CAG Beak

[sgtpepper]

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=19va6r&s=8#.VCPgNPmSzl8
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=15rxn36&s=8#.VCPg0vmSzl8

This is the beak of our female Congo African Grey. She is 3 years old and we have her for barely one month now.
They were on a seed diet when we got her (and her pair) and their beaks were quite bad looking especially the female's. Now it seems her beak is even worse and we do not know why because we have changed their diet, introducing daily vegetables and grains, fruits and pellets.
We have bought a Calcium supplement which we think it might help.

Have you had any experience with this?
It seems like the beak is peeling and some pieces will break and fall down.

[Wolf]

What are you supplying for perches and for chewing/ shredding materials? It appears to me that she just needs things that she can chew up and destroy her beak should not look all black and shiny, it will have some greyish areas on it that she will rub off on various thing but primarily on vertically hung tree branches with attached bark and perches. This cleans debris from the outside of the beak as well as keeping it trimmed and sharp.
My Grey likes her beak scratched so you can help groom her beak by scratching it for her as well, just use your fingernails a little. Other than that it doesn't look all that bad to me. Pajarita has more experience than I do. Let's see what she has to add.

By the way, we haven't heard from you in a while, so how are thing going for you and your Greys? I am so jealous that you have a mated pair. Could I get a couple of recent pictures of them when you get the time?

[sgtpepper]

Well we thought that that is why her beak is peeling in the first place, because we give them a lot of stuff to destroy and chew, while they didn't have anything like that in their previous home.
We have cement perches in the cage, and recently we got a big sand perch.Other than that, we have only several wood and a rope perch.We'll try with a vertical one with attachments.

I posted some updates on the other thread. It's going fine, but really, really slow:)
I will upload some pictures as well

Thanks for the help!

[Wolf]

Could you include pictures of the perches as well ?

[sgtpepper]

Yes of course. i will take some later today:)

[Wolf]

Thank you

[Pajarita]

Don't worry about it. Her beak is 'peely' because of the bad diet they had before but it takes about two years for the beak to grow out (since it starts at the bone and until it reaches the pointy end) so you are going to see these flakes falling off for some time. Nothing is immediate when it comes to bringing a bird back to a good condition after it's been on a bad diet or prevented from flying or whatever. Everything takes time so don't get impatient but do keep on asking whenever you have a doubt, we don't mind at all. What you can do to make them look better is to 'polish' or 'buffer' them (they use a special very fine 'head' in the nail dremels) but it's a stressful thing to do to a bird so what I do is put medium size rocks in my birdroom -the birds like to clean and hone their beaks on them (I get them from my garden so they are free).

Now, be careful with the calcium because too much is as bad as too little and, if what you got is avian calcium or a human supplement that has D3 in it, you need to be even more careful as this is a vitamin that is fat soluble and for which the body has no mechanism to get rid of the excess so it stores it in the liver in the form of fatty nodules (which ends up causing hepatic lipidosis -aka fatty liver) and, taking into consideration that these birds were on an all seed diet (high fat, high protein) for years, I am sure they already have quite of few of them in their livers so you don't want to make things worse. Now, if they had not had any calcium supplements in their previous life and had no access to direct sunshine, I would give them 5 days of Calciboost and then give them cuttlebone and one single dosage of a multivitamin in their water three times a week for a month and then go down to once a week which is what I give all my birds.

Also, calcium doesn't do anything for beaks, they are made of keratin, the same type of protein that makes their feathers (and our hair) and nails.

[sgtpepper]

Thanks Pajarita for the help. I'm always looking carefully to see if everything is okay, so today when I noticed that the flaky thing was looking as it starts to come off I panicked a little bit:)
We are planning on a serious vet trip, to get them microchipped, and also to run some tests to see if everything is okay. The problem is, we cannot find a serious avian vet here in Copenhagen(who would run lab tests), they all say that it's a "standard check-up". We're also afraid of frightening them too much with this experience. We thought of waiting a while until they both settle down and then find a good vet somewhere in Denmark/Germany and take them there.
We have bought some Calcium,Multivitamin powder, and some "Nutri-boost"( which is a mix of AviTotaal multivitamins ;Avi~Stress mix; AviVit B50- complex ( a pure vitamin B-complex) ;Spirulina)
We have started a few days ago with Nutriboost (as suggested by the company we got the vitamins from) and will give them for max. a week. Afterwards , we will give them only the multivitamin powder + (maybe) calcium, a few times a week and then gradually reduce them.

We got them these cement perches and i see they often rub their beaks against them.
Also, there is a cuttlebone in their cage since we brought them home-they haven't had any interest in it:)

Here is a link with some pictures, there you can also see the two types of "polishing perches" ; there are 4 small cement perches(as the green one) and we have just got them this sand perch (the purple one)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/123740355 ... 614169720/

We've just had a training session and it went really well, Zaura(the female) steps up with no hesitation now, and Dino(the male) seems a little bit jealous , so we expect him to surprise us anytime soon!:)

On another note, we are trying to teach them to take baths, and tried spraying them or putting a large water bowl in their cage, but it wasn't too much of a success. Any suggestions about that?

[Pajarita]

Weeeeeell, I don't like those perches. I don't like the fact that they are rough all the way around, I don't like the fact that they have pretty much the same diameter all the way through or that they are completely parallel to the floor. I like the ones that have the rough part on each side (where the tip of the claws would rest) but a smooth side both on top and on the bottom (so you can turn them upside down) and are unevenly shaped and not straight. They don't hurt the tender sole of their feet and provide great exercise for their toes, feet and legs. This is the kind I like: http://sweetfeetandbeak.com/12002.html

You also have to change the dowels you have all over the place (use tree branches instead, they will love peeling the bark off and chewing the ends and they are perfect for their feet and legs).

Don't worry about their bathing, I've had 6 grays at a time and none of them ever took a good bath (by our standards). Mine hate been misted and like to bathe in large, shallow containers (I use cake pans) and although they make a HUGE production of it (water splashing everywhere, going in and out a million times, wings flapping, head gyrations, etc), at the end, when you look at them, you realize they hardly got wet But they never smell or look dirty so, although I do go after them with my spray bottle once a week when I give (or try to) everybody a bath, I don't insist.

[Wolf]

My Grey doesn't do the bath thing to any degree either. She will not use anything other than her water bowl and all she can do is get her feet in it. But when she does this she will accept being sprayed down and will go back to her water bowl if she wants to be sprayed down again. Sometime one soaking is enough sometimes two or three times before she is good with it.