in overnight. We went out and purchased a large cage that easily fits the macaw but had a center divider, so both birds could use it. It's not as good as their cages at home, but for the hours we would be gone during the day, it would suffice. We put this cage up in our living room for three weeks prior to our weekend excursion, Loki loved it and Finnigan hated it. In the three weeks it was up, she got no more than a foot away from it without flying away (both of our birds are fully flighted). She never set foot on that cage. :ohmy: I started to feel as if this trip would really stress her out and not be good for her. But, we perservered and packed up our stuff, which to be honest wasn't much of "our" stuff, but mostly bird stuff! We decided to drive at night and cover their cages. This went great, both birds got into their travel cages with no problem and seemed curious about what was happening, but not overly excited. I did feel bad for Finnigan as she holds on much looser than Loki and she fell off her perch several times during the night, thankfully, she only had a couple of inches to the bottom of her travel cage, so no harm done other than her sleep interrupted. The drive was without incident, until the morning when we got into the mountains, then poor Loki got car sick and started throwing up. At first we thought he was happy and regurging showing his enthusiasm for the trip, but after about twenty minutes of this, it became obvious that wasn't the case.:pinch: We had to stop and slow down quite a bit so he could recover. Finnigan did fine (I was the proud mama of course my grey did great!:laugh: )We let them out when we got to the cabin, introduced them to the house, showing them where the windows were (we brought painters tape to put a strip on any window that did not have a blind on it, so they had a visual that the window was closed). I was very surprised to see that both birds, were very relaxed and immediatley began preening. They ate and drank and acted as if they had been there a dozen times before. We put their larger cage up and had an appointment to get to so they had to go into their cage. Now, this is the cage that Finnigan wouldn't touch before, but she went into with little fuss (not NO fuss, but just a little)for which I was eternnally grateful. The birds seemed to have as much fun as we did for the weekend. I was very surprised how quickly they relaxed into the new environment and went with the flow. Finnigan even put her harness on and went for a walk with us in the mountains, she seemed to genuinly love it. The only seemingly stressful part for them was packing to leave. Finnigan was obvioulsy worried about being left behind as she set up her post by the front door. I ended up putting her in her travel cage and putting her in the car even though we were still packing...believe it or not, this settled her down and she seemed happy and comforted to be in the car. She did not fall off her perch on the way home (we did travel at night again). Both birds were very happy to be home, Finnigan had no problem getting in her cage and though she wasn't reluctant to leave it, she was in no hurry to abandon her beloved space.

With all the fuss about birds, and especially greys, not being able to handle changes or new things, I really expected them to be more stressed out and uncomfortable, but both birds travelled with no fuss and adapted well to a new environment and didn't stress about being left alone in the new place. I only post this in the event that anyone is thinking of a long weekend and not sure whether to bring your parrot or not, I think as long as you are confident and take the time to introduce them to their travel cages and such, they will be happy to be with you. I will definelty take my birds with me again.

[LindaMary]

That sounds like a huge success, Christina! Karma to you for sharing the whole process with us!

[Sallas]

When I go back home to my parents house, I take my cats and my Greys with me. They all LOVE going to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

 

We have another cage for the greys that stays at their grandparent's house, and the cats love to attack my mother's plants and sleep in the planters.

[PekingeseMama]

Thanks for posting that....we plan to go on vacation this summer, and I've been considering taking the CAG with us. Now that I know it's possible, I might just do it too!

[Luvparrots]

Great post Christina, thanks for sharing your traveling experience with your Finnigan and Loki with us.

[chimaysmommy]

I know that this is an older post but THANK YOU Christina for the greYt success story on travelling with your grey. My younger brother will be graduating from the Coast Guard in October and we'll have to drive out to Cape May, NJ for the graduation. Since my mother is our only bird-sitter and will also be attending the graduation, Chimay will have to come with us. It's a 9 hour car ride and I am already stressing out over how Chimay will handle it. We're going to start taking Chimay on car-trips with us to get him used to the car rides (that don't end up at the vet's office...lol).