r/AfricanGrey

Lots of new toys and plenty of treats for the day!

Today is cage cleaning day. I also spray Iris with warm water while everything is out of her cage. She doesn’t like to take baths or showers. The weather has been extremely hot here and I thought she would enjoy being sprayed. Nope. She just sat there shaking her head. I stopped spraying her and wiped everything down. After getting her situated I started vacuuming. Oh man. She absolutely went crazy in her water bowl. I couldn’t believe it. So the vacuum trick does work! Thank you to everyone who said it. She’s going to take a good nap now! 👋

Hi y’all,

This morning I noticed Tootie (30M) has a chip on his beak. I’d take him into see his vet, but they’re closed until Monday. I could take him to the local birdie ER, but that feels a little extreme since he doesn’t seem to be in pain or uncomfortable (from what I can tell). Any recommendations?

He has three toes forward on his right foot!

Thought I would share this as it's unique / wondering if anyone else's bird is the same.

He had this when we got him, it's a result of being born with a calcium deficiency and resulted in his toes being weird but also his right leg having a sort of right angle in it.

Side note: the bad perch is being replaced soon! It's only in temporarily as we've been trying to tempt him to use more of his cage space lower down

Habitat advice needed
This is our three-year-old Mortimer. When we got him, my husband was working from home. About six months ago my husband started a new job where he has to go into work which means Morty is in his habitat for most of the day. I’m just wondering what other folks do for their birds that have to be home enclosed for 10+ hours a day. We have a green cheek conure on the other side of the room who is in her enclosure as well, so there is somebody else in the room, we play music while we’re gone, but I don’t feel like that’s enough. I was thinking about getting a larger habitat so he had more room to move around, but I don’t know if space is what he needs.

What do you do? What does your set up look like? I want to make sure he’s happy and entertained.

Addie still refuses to allow the mist bottle or a larger container to bathe in. But whenever she decides she is going to bathe? It is like a triathlon.

I wish I could be so flexible!

This is Griffin, he'll be 18 on the 11th (of July). He has zero interest in working, some political opinions and is 100% judgemental. However, he'll do almost anything for a good head scratch.

Oh and he completely runs the house - we just live here.

Hi everyone, this is my parrot Noah. I’m coming here because i’m having issues with her feathers that have never come up before and I’m worried about her. I was wondering if anyone had any helpful advice. Noah has always had great feathers. She was never a grey that had any issues with them, she’s not neurotic. I know she does not pluck. She is happy, I don’t think it’s a behavioral problem. She has lots of enrichment within her cage and she gets taken out often. Suddenly, after her pin feathers came in this time, they came out looking like this. This has never happened. I help her as much as I can, but she is 17 and every time when her pin feathers come in, she often takes care of a good portion of them herself and she still looks healthy and beautiful.

Here are some things I think it could be:

• I was giving her the Zupreem pellets, but ever since they changed the packaging, she doesn’t like eating most of them anymore. Now this has only been going on for a month or so, so I wanted to wait and see if that was maybe a momentary thing.
• Noah’s cage was, for a about a year or so, in a room that got a ton of sunlight, now we have moved her to a room that has a lot less sunlight because the other option was not very practical and we thought this would be better for the bird because she could be in the center of the house involved with the family throughout the day. The other room was at a very removed part of the home. So i’m wondering if maybe the change in sunlight could have impacted her feather quality.

Things to note:

• Noah gets a very good seed mix (the rainforest exotics vitamin seed mix for parrots) in addition to fruits everyday and bites of whatever we are eating that we think is acceptable for her to have. She eats apples, bananas, and strawberries as her main fruits. She also has granola bites everyday with superfoods, primarily spinach and kale.
• She likes to scratch herself with little pieces of wood from her toys that she breaks off, but that has never caused issues before.

If anybody has any advice on what to look for or if something similar has happened to their parrot that they were able to find a solution for, please let me know 🙏 I’ve included pictures of what her normal feathers look like versus now. Thank you!

We got our TAG 24yo (estimated) female from my husband's grandmother 3 weeks ago and we are so obsessed with her! She's so silly and so much fun! We have had to overhaul her diet, but she's trying lots of new things and it's going great. She's been able to enjoy some outside time with us, also!

She's stress pulled her tail feathers and flight feathers out from being neglected for over a year but she's still beautiful! Her vet visit went great and she's healthy. The vet isn't worried about the growth on her nose at this time.

Originally named 'Baby' but we changed her name to Sprout! 🥰

My girl Rafiki ♥️
I was recording her while I was cleaning HER mess.
😂

Okay so just a little background before starting any of this, I’m read countless posts in this forum aswell as many other informational sources about African greys and, I’m by no means an expert and I’m actually writing this for a place to discuss and possibly even get advice. I’m currently a 19 year old and I’ve been fascinated and obsessed with African grey’s since I was a young kid(10-11ish) when I read NEXT by Micheal Crichton. This novel for all of you who haven’t read has an African grey ( GERAD) who is rather witty and makes for an even more fun read. I truthfully never thought that I’d own my own African grey though, they seemed part too expensive and I thought that maybe it just wasn’t for me. Move forward all these years later and my mom is getting into birds and as a hobby and it started with canary’s and then budgies. Note I’m constantly telling my mom that these birds need to be taken care of properly and aren’t just decorations, which she isn’t the most receptive to and it doesn’t detour me from telling her off. A few months back she ends up bringing home a sun conure. Yes his name is mango… but this simple introduction sparked my interest back in wanting parrots and, I researched and researched in pursuit of being the best and most responsible bird owner I could be. I knew my mom wouldn’t be able to provide this for them since she works all day and she pretty much just saw Facebook videos of birds singing and deicided she wanted to make the commitment. Obviously not doing research of her own she had the poor guy on seeds, obviously I had to get him on a chop and harrisons high potency diet instead slowly transitioning and he’s adapting pretty well he does well with target training and he can do step up consistently, I started doing a snap before I say snap up and now whenever I snap and I’m a few feet out and put my hand out he’s able to fly to me. Obviously short training intervals and I make sure he’s stimulated with toys and other things. But I would still consider myself far below a novice and suddenly one random day I wake up to see a timneh African grey in my garage( GIZMO) my goodness she’s a beautiful bird and she might not be the specific bird of my dreams a Congo she’s slowly but surely changing that opinion. But I’m concerned about being able to provide her with what she needs I try my hardest and my parents pressure me a lot because they question why a TAG isnt as social as a sun conure. I.e she doesn’t step up at all she’s terrified she bites obviously when we breach her personal space. I respect all her warnings and everything but to my parents who are just basing their realities of these birds from Facebook reels, it’s so hard to keep up and then give me a deadline of two months to see progress with gizmo. I still try my hardest and she’s simmered down a lot since when she first arrives she would stay on her perch for hours not moving and only eat from her bowl and drink water. Now she moves around and chews on toys sometimes she climbs down from her cage but usually she’s perched on top of it, I want to know if anybody has advice. I’ve been trying to target train her and she’s somewhat receptive she doesn’t walk for it but she’ll reach her neck out. My parents force her to step up by making her fly off her cage to a lower point of the room and then she stands up, but I don’t think that’s healthy at all for her. One time I offered her a cardboard box and she loved it, she shredded it up. She plays and fidgets with her toys but as for training I’m worried I’m reaching a wall.

FYI: mango and gizmo are not housed together nor are they allowed near each other I’m always watching their interactions and make sure they don’t get too close. I essentially just let them eat together so gizmo can see how social and interactive mango is with me. I heard a monkey see monkey do kinda of effect happens

However, he’s only using it to try and destroy it, but at least he’s using it

Got few branches from a guava tree from a family member and made few perches for fraction of a price. You could make about 10-20 perches with these items. I spent about $35

https://a.co/d/08bGRwN8

https://a.co/d/04DQDa9w

https://a.co/d/0abUH0JK

He's such a pain in the butt sometimes but I love him. I rescued him when he was about seven, so that would make him approximately 22 years old now.

He laughs like an old man who has smoked three packs of cigarettes daily for his entire life and his favorite song to whistle is the Andy Griffith theme song. He's definitely a character 🤍