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[brandonyoung]

We recently brought home our 3 month old African Grey to find her extremely scared. She would growl whenever anyone came near the cage and become further distressed if we tried to change her food and water. 3 days later and she has come on leaps and bounds and is now allowing us to hand feed her seeds. She also has found how to climb up her cage and onto the play area where she appears a lot happier. It’s clear she is growing in confidence by the day which is great to see. Despite her upward climbing skills, her downward climbing skills are nonexistent! In order to get her back down I have to use a wooden perch which she steps up on before I slowly lower her back into her cage.

I am facing two problems whilst lowering her back down into her cage.

The first is that she sometimes walks toward my hand and bites my fingers, hard! I am aware that I cannot flinch or move as she would get scared and it would make matters worse. As a result I have suffered some painful bites!

The second is that she now knows that she’s going back into her cage each time I offer her the perch. This obviously causes her to be less willing to get onto the perch. I worry that we are heading toward a dilemma where she refuses the wooden perch at all, leaving her stuck up there.

I would appreciate any advice or input on any of the above.

[LynnP]

Hi
Do you know if your baby grey is hand reared or parent reared?

You could use a favourite treat (mine love almonds) to hold in your hand as a bride whilst you lower the bird into the cage, hold it right infront of him so he's almost following it and don't release it until he has stepped off the stick and onto hiss perch in the cage.

Or you could use a buddy perch which basically protects your fingers from bites whilst the bird is on it.

You may find he will settle and once he starts to trust you more and with some training he will hopefully stop the biting, keep working on the stepping up though and really praise when he does something you want and ignore the bites along the way



 

[brandonyoung]

Thanks for the reply.

I am told she was hand reared although we were expecting her to be a little more sociable knowing this fact. Am I wrong in making that assumption? Is it normal for babies to bite?

I will give the almond trick a go. I will also be purchasing a buddy perch.

Thanks again for the help.

[kazky]

they do bite, they bite to test things, they bite to protect themselves, they bite to stop you doing something etc.

She's very young though so she's probably finding her way, and if you haven't had her long it's understandable.

Try to distract her when she does it, as you know if you yelp etc it becomes fun for them.

But in all honesty most of them do bite, it's part of their communication.

[brandonyoung]

Thanks for that Kazky.

[kazky]

Lol probably not the answer you wanted and as silly as it sounds, you kinda get used to it, ha ha

[lou]

when kaspa bites he doesn't loose he clings on while i'm in silent agony i have to go out the room and cry it's so painful x

[kazky]

The things we do eh Lou?

[lou]

and they are still loved after x