Timneh African grey help:

[hassan94]

Hello!
I bought a 3 months old Timneh african grey and I have had him for about 3 weeks now. He is Handfeed and hand tame aswell.
I have had some issues with him lately:
*He has started biting abit(more like chewing), although i do not think that is a big problem. Any tip to make him less wanting to chew on my finger:P?
*He does not really want to sit inside his cage? Any suggestions?
*He loves to get pet when he is a bit sleepy, which is lovely. But when he is awake, he does not really like to be handled by hand. I have tought him to step up, sit down and small things like that, but i can not pet him while he is fully awake. Shall i only have a bit of patience? suggestions?
Thank you for your answeres!

[Polarn]

this might seem like standard out of the box answers however, but anyways... not all birds really like being petted or held, and babies are generally more acceptable towards this whisle sleepy couse then its time to bunch up in a crowded area anyways.

As far as the biting... either its beaking witch is pretty much normal, and generally something they go through while learning to step up etcetera to check if a finge/hand is stable enough to step up onto. If it is biting and not beaking, chances are your doing something he doesnt particulary like and have missed the warnings coming before the beak (this is how you teach a bird to skip warnings and get straight to biting causing birds that "bites out of nowhere") birds generally does not fight they flight instead... but given you (or the breeder) has removed that possibility the only option to get away from whatever is uncomftible is to get you to back off instead, this is why clipped birds generally bite more than flighted birds.
Imagine a scared dowg where you tie its legs together causing it to hop rather than run, if you were to chase down this dog thats scared of you, it wouldnt keep on hopping couse its pointless, it would turn around and try fight you off instead (I know dogs and birds isnt the same, but in both these cases you remove a possibility to perform a natural behavior).

About the cage, my first bet is that it doesnt satisfy his needs or doesnt satisfy them good enough, like it doesnt have enough things todo while in the cage or the cage is to small to actually play in. If you provide the basic needs inside of the cage such as food, toys (both foraging/puzzles and other types) natural branches to break apart with the beak, enough room to flap the currently (hoping you will let him grow his feathers out) useless wings, fresh water. if all these needs are met in the cage (and food nowhere else) then the cage should be seen as something possitive. But if given no timeconsuming foraging or activity to keep his mind focused on a task or occupied, or placed in too small of a cage or never really fed in the cage but always on the playstand then why would he like to be in the cage? Basically the questions you will have to try and figure out answers too is:
What is occupying his time in the cage?
What is he doing when not eating while inside the cage? (if the answer here is sitting on a stick doing nothing until the next meal, you will need to spend some time thinking about the third question)
What is missing?

[friend2parrots]

i agree with polarn about the biting and the flight issues. biting situation will improve as you learn to watch his body language to avoid bites.

also, allowing your parrots wings to grow out and training him to fly (see the really helpful flight training guides posted by the forum owner michael) will REALLY improve his behavior overall and help solve these issues. because african greys are heavybodied birds, it will take him some time to build up the chest muscles needed for even simple hops and jumps, but he will get there. see the posts in the indoor flight section of this forum.

also, given that youv'e se t up the cage appropriately as polarn has suggested, you can encourage your bird to go into his cage when he needs to by luring him inside with a treat that he receives only for going in.

eventually youcan set up a command for going into the cage. in the long run, some basic positve reinforcement training, clicker traiining, target training as described elsewhere on this forum and blog will really help too.

[hassan94]

thank you very much for the reply!
About the beaking thing: He does not really seem scared of me? He rather does the beaking when he wants me to take him out of the cage and things like that. Now my thought has been: "If I let him bite me and still take him out, that might make it a habbit of him to bite everytime he wants to do something" Like a child. Am i wrong in this sense?
He is not really afraid of me in any way, he do show signs of not wanting to being touched by moving away. But as soon as i want him to step up, he does it directly and there is actually alot of interraction.

Now there is a whole story behind this and i wont be able to tell you with just one post, but I am curious as to if my approach is correct or not.
It is not that he just lets me pet him when he is sleepy,no , he rather comes forward to get a head scratch by himself. Which does not really show any signs of that he is afraid in any way. Shall I be hopefull of that the relationship will better with time, or should i approach in a different manner?
Thanks again!

[Polarn]

about the scratching, as long as he is asking for it no harm is done, however look at where to pet and where not too, there are smoe posts where it is mentioned on the forum but basically, anywhere he can reach himself, isnt areas where you want to pet and cuddle (ofcourse some training on handling etcetera is good, but thats different than cuddling) I don't know particularly much about the greys mating behaviors etcetera but overall most birds only ever have fysical contact (besides helping each others out preening head n neck) during mating season, wich means your gonna end up with a well petted 14 year old boy who every night gets to make out and be hopeful about it leading into the bedroom but never does going on for years in a row... the first sign something is wrong (perhaps not the first but an easy one, if you keep track of your birds molting), again im not sure about greys and their nesting etcetera, but alot of birds will stop molting when their about to get chicks couse they will spend plenty of time in a cramped up poodrenched little hole feeding the chicks and they will start the molt once their out instead.

As for the biting, well yeah if he bites you when he wants out and you let him out your basically training him to bite to get out of the cage. The better solution would be to make sure not to get bitten, but when he makes a cute little sound you want to be the signal instead you walk ver open the cage and let him climb out of the cage on his own (if he will bite you once youve opened the door) and then ask him to step up once outside, this may very well eliminate the biting issue of wanting to get out of the cage, atleast it should gradually decrease (if wanting out of the cage is the reason behind the biting, wich isnt btw a natural behavior so it is something that he has learnt somewhere)

[Michael]

*He has started biting abit(more like chewing), although i do not think that is a big problem. Any tip to make him less wanting to chew on my finger:P?

Do absolutely nothing. Just ignore this. As the bird grows older and sees that there's no point in doing this, it will grow out of it.

*He does not really want to sit inside his cage? Any suggestions?

Too bad. He'll get over it.

*He loves to get pet when he is a bit sleepy, which is lovely. But when he is awake, he does not really like to be handled by hand. I have tought him to step up, sit down and small things like that, but i can not pet him while he is fully awake. Shall i only have a bit of patience? suggestions?
Thank you for your answeres!

As you build more trust and a relationship, he'll come around. Mind you Greys are less cuddly birds so be happy with what you can get and don't think that it will be a 24/7 cuddlebug.

[hassan94]

Nice, Thank you for all your help!!