Hello Everyone! Newbie with Wild Juvenile African Grey

[AfroTon]

Hello Everyone,
It's nice to meet you all here. It's also encouraging to see the depth and breadth of the responses that newbies get from experienced bird users. It creates a feeling of being welcome!
I just got my self a young, wild, african grey. It's eyes are still dark grey indicating that it's most likely less than a year old. So far, it has not been easy.

Taming Progress:
As you know, my parrot is wild. I can'd handfeed it. I can't handle it yet. It still scampers away as I approach it. If I approach very slowly, it may not scamper away but it surely withdraws and backs into a corner. I wont say that it bites, but it nibbles on my finder as I bring it closer. If I bring it slowly enough (and if its backed into a corner) I can actually stroke the back or head and from time to time, it nibbles on my fingers with its beak. It's not exactly an aggressive bird I would say.

Goals:
I would like to be able to handle (carry and pet) and handfeed the bird for a start. How long do I expect this to take? I am asking this because I need to be able to handfeed it in order to give it a treat. Without being able to give it a treat, I might as well forget about training it.

Other Info:
I got a pair of african ringnecks (male and female) to keep the grey company but so far, that seems to work against training the bird since the other birds distract it. I am considering returning the ringnecks to allow me focus on the african grey, which is actually my favorite.

Thanks as I expect your replies.

[liz]

Welcome to the forum.

Your Grey is not really wild but afraid. Make sure he can perch at face level. Give him the respect of a little being. He is just like having a scared toddler.

My method of calming the scare is to talk to them but not ask anything of them. I do not try to touch them until they come to me.

I knew nothing before I joined this forum. Being ignorant of how to take care of a parrot paid off one time. When I talked to Myrtle and she thought I was getting too close she would put up her foot to block me. I did not know that so instead I said tickle tickle and tickled the bottom of her foot with one finger. I was so lucky when she accepted my tickle instead of going away from me. I have had her for 5 years now and she still asks for a tickle every day. To me it feels like a neighborhood. It takes a village to raise a bird.

[Wolf]

Not meaning to gain say you, Liz, but in many parts of the world there is still an active exotic wild bird trade and African Greys are one of the most sought after. So depending of where the OP lives it is very possible for this to be a wild caught bird.

We don't get many wild caught bird, here in the US, although we do get some parent raised birds. How long have you had your birds? I could post so many question that it would probably put you off, although I would just be trying to be as helpful as possible, so I will just say that the more detailed information that you can give us about your birds helps us to answer your question more accurately.

About your ringnecks. They can be wonderful birds, even as companion birds if they are given enough personal one on one attention, they are, however, listed as aviary birds as they do not bond as well with humans as those listed as companion species and then they revert to a more bird oriented behaviors much more quickly if the one on one attention is not maintained. I know you got them to provide company for your new Grey and although they can do this for when you are not there, The Grey is not very likely to ever want anything to do with them. Greys rarely like birds that are not also Greys and even then it can be difficult to get them to establish even the basic flock bond with other Greys.

I am of the opinion that kindness, persistence and respect will be the keys to gaining your Greys trust. It is the birds trust in you that will make a relationship possible and without that the bird will not want anything to do with you. I think that the starting point is going to be your presence in the same room as the Grey is in. Your presence in the room while you are doing other things, such as reading, straightening up, watching TV, listening to the radio or whatever, while you are not obviously watching the bird will give the bird the chance to watch you and get accustomed to you being there. This along with you talking to the bird using its name and giving it lots of " Good bird" type of praise will go a long way towards helping your bird to get past its fear of you. Also while you are doing this dropping by its cage to show it a treat and then just placing that treat in its food dish will begin to show it that you are the bringer of good things to eat and that when you offer it a treat that you will always leave it for the bird, this is the very first steps of establishing trust.
During this early period, I would not be reaching into the birds cage and pressuring it to allow you to touch it or making the bird touch you. I think that this is even more important with a Grey than it is with other species of parrots due to the fact that Greys are not very fond of a lot of touching, even from its mate. I would not get concerned about how long it takes to accomplish any one step with your bird. Even with birds that are already socialized to humans, I would not worry about how long it may take to accomplish any step, it always varies and is dependent on the bird.

[AfroTon]

Thanks for the replies all. The bird was caught in the wild. Here in West Africa, the Congo Grey is quite inexpensive (50 to 80 dollars for one) because it's abundant in the forest. We do not really have local laws protecting them at the moment but I believe that sooner than later, the government will start looking in that direction since there have been calls to stop the exportation as many of them die while being shipped cross-continent.
I'll take my time with the Grey as wolf has said.

Wolf,
Please ask all the question you want to ask!
I am the one gaining knowledge from you so if i get pissed, my loss! Haha.

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum and we will try to help your bird (and you) as much as possible because, at this point in time, short of releasing to the wild (which is what I would do), there is nothing else that can be done.

Now, let's start by clarifying terms. Handfeeding is not using your hand to offer a treat, it's the action of feeding a baby bird in the beak like a parent would in order to make it imprint to humans instead of birds (yours is too old for this so the chance to have him imprint to humans and accept them as part of his family is gone). You don't need to have the bird actually eat from your hand for him to learn to trust you or even like you. As a matter of fact, forcing him to get the treat from your hand is called 'flooding' which is any technique that does not give the bird another option (in this case, if he wants to eat it, he has to take it from your hand so it's kind of 'my way or the highway'). These techniques were used years ago when we did not know any better but have fallen into disuse because they are not only not kind to the bird, they actually end up backfiring in the long term as the bird never learns to trust you.

What Wolf recommended is the way to go: slowly, gradually and always the bird setting the pace, never the human. I would get him a large cage and put it in a corner where he would still get natural light from a window (the two 'blind' sides will make him feel protected which, in turn, reduces the inevitable anxiety any wild bird suffers when in captivity and alone). His roosting perch (the one he will use for sleeping and often the favorite one in the cage) has to be at the same height your eyes are when you are standing up (birds like heights because high up is safe and they profoundly dislike a predator -which is what you are to him- looming over them -again, this reduces stress and anxiety). You will have to get near the cage for cleaning and feeding but, aside from these occasions, you should not get any closer than the distance where the bird feels comfortable. You need to learn his body language but, usually, when they are relaxed, you will not see any tension in the body, the feathers will not be stuck flat to its body (they won't be puffed up but the contour of the body will look a bit of a fluffy look to it) and he will stay exactly where he is (meaning, he will not scramble to get as far as he can from you). So, like Wolf said, you need to spend hours and hours and hours keeping him company, talking, whistling (you can put soft music in the background), singing, etc. but you can't touch him unless he invites you (he will bow his head to you). You walk into the room where he is never looking at him directly (this is what a predator does -which always happen to have their eyes in the front of their face and not on the sides like prey do), you use the corner of your eyes to check how he is reacting and, as soon as you see him tense up or move away to the back of the cage, you stop and take one step back. This will be the place where you sit to spend hours with him and not any closer and, as he gets used to your presence, you will be able to move that chair closer and closer until you can sit right next to the cage. Every now and then, you can offer a treat (like a nut, for example), he won't take it from your hand at the beginning and that is fine - what you do is drop it on his cage and walk away. The treat is not a reward or a bribe, it's a gift, a token of friendship so as to win him over because you need to prove to him that you are the bringer of all good things, that you will 'listen' to him and not force him to do anything he doesn't want to do. Parrots don't live in a hierarchical society so obedience and subservience traits don't exist in their psychological make-up, nature never gave them these tools because they simply don't need them for the life they evolved. So what you need to do is to make him trust and love you and not to make him obey you (they don't understand the concept of bosses because they don't have any).

Once you see that the bird not only does not scramble to get away from you but actually is eager for your company (he will come closer to the bars on the side you are approaching and maybe even hang on to the bars on that side), you can start target training him from inside the cage. But that will take quite a number of months so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The biggest problem that you will have with a wild-caught is that, unless you can give him its own room, letting him out of the cage for exercise can be a problem because of the potential difficulty of getting him back in. BUT if you feed him right and keep him at a strict solar schedule, he can learn to go back into his cage on its own so the question is what are your feeding him and at what time during the day? If you answer that, we can take it from there.

[AfroTon]

Hello Pajarita,
Thanks for the reply! I appreciate the fact that you took out time to type the detailed reply. Regarding your question, I feed the parrots in the morning before leaving for work and in the evening before when I return from work.

[Pajarita]

Good! Twice a day is perfect for birds because it reproduces their natural biorhythms (the 'schedule' when they do things naturally). Birds always eat two big meals, one when they first wake-up and another one when the sun is beginning to set so these are the two times that is best to feed them (keeping the same 'schedule' birds have in the wild reduces stress and keeps the digestive and endocrine system in good working order). Now, the trick is what to feed them when because all birds are programmed by nature (evolution at work) to crave and gorge on stuff that is necessary for life and not easily available in their natural habitat - so, you have the natural seed eaters (like canaries, finches, etc), for example, that would always choose to eat the leafy green first even when they are given seeds and fruits at the same time BUT, for parrots, it's the 'protein' food that does it for them so, if you give a parrot a protein food (seeds, nuts, pellets, nutriberries, avicakes, etc), a fruit, a veggie and a leafy green, you will see that they all go for the protein first - why? because for birds that are not natural seed eaters, protein is not found in abundance in nature so, when they do find it, they eat and eat and eat until it's all gone. We use this trait of them to train (reward) and get them to like us. But, for this to work, you can't free-feed (keep a bowl full of it in the cage all the time) it because, if the bird has access to this food, he will not have any incentive to interact with you. What we do is give them a low protein but healthy and fulfilling food in the morning and all day picking and the protein food for dinner. This way, you can use the protein food during the day as a treat, reward or a token of friendship -as you will be doing at the beginning. I feed my parrots gloop (you can find recipes of this dish and others in the diet section) accompanied by raw produce in the morning and a good quality (few sunflowers) seed/nut mix for dinner when they sun is halfway down.

The next step after transitioning them to a healthier diet (free-feeding protein ends up messing up their liver and kidneys so it's not really healthy for them) is to identify what we call the 'high value item', this is normally their favorite food item (usually a nut) and reserve it for treats and rewards (this way, the bird will always be willing to do something for it). You identify it by giving the bird a few nuts side by side -for example, you can use an almond, half a walnut and a cashew- and watch which one he consistently picks first (you have to do it several times because, at the beginning, he is just tasting them all).

[AfroTon]

Thanks Pajarita for the reply. So far, I have been giving them corn and fruits (watermelon, cucumber). They seem to like corn a huge lot.
On your first post, you said :
at this point in time, short of releasing to the wild (which is what I would do), there is nothing else that can be done.
Is there any particular reason why you said that?

[Pajarita]

Yes, there is and the reason is that I don't agree with poaching any bird from the wild to be used as a human pet because this never benefits the bird itself and, as far as I am concerned, people should have animals only if they can improve the animal's life in any way and for no other reason. Parrots born in captivity and handfed imprint to humans so, although their life in captivity is not as good as they would have in the wild, they would not last more than a few days out in the wild because they never learned survival skills so they can't be released and, besides, they think that humans are part of their family. But, wild-caught or poached birds do have survival skills, they know that humans are predators and suffer terribly in captivity because they not only lose the only family and home they know but they have also experienced life at its fullest and now they have half a life (no freedom, no family, no flock, all alone, unfamiliar and inadequate environment, etc). In the case of African grays, the poaching is so bad (they export them to Asia) that the entire population is in grave decline and it is already listed in Cites Appendix II. I love animals and I always put their needs before humans' desires...

Corn and a couple of fruits are not enough (birds like cucumbers but, in reality, they are one of the veggies that has less nutrition). Good stuff is cooked sweet potato, any orange pumpkin or squash and berries like blueberries, blackberries, etc. And, if the corn is dried and not fresh, I would not give him any because dry corn is the highest source of aspergillus there is -well, maybe peanuts are as bad as corn... Why don't you check out our diet section? Lots of good info there!