Hello from Finland!

[Tero]

Hi to you all!
I haven't wrote anything here yet, but I've been reading a lot. Lot of good information, thank you for that!

I'm a 39 year old guy from Finland. I have two African grey parrots, Roope, 17 and Hugo, 3. Although they have boys names, they're both dna-tested girls.
I spend lot of time with them (and for them), some people might say "too much". I'm also an enthusiastic toy-maker. If someone would like to see some of my diy-toys, here's the link to my fb-album:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 3f5df690a2
(Unfortunately all descriptions are in finnish)

Greetings from Finland!
Tero

[Wolf]

Welcome to the forum.
With Greys there is no such thing as spending too much time with them, don't take my word for this. Go ahead and ask them, the Greys.

[Pajarita]

Welcome. Living in Finland, you need to be very careful about light schedule and changing them to make them 'represent' different seasons, please take that into consideration.

[moderndaydinosaurs]

Hi Tero. I just joined too. Can't wait to hear more about your greys. I have a 9 year old male Congo African Grey named Echo. He is like a child to me. So no need to explain yourself for spending "too much time" with your girls! Welcome!

[shiraartain]

The toys look really nice! My morning started with Fajr deciding to take a nap in my blanket while I got some work done and will probably end with Fajr eating his dinner alongside us, so I don't know what you mean by "too much" time

[Tero]

Thank you for your nice posts!

Pajarita:
Yes, our light schedule is quite problematic. Especially summer months are difficult, because there's too much light and summer day lasts almost 24 hours. I just have to create dark sleeping hours with curtains. In winter time days are very short, so I have 4x36W tubes above their cage (2x daylight tubes and 2x Arcadia's UV/avian tubes). Those are connected to timers. They go on and off different times to simulate some kind of sunrise and sunset.

I know, there's no such thing as "too much time with my parrots". Some birdless people thinks so, but they just don't know what kind of animals greys are. Greys are very intelligent, emotional and I have very strong connection with my greys.

Thank you shiraartain for your comment about the toys! I love making those. It also gives me a feel of security, because that way I know exactly what materials is there in the toy. Most of the wood comes from my backyard, so I save some money too.

[shiraartain]

We were actually at the pet store the other day (picking up fish for my youngest sister's tank) and I was trying to convince my dad to buy Fajr a toy. He looked at them and scoffed because they really are all things we can make at home. He told me he could make the entire store's worth.

In the end though, we bought one (plain, with no colors) chewing/climbing toy for Fajr as a present for the holiday we have later this month, with plans to make more toys this week .

The photo of the dye-how do you make your dye for the toys?