Hello from India !!!

[vishalp]

Hello all you parrot lovers,
I am Vishal from India. I have an African grey parrot from last 10 days. It's an abandoned 11 year old bird, it was always caged by the previous owners. It had an absess on his forehead above the left eye. The previous owner don't wanted to treat it so they left him. I have rescued it and shown it to an avian vet. After an antibiotic treatment for 10 days the absess was still there. So we got it removed by surgically yesterday. I am very new to this parrot world. I want to know few things. I hope this forum and all you experts would help me.
1. Can I gain trust of this parrot.?
2. He bites and acts agressive when I go closer to his cage. What can be done go this ?
3. As he is agressive, it becomes difficult to give him medicines. Please suggest me the best method for giving him oral medicines ?

[Wolf]

Hi and welcome to the forum.
Thank you for your kindness in giving this bird a home. We will do our very best to help you, although there are no experts here. In fact, as far as I am aware of there are no experts as there is simply not enough know about any species of parrot for there to be any experts. We are just a bunch of people like you who just happen to have and love our birds.
Depending on what medications you are required to give your bird, and the food that he eats, you may be able to give it to him in his food. If that is not possible a syringe is probably going to be the next best way. So what medicine are you giving him and how often do you need to give it to him? The best way to be certain that you are giving it to him correctly is to take the medication and your bird to the vet and ask them to show you how to give it to him. The vet can teach you how to towel your bird without hurting him so that you can give him the medication. Although this works best with two people it can be done by yourself.
Have you given him a name or are you using his old name, assuming that you know what it was? If you are not using his old name it would be easier on him if his new name sounds similar to his old one as he will identify with it much quicker. Unless you are able to give him his medication in his food it is going to be very hard to gain his trust while you are giving them to him. At 11 years of age he is still a young bird and you should be able to win his trust in time.
At this time the more that you can tell us about him the better we can help you. This is both background information about his life where you got him and what his current new life is like. So if you can share with us what a day for him is like right now, it would be helpful so that we can give you the right advice. What time does he get up and go to bed? Do you cover his cage at night? How often do you feed him and what do you feed him? How large is his cage? Does he currently get any time out of his cage? Are his wings clipped or not? Are there any other animals in the house that we should be aware of? Are there other people in contact with him in your household?
I am sorry about the list of questions, but the answers will help us to give you the answers that you need to become this birds best friend and he yours. Does he have any toys? if so, does he do anything with them? Can you post pictures for us to see him and his cage?
I know that some of the questions may not seem to be very important, but I assure you that they are very important to your bird and his well being. My grey came to me as a severely abused 13 year old female who was plucked nearly naked and had big holes in several places on her body from plucking her feathers and self mutilation. Today she is nearly fully feathered and does not have any wounds on her body and most importantly she is my best friend. She is fully flighted and is out of her cage most days for up to 7 or 8 hours. She lives with myself some cats and dogs as well as several other parrots, who are also out of their cages with her most of the time. The dogs and cats are not allowed to interact with the birds at all.

[vishalp]

Hello!
Thanks for your quick and wonderful reply. he is on liquid medication one is a pain killer and other is an antibiotic. I am suppose to give 0.2ml and 0.4ml twice daily. I tried syringe but he gets aggressive as i take syring close to him. He was badly abused and his previous owner says that he never took him out of his cage. I want him to be out of his cage but dont know how will he react if I put my hand in his cage. I pamper him by tickling his head and loves it. He tries to hold my finger. I dont cover his cage at night. He sleeps at 1am and wakes up at 6am. I dont know weather he sleeps in the afternoon as I am out at work. He eats mango, pear, apple with some sunflower seeds and ground nuts. His cage is 60cmX90cmX45cm. I have a pug who is so lazy that he is not concerned about this parrot.
Please help me with the medicine part as its very important to heal his surgical wound.
Thank you once again Sir.

[Wolf]

Do you have someone who can help you in giving him his medications?

[liz]

Welcome to the forum. Thank you so much for taking in the poor thing. His life has been rough and can only go up from here. Wolf and Pajarita will help you a lot more than I can.

I rescued a 1 year old BF Amazon 4 years ago. She did not have a medical problem but was kept in the same situation. The aggression is from fear. He knows where he has been and does not know yet that you are going to love him and care for him.

Parrot proof a room, open the cage door and let him come out when he is ready. He needs security and respect which is something he has never had. If you have him in a small cage put it up so he will be at face level. If it is a big cage give him a perch as high as you can get it. Preditors come from above. All he knows is that you are a preditor and want to eat him.

Don't try to touch him except for his medicine. Have you tasted it. Try hold one hand behind you and offer his medicine with the other. Some times the will take it from the syringe.

[Wolf]

This is difficult as it appears that you do not have anyone who can help you with giving your bird his medications. Due to his aggression I was going to suggest that you towel him so that you could feed him his medicine with a syringe quickly. Toweling is simply restraining him by wrapping his body in a towel so that he can't fight you so much, but it is best done with two people.
The diet that he is on needs a lot of improvement and is not suitable to putting the medicine in it and letting him eat it that way. This brings us back to the syringe alone and how to get him to take it willingly. Under normal circumstances this would not be a problem as you would have time to teach him this.
You can put nothing in the syringe but unsweetened fruit juice, you will have to figure out one that he likes, but I would try apple juice since he already eats apple. Don't put too much in it to begin with as you just want him to get a good taste of it and offer him the syringe just as you would with the medications and try to get him to bite it or take it into his mouth so that you can give him the juice. When he bites the syringe give him a little taste of the juice and keep doing this until he takes the syringe in his mouth so that you can feed him the juice and then switch to the medication. You may go through a few syringes while teaching him this but it seems that this is about the only way that you are going to get this way to work.
Another way that you can try is to see if he will eat a small piece of whole wheat bread with peanut butter on it. If he will eat this then you can try putting his medications on the piece of bread after you put the peanut butter on it and give that to him to eat.

[liz]

I used that method with a scared rescued dog but I did it backwards. I used two syringes one with medicine the other with maple syrup. She took her meds to get the syrup.

[Roonil Wazlib]

Hello and welcome. Its a great place here. Thank you for rescuing a beautiful parrot that needed a loving home. You are an awesome person

Learning his/her body language will be essential to earning his/her trust. Try and find a book or research information on body language. This will help you to understand his/her feelings, and you will be able to react accordingly in a positive way. If the parrot doesn't want to do something, and you see the body language being conveyed and you walk away, the parrot will learn that your not going to force it to do something (and will be less likely to bite, as biting is his/her last attempt at telling you no), and it has choices. He'll respect you because your respecting him. This will build up to trust over time