Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: BowEd on November 09, 2015, 11:39:32 am
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Well fellas my girlfriend convinced me to get more noise in the house here.An african gray parrot is coming into the house.Anyone ever fool with them?They are pretty neat though too.
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Are the feathers big enough for fletching?
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You'd have to ask Robin.I'm sure she'd trim yours if you tried....lol.
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I hope this is not her first bird. African Grays are a lot of work and need a lot of the right kind of attention or they will get neurotic and have all kinds of issues. They are great birds if you know what you're doing, but sadly far too many Grays are not properly cared for an end up dead or in rescues/sanctuaries. I have a mustache parrot and a good friend runs a bird rescue, she has hundreds of birds in her sanctuary and has seen many grays in sad shape from not being cared for properly. Taking in a gray is like agreeing to have a toddler in your family for the rest of your life and if not cared for and given as much attention as a toddler they will become quite psychologically damaged.
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I hope this is not her first bird. African Grays are a lot of work and need a lot of the right kind of attention or they will get neurotic and have all kinds of issues. They are great birds if you know what you're doing, but sadly far too many Grays are not properly cared for an end up dead or in rescues/sanctuaries. I have a mustache parrot and a good friend runs a bird rescue, she has hundreds of birds in her sanctuary and has seen many grays in sad shape from not being cared for properly. Taking in a gray is like agreeing to have a toddler in your family for the rest of your life and if not cared for and given as much attention as a toddler they will become quite psychologically damaged.
so very true - - They will give you attitude and bite the hand that feeds them, if they feel you have been neglecting them, emotionally.
Sounds ridiculous, since we are talking about a bird, but true.
They are such beautiful birds though. If cared for properly, they will likely outlive you, so be ready for a lifetime of "polly want a cracker" or whatever else you teach him to say.
I had a myna bird, years ago, and the location in the little house where his cage was kept was just outside the door to the bathroom - - and that damn bird learned to duplicate the sound of the toilet flushing, and would "flush" all day long, except when the door bell would ring, and to that, he would usually say, "hello dummy". When he felt neglected, he had this way about whipping his butt sideways in such a way as to be able to fling his poo quite accurately. Just want to make sure I said "damn bird".
Russ
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Ditto to what has been said. They are very intelligent, and can have quite a range of sounds, and mimicking. But they do require a LOT of attention. I have some Friends in the Virgin Islands, that have a Scarlet Macaw, and a Hyacinth, very neat birds. Some Friends of mine had an African Grey, and like a lot of them, it chose the Husband as it's Buddy, the wife, it would tolerate, but would take any opportunity to bite her. When she cleaned the cage, she would use a stick to get it to perch on, and then she would put it on top of the cage, and change the paper, and food, and water. But the bird, would lean over, and bite her, and she would sometimes respond with "Son of a #%$@#!!" Well one day she was cleaning the cage, and the bird was on top of the cage, and leaned over to bite her, and leaned too far, and fell off the cage, and when it hit the floor, it stood up, and said "Son of a $#%#@!" So they can use some words in the correct context. But they are great pets, but don't be surprised if it chooses one over the other, rather than both. If it bites, or tries to bite, never hit it, or thump it with your finger, just blow a puff of air at it. My Girlfriend raised Cockatiels, and they were also very demanding in attention, and also very smart. And don't think a bird can't make facial expressions. Oh indeed they can! But good luck, and get some good books, on the care and feeding of your parrot. Get lots of toys for it also. There are certain foods, you should avoid, like avocados. It is too fatty for it. Anyway, enjoy your new permanent child.
Wayne
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Yes they are beautiful birds for sure and we've done out homework and know what we are getting into.
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My mustache parrot is a hoot (is that a bird pun), she's small, they are related to indian ringnecks but very different in behavior (and noise level, thank the gods), they are not as smart as a gray but as smart as most any other of the larger parrots. She can say a few things, "pretty bird" and her name and can laugh with you etc. (I swear I've heard her do the star wars imperial march under her breath but she'll never do it if she knows I'm listening). She doesn't understand context so it's pure mimicry but she does know it's our language because when she gets angry at one of us it's so funny to hear here curse us out in the only English she knows, pretty bird and her name, but she says it differently and vigorously so you know she is blessing you up one side and down the other, lol. She prefers my wife but she's really a very good bird so shes nice to me too, just doesn't snuggle like she does with my wife. The kids, they burned that bridge long ago in that birds mind, lol.
Here's what a mustache parrot looks like if you've never seen one:
(http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz71/clawinnz/Cockatiels/IMG_0375.jpg) (http://s815.photobucket.com/user/clawinnz/media/Cockatiels/IMG_0375.jpg.html)
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I had a friend with an African Gray.....when he would come home from work and walk into his apartment, the parrot would say, "How's it going Vince?"......too funny
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Sounds like a hoot fellas.Robin seen the opportunity to have one and took it.She won't even let me cut the goats horns either.....lol.She's worked in a dog rescue league for a number of years.She realizes the demand it takes to own one and informs me too.I've been around animals being a farmer all of my life.Have a soft spot for coonhounds.Don't hunt much any more since 2005.Used to competition hunt a lot too.Any how this bird is already quite a character.Says "Go Chargers"!!!I'll have to change that I hope.Saying "Chargers suck"..."Go Vikings"...lol.It also says in a deep voice "Hello" like a man...lol.I'm sure I'll learn alot about parrots.It's supposed to know close to 100 words I guess and 20 phrases.It's 5 to 6 years old.
Your mustache parrot is just plain beautiful.I'll try to get a pic up of Missy who this is even though he's a male bird...lol.
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I am scared of those things. They can be dangerous! Dang things can bite a finger off.
Leave me catching injured eagles, owls, angry redtail hawks and the like. They are gentle!
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Here's a pic of Missy.
(http://i920.photobucket.com/albums/ad41/Beadman1/IMG_20151109_190825_zpszxs8lnq4.jpg) (http://s920.photobucket.com/user/Beadman1/media/IMG_20151109_190825_zpszxs8lnq4.jpg.html)
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Unsalted sunflower seeds are a nice treat. Not more than a half dozen or so a day, though. Like any other nut, she is gonna love 'em because they are fatty. They will start ignoring all other food and scream for nuts and if you give in, you will have a bird dead from fatty liver disease. It is painful and takes months for the poor animal to die in agony.
Wrap an unsalted sunflower seed in the shell inside a piece of newspaper. She will have to shred the paper to get to the cookie. That's fun. When she gets good at that, add more paper. When that starts to get boring, stuff the wadded newpaper with it's sunflower seed into a toilet paper tube. A little harder to destroy, but that is part of the game. Eventually, fill the cups in half an egg carton (the grey paper mache' kind) with wadded newspaper with sunflower seeds in just a few of them (gotta guess which one has the cookie, baby!).
Parrots are not "gorge" feeders like a raptor. A hawk nails a rabbit, gorges until full, and flies off for a nap in the sun. Parrots nibble and taste all day long as they forage for their meals. Hiding their food all over the cage and the room is good for them. It engages their mind and their playful mood. It's natural and normal for them, too. Think of this bird as a toddler for the next 35 years and you get the drift.
Good luck, Ed.
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Heard they all taste good wrapped in bacon.
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Yep.We've done our homework on this type of bird.Guess everyone can be a lttle different.The thing I'll have to get used to is the noise deal.Other than that it seems a lot more entertaining than listening to the radio....lol.This bird is well taken cared are of.I'm the trustee signed on to give it back to the previous owners in case Robin and me disappear.Notorized....lol.Someone will take care of him.
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Heard they all taste good wrapped in bacon.
On the rare occasions my bird gets loud I've recited recipes, fricassee of mustache parrot, poached mustache parrot, parrot a l'orange, lol. Frankly I'm surprised she hasn't picked this up, lol. One year I asked my bird rescue friend what she was having for thanksgiving, well apparently her birds were giving her the business that day because she said "A lorikeet stuffed inside a gray stuffed inside a blue and gold macaw..." lol
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Heard they all taste good wrapped in bacon.
On the rare occasions my bird gets loud I've recited recipes, fricassee of mustache parrot, poached mustache parrot, parrot a l'orange, lol. Frankly I'm surprised she hasn't picked this up, lol. One year I asked my bird rescue friend what she was having for thanksgiving, well apparently her birds were giving her the business that day because she said "A lorikeet stuffed inside a gray stuffed inside a blue and gold macaw..." lol
Isn't anything good wrapped with bacon?
I just have some parakeets. Loud, Messy, And they really hate to stay up late, or for me to take a nap.
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Go to You tube, and search for Hatebeak. Prepare to laugh. ;)
---Ford---
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Yea that's a band.Lots of funny U tube takes on these Gray's.Tui has a tantrum.Pretty funny.We've been figuring out listening a lot of her words.Pretty bird,Baby bird,some kind of siren sound,Hello,a long dying whistle and then the words "in coming",Robin sweeps under her cage she'll say "your a messy bird".Quite the entertainment!!!!I'm sure there are a lot more to come.She loves grapes to eat and she seems to be getting more comfortable with her new surroundings.
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The band provides music, but the 'vocals' were all by an African Grey named Waldo.
---Ford---
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There was a show on TV a while back about the difficulty of keeping parrots. The part that sticks in my mind was a video of the animal welfare people breaking into an abandoned house and finding it completely empty except for a cage with a Grey in it. It was just about dead from thirst/hunger. Fortunately it survived. Unfortunately so did the people that left it there.
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Friends of mine run a parrot rescue and DC's story is not terribly unusual. They were contacted by a sheriffs department in Colorado to help with an abandoned macaw. It was late November and the sheriff's deputy was at the place to serve papers on the occupants. Nobody home, doors open, house cleared out. He checks at the neighbors to see when the occupants were last around and finds they skipped town a week before. The neighbors claim they keep hearing a baby crying but can't find it. Sheriff's deputy finds the macaw in a cardboard box in the garbage can. Bird lost several toes and part of one wing to frostbite, but is the most loving and gentle bird to this day.
I can love the meanest of dogs and the most ornery cats. People? That's another issue altogether.
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There was a show on TV a while back about the difficulty of keeping parrots. The part that sticks in my mind was a video of the animal welfare people breaking into an abandoned house and finding it completely empty except for a cage with a Grey in it. It was just about dead from thirst/hunger. Fortunately it survived. Unfortunately so did the people that left it there.
i'm pretty sure i saw that documentary on netflix.
i remember that scene >:(
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Our bird had a previous owner too, not sure if they were a breeder or just jerks, but this bird was hand fed and well taken care of for the first few months but as soon as it was old enough to feed itself etc it was tossed in a cage and not touched until she reached our rescue friend who knew we were looking for a mustache parrot and go her to us. She was still really young which helped but she was quit ornery, not only was she not used to being handled anymore she was bitter from having been abandoned by the last humans that handled her so it took quite some time to bring her around but she's a sweety now, it's been years since she's even nipped at one of us. I couldn't imagine trying to rehab an older bird or a larger bird even. People think ol' Polly is gonna sit in her cage in the corner and look pretty and say cute things when they have visitors but the reality is that's another child in your family. Having been at my rescue friends house many times I've seen the sad results of neglect on the psychologically damaged birds, she had this one bird, a macaw of some sort, that had been actively abused and was so neurotic he would pluck all his feathers out constantly, he was always bald and bleeding, eventually died of infection from it, so sad.
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My Girlfriend's Cockatiel, would whisper, when I would walk out at night, to get a drink of water, and I would whsiper to him, and a little whistle, noise, so I would not frighten him, by waking him, when he heard me open the refrigerator door. He would whisper whistle back at me, and all would be well. When she put the cover on his cage, at night, and she went to bed, and I would stay up and watch T.V.. He would walk back and forth on his perch, stomping his feet, shaking the cage. I thought what the heck is he upset about, then, I thought, oh, so I turned the T.V. down, and he settled down, and went to sleep. He would fly to me, and take food from my mouth, but would not let me pet him, or touch him. He would fall asleep on my knee, but she was the only one who could pet him. He would snuggle under her chin, and she wold rub the back of his neck, and he would close his eyes, and make these little chortle like chirps. He loved shrimp, and lobster. I would feed him beef, and he would take a piece from my lips, and go on my shoulder, and eat it, then go back for more, but if it was shrimp or lobster, he would stay right there, and when I didn't have any more at the moment, he would run up to my shoulder, lean over, and bite my cheek, and screech, and run back down my mouth and check, to see if any more shrimp or lobster, was available. Quite the little character! One day he flew to the refrigerator, and started walking to the back of it. My Girlfriend said go get him, before he falls, behind the refrigerator, so I go to get him, and he leans over the edge of the unit, cocks his head, and looks down behind the refrigerator, and says,"What're you doing?" I asked my Girlfriend if she had a troll living behind the refrigerator. He could whistle the worms, crawl in and worms, crawl out, and various little phrases. She raised him from a very young stage, and the girl who previously had him, didn't pay much attention to him, and almost starved him to death. My Girlfriend nursed him back to health, and he lived about 13 years. She would get up every 4hrs, or so, and feed him, and water him, with an eye dropper, till he was able to finally start feeding on his own. She kept him in a fish tank. And he would travel with her, in that tank. And in the morning he would tap the side of the tank, to wake her up. He did not like insects though. There was moth in the apt. and it was just a small one, my Mother used to call them camel flies, because of the wing structure. Anyway, this little moth flew by him, when he was out of his cage, and you would have thought a cat had him! He really put up a ruckus, and flew back to his cage, and squawked, until we caught the moth, and got rid of it. Sounds like you have things under control, and Missy, has a good home, and slaves. ;)
Wayne
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Nice story stickbender.Our Gray here bit the tip of my index finger the other day here.I was offering it part of a grape which I know it likes but at the moment he did'nt want it.I kept reoffering it and finally he bit me good.I blew on his face for him to back off which worked just to let him know he can't get rid of me by biting.Other than that he's a character.Jingle the keys as you go out the door and he'll say...see ya later....lol.Another video on U-tube shows this Gray called Einstine.Quite the vocabulary.
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Stickbender, my Mustache is the same way with my wife, she'll let me pet her sometimes but you can tell she's humoring me, but she'll cuddle under my wifes chin just like you said, it's a family bond thing with birds.
Beadman, if you haven't read/been told this yet, another thing to remember about disciplining a naughty bird is that they are actually surprisingly good at reading human facial expressions and tone of voice, many times just giving the bird "the evil eye" will be enough to shame/chastise them. Also if you haven't already look up laddering as a training/disciplining tool, on the rare occasions my bird gets naughty a few seconds of laddering is all it takes to un-rile her, lol.
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I'll admit dealing with birds is different for me.Being a farmer I've dealt with many different types of animals.Been bit by everything in Iowa I think.Birds would be chickens,ducks, and geese.Most don't have no sense compared to a dog or a horse.One thing I don't do with animals and birds is bluff.They better mind or it's time to pay the keeper.Just stern positive forward action.This Gray is a nice bird and it's attitude is good.Never heard of laddering as discipline.Sounds like excersize to take the edge off.This bird has more toys than carter has liver pills.Always chewing on something or eating and it's mind is being occupied pretty good while in it's cage.It seeks out attention but has not been handled that much from previous owners.So we have been making it step up on our arms to be put on a perch in the living while watching TV.I was nipped during the first time we made it get on this perch and it was a little scared that's all.We're having a blast with it.
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The theory behind the laddering is basically the first thing the bird learns through human training is the basic step up. Even when they want to come to you or if they don't, stepping up is a kind of submission in the same way any training is really. So when you get the bird to step up, step up, step up as you do in laddering you're reasserting your authority even if the bird doesn't consciously realize this. So it's not so much a negative feedback disciplining like a good mean stare and a firm word of scolding so much as a way to reassert your authority as higher in the pecking order and tends to realign their attitude when they get snippy. Oh, another tip (can you tell I did a LOT of research on tropical bird behavior, lol), be careful about letting the bird interact with you above your eye level. In tropical bird society the pecking order is can be physically displayed by relative height, the top bird is literally on top looking down on the others. It's not usually a big deal to let your bird chill on top of the cage or a high perch, but when interacting directly always have their eyes lower down that yours or they may get ideas about who's really in charge. That's why it's not a good idea to shoulder larger birds (shoulder being the term for letting them perch on your shoulder like a pirate) as their eyes will be above yours.
Sorry if I'm being all experienced-mom-telling-new-mom how to do things, I'm just really interested and fascinated by these creatures. When we first got ours it's like you said, they're so different from any animal I had interacted with before so I dove into the research on their behavior and now I can read the tropical birds just as well as I can read dogs or cats.
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Very interesting and makes sense.Don't worry about over explaining yourself.I'm good if your good.We got to make ours step up a lot more in my opinion.Got a nice big cage for it.My girlfriend has been making countless toys for it to tear up,and is the main handler so far.[He's a chewing son of a gun I tell ya].Even has a 2 month supply of assorted veggies and nuts etc. for it.No avacado though....lol.Mister wants to interact very well and seems to talk more when I'm in the other room through the doorway.Not always.How long have you had yours?
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Probably close to five years and she was maybe 6-10 months old when we got her. We don't do much training sessions anymore cause she pretty well trained as well as we want her now but in the beginning we did dedicated training sessions and each sessions started with a little laddering, "step up, step up, step up, that's a very good bird!" etc., then we'd work on just some interaction, giving almonds for treats when she let us touch her, verbally scolding and laddering when she was naughty, and we'd end our training session with laddering and much praise. We tried to do every training session in a certain spot in the house to help differentiate training sessions from just hanging out. While a mustache parrot is extremely smart for a smaller parrot, I would put her on the same level as a macaw, she's nowhere near as smart as a gray so you guys will probably have more activities you can do in the training sessions, whereas with ours it was more just behavioral stuff. Are you keeping his wings clipped or letting him fly some? Ours never flew when we first got her and we kept it that way until she was behaving very well and we knew she wouldn't use flight as a way to get away from us at the first opportunity, lol, then we let her feathers grow and did training sessions to work on flying and landing (nothing funnier than a majestic bird of paradise missing the landing on her cage and unceremoniously fluttering down the wall and *thump*, lol). When she got good enough that she would start to fly places around the house on her own we let her enjoy that for a couple weeks but knew we had to put a stop to that for her safety. So now we clip her then let it grow until she starts getting adventurous and clip her again so she has cycles where she can fly enough to get to a shoulder at the dinner table (and beg, lol) and fly back to her cage but little more.
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I knew a parrot that would say "Here kitty kitty kitty..." ;) Congratulations on your feathered toddler, the most I ever had was parakeets as a kid (and I suppose chickens now). From everything I've heard they're hard work but a lot of fun for the right kind of people with the right attitude.
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Yea chickens,ducks and geese are mostly what I messed with in the past.Robin has a quaker parrot here too that says kitty kitty kitty.We are getting the Gray to step up a lot from place to place.It seems to like it.It does'nt fly around crazy or anything because I think the previous owners did'nt get it out much.It's a little unsure of itself climbing around outside it's cage.
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My bird likes to play with the little plastic cat toy balls with the little bell inside, she picks it up in one foot and shakes it and the cat comes running thinking it's for her, lol
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Coool.Robin just put a plastic spatula with plastic measuring cups tied to it to chew on.I swear it's a living breathing can opener...lol.This bird barks like one of the dogs in the house here already.Says his name too.I keep trying to get it to say good morning and it has'nt yet.Keeps saying helloooo.