Do you think an African Grey is for me?

[Hamzah_khan]

Hello, my name is Hamzah and me and my family are deciding on whether or not an African grey would be a good pet for us. I currently have two sun conures and a cat, our cat has grown up with parrots so she is used to them and isn't interested in birds at all. Me and my sister are at university about 4 times a week however my mother is a stay at home mom and is at home everyday. I was just wondering if an African grey would be ok growing up with other parrots like sun conures. If we buy one we would buy a baby so it can interact with our conures. We used to have an Indian ringneck as well so our conures are also used to having other parrots around. We live in a great so unity so we plan on having our grey interact with others too so we would try to socialize it with our neighbours to try to get it used to other people. Do you think african greys would be a good fit for us? We have a lot of experience with parrots and hand feeding etc since our sun conures are a breeding pair. Any help would be appreciated since we don't want to get an African grey and have it suffer in our home.
Thanks

[Hamzah_khan]

So unity = community haha

[Pajarita]

If your mother stays at home and is willing to have the bird out with her in a safe environment (where there is nothing dangerous to the bird, meaning, not in the kitchen, for example, and the bird can be kept flighted without danger of it flying away, etc) it should be fine.

I seriously doubt the gray will interact with the sun conures, though. I've had six grays, all of them lived in a birdroom with other birds of different species and they never interacted with any other bird, not even another African Gray -and two of them were a brother and a sister that had grown up together and they still did not interact! But it's not as if the gray will be bothered by the conures because, in my personal experience, they tend to ignore them... they just want to be with people.

Socializing is fine but I would be very careful with a gray because they tend to be more high-strung than other species so I would go very, very slowly and only start doing it after the bird is an adult (I would never expose a baby to strangers, it would be stressing to them).

[Hamzah_khan]

Yeah all the parrots I've had are free flight and we have precautions to prevent them from flying away. Hmm ok, so socializing a baby with the neighbours wouldn't be a good idea? Ok, I thought maybe since it's a baby it would be able to adapt more easily, or is that not a true?

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it

[Pajarita]

In the wild, baby parrots don't see any other bird except their parents until they are ready to fly out the nest and, after that, they still stay with their parents for a long time 'learning the ropes' - African grays do it for 1.5 to 2 years. African grays are nervous birds which tend to have behavioral issues when insecure (they are very prone to plucking) and, in my personal opinion, exposing a baby to strangers all the time would stress them out.