Hi everyone!

[TheMrsFoster]

Hi everyone!
We are complete newbies to the parrot world from Pennsylvania, and we have a very, ahem, interesting African Grey female named Filo. She belonged to my brother in law's mother until she passed away from cancer last summer, then my sister and brother and law took over her care. They had her until my brother in law had a stroke recently and they had to move where they couldn't take her. Being that Filo was his late mother's bird, and we are all very attached to both his mother and Filo, we volunteered to care for her until they could again. We didn't want her to go to someone we didn't know, and boarders won't take birds who have, um, "certain words" in their vocabulary (at least around here they don't). Now, I don't want to give her back!! LOL I love the little stinker!!! I find I am learning a lot about her as I go, from asking them and from consulting blogs and other online sources, even going and buying books specifically just for her. My brother in law said he's not one bit worried about his "baby" because he knows she's spoiled rotten with us, and boy, is she! Our 9 and 10 year old daughters love her, and I think she's reveling in the socialization, as they talk to her all the time. One issue she had with them was stress and feather plucking, which I think had to do with the fact that EVERYONE in the house smoked around her. She had lost a good amount of her feathers. Now, she has been with us for about a month, and I've been calling her Fuzzy Filo, because she has a LOT of downy feathers growing in, and lots of dark pinfeathers coming in up on the crests of her wings. It makes me so happy to see how much she's improved since she's been with us. I feel like I'm doing the right thing by her, and by his mom by taking good care of her baby, because she loved Filo so much. Every now and then, she still says "I love you" in his mom's voice. That makes being a complete noob at this completely worth it to me. Sorry for being so long-winded.....and if I annoy everyone with nine zillion questions, I'll apologize now. I just want to be the best bird-mom I can be. Thanks everyone!

[Harpmaker]

Welcome to the forum Flo and TheMrsFoster! And don't worry about questions, that's what we are here for.

Congratulations on getting some feathers on your Gray!

One thing you can sometimes do with birds that have "objectionable" language habits is to "correct their pronunciation" to something innocuous.

[TheMrsFoster]

As we talk to her more, she seems to be getting away from the "sailor" language. Honestly, I think some of them taught her the words just to see if she would say them. She imitates laughs a lot, she cackles, and she imitates both of my daughters' voices. They each have a specific way they address her (sweet baby, etc.) and we know which girl she's mimicking when she says it. I've taught her "Filo's a pretty girl" and it's still kind of weird hearing that back in my own voice...LOL Usually when I reinforce good behavior with positive words, I immediately get "Filo want peanut? Cracker?" I find she's much more chatty in the later evenings (9-10pm). Is anyone else's parrot like this, or is this just because they were all more night owls? We do cover her cage when we all go to bed and tell her "Good night, Filo" when we go to bed so she knows it's time to settle and sleep. She'll say "good night Filo" back to us.

[Wolf]

Hi and welcome to the forum, we are glad to have you along and hope that you will find it to be enjoyable and educational as well as entertaining.
Among other birds, I also have a Grey, and they have their very own special place in my heart. Actually they all do, but Greys are a little more special to me.
I would like to suggest to you that 9 t0 10 pm is a bit too late for Filo and that you consider changing her over to a solar light schedule as soon as possible. Basically a solar light schedule is up at dawn with the sun and to bed with the sun as well. This is their natural way and is much better for them as it will help to keep their biological clock properly attuned.
Another area of prime importance is their diet as they can't eat a seed only type of diet without it leading to major health problem due to the protein content.
We love long detailed stories about you and your bird(s) and we are here to answer you questions and try to assist you in giving your bird a long healthy and happy life. So if we can help please don't hesitate to ask.

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum, Filo and new family. Wolf is correct both on the light schedule and diet (especially if she has been plucking). If she has been around smokers for so long I suggest you use an air purifier 24/7 in the room where she is kept (not the kitchen, right? because it's the worst place in the whole house for a bird) and that you give her some coqunol, D3 and B12 as well as make sure her diet includes food rich in betacarotene and vit C (they all help with lungs and respiratory functions). It will take from 10 to 15 years to clean up her lungs and air sacs but it can be done as long as she flies. And please, be careful with the peanuts (better to give a tree nut -peanuts are legumes and not really nuts)

[TheMrsFoster]

I find she likes pistachios more, and I get a more positive response from her if she sees me with pistachios. They're only for special treats though, because they are pretty expensive. We have been working her into an earlier schedule because we go to bed earlier and get up earlier than they did. She has been adjusting well to it. She's still kind of skittish and snippy right now because she just laid 3 eggs in the last 2 weeks. How often do they do that? We just kept her cage covered on 3 sides and tried to keep everyone's interaction with her to a minimum unless she was at the front of her cage to minimize her stress.
Another question I have is that, could her laying the eggs be why she has been spending a lot of time on the bottom of her cage? She's not there all the time, but she does spend a decent chunk of time there on her eggs (they're not viable, of course).
And.....can greys get poison sumac? I'm just wondering. My husband got poison sumac from work. Filo LOVES my husband. We're talking she gets jealous if his attention is taken from her by anything else (including me LOL). He doesn't get it because I do everything for her. Anyway, she was out of her cage the other night, walking up and down his arms and across his neck, and this was before it was really showing up. Well, apparently while she was walking, her desperately-needing-trimmed claws were making tiny little pinholes in his arms and neck and apparently spread the oils all over and he has the sumac blisters everywhere. I have looked at her feet as best i can when she's climbing on the cage and I can't see anything.

[Pajarita]

Hmmmm, I've never gotten that question before (about the sumac, I mean) but yes, their skin is pretty much like ours and it reacts to the same irritants so just keep your eye on her. As to the eggs, one of mine lays but only in the very beginning of spring. She also gets hormonal as the summer wanes but she is all done with sexual hormones by now so, if yours just laid, she is overly hormonal and her endocrine system is screwed up from a human light schedule and high protein diet, too (most likely). Grays are what we call 'shorter days' layers, same as cockatoos and they seem to have two seasons, one before the other birds and another after. But, like I said, the days are too short for any bird to be laying now so you will need to keep her a strict solar schedule: up with sunrise (she needs to be exposed to it) and to bed with sunset so there should be no artificial lights on before the sun is out on the sky or after the sun is halfway down (this time of the year is lights on at around 8am and off at 5 pm latest). She should fall asleep as night falls and kept in a dark quiet place so she gets good quality sleep until the next morning.

Please check her eggs and see if the shell is thick enough because, if it's thin (get yourself a dozen eggs from a range hen -the old-fashioned kind that scratched the soil and ate a natural diet so no supermarket eggs- and compare the shells), she needs calcium and vit D3 supplementation or she could become hypocalcemic and go into seizures or become eggbound (which could be fatal).

If I were you, I would eliminate the pistachios. I don't know what you are feeding her but, if she has been on free-fed seeds or pellets, she has been getting way too much protein in her diet and that makes them hormonal as well as messing up their livers and kidneys. Now, personally, after years of research, I've settled on gloop and raw produce for breakfast and about a quarter measuring cup of a cockatiel seed mix with just a little bit of sunflowers or, better still, safflower based. I always put them on a detox treatment when I first get them because I rescue mostly older ones that have not been fed right so I know their livers and kidneys can use it and I can tell you what I do, if you are interested.

One more thing, keeping her cage covered only promotes her breeding condition because they nest in cavities and, when you cover her cage, you are creating a 'nest'. Flying is what helps the most next to a good light schedule and diet because the exercise dissipates the sexual hormones (as well as the stress ones) from her bloodstream which speeds up the process.

[TheMrsFoster]

We did as you suggested and opened all the curtains and blinds first thing in the morning yesterday (about 6am, when we got up), then closed them all, covered her and turned off the TV and made the house very quiet by 8pm last night. WOW! What a difference in her demeanor today! She's very calm, very lovey, not as snippy as she can sometimes be. This morning for her food, I improvised a little. The seed mix I have for her has a lot of sunflower and safflower seeds in it, along with various other seeds, chili peppers, peanuts, and the like. (It's a bulk parrot mix I buy). I had also bought a special parrot mix from Petsmart that I mixed in with the seeds so she was getting more balanced nutrition and not only eating seeds. She seems to like it for the crunchiness. (It's kind of like colorful different shaped pellets....Kaytee I believe is the name?) So this morning, I picked out a ton of the sunflower and safflower seeds and put ONLY those in her food dish (along with just a couple of the bigger crunchy pellets), then in her side bowls, in one I put cut up baby carrots and in the other, cut up apples. When she saw that seed dish.....I couldn't even get it in the door!! At first I was a little afraid, as she has bitten me before when I was feeding her. This time, she just wanted that dish! She had her head in it, her foot on it, and I kept telling her, "Back, Filo, back" but she wasn't having it. She wanted those seeds!! She has them pretty much gone already! Now that I think about it, those are the first ones that are gone out of her dish every day. The other ones in the mix, she eats later, as if she'll eat them because there's no other option. Would it be a good idea to buy her a just sun- and safflower seed mixture? And she does like raw produce, it just takes her a minute or two to kind of "get" that it's there. Day off for the kids from school today, so we're playing with Filo and having fun with our feathered friend.

[Lizz]

My first bird was a cockatiel named Amy. My sister got tired of her. I took her because she had had multiple homes and I could not turn my back on her.

She was a sweet little thing. I knew nothing about birds. Her first January she laid 12 eggs. She would sit on the bottom of the cage and actually had labor pains. She rocked back and forth and tweeted for someone to sit with her. I was taking the eggs out so they wouldn't just rot when it hit me that she would keep laying like a chicken until she had enough to sit on. I replaced them with white Jordan almonds.

[Wolf]

No, you should not be feeding that many sunflower seeds to Filo ever. sunflower seeds are high in oils and in protein and this is what we are trying to tell you. A diet that is high in fats and proteins is not good as it leads to liver problems among other issues. Filo needs to have cooked whole grains along with a variety of chopped vegetables and a little fruit for breakfast, including enough to nibble on throughout the day, and then a small amount of the seed mix for dinner. Any of the seed mix that is left over when Filo goes to sleep should be removed from the cage.