RebelAngel
New member
- Apr 29, 2015
- 48
- 0
Hi all! My name is Debbie and I've been reading the forum for a couple of weeks. A friend of my hubby has been staying with us for a few months, he has a 30 year old Timneh African Grey who stayed with his dad until his dad "got tired of him." He has been at my house for a little over a month. Duck is his name and he was rehomed at 13 years of age from an elderly lady to a 13 year old boy (his current owner, 17 years later).
Duck is a very friendly bird, doesn't bite, even with 8 year old girl fingers poking into his cage for hours. He will step up for his owner on anybody/anything, but not for me. He will step up, but not consistently. He has "arthritis" in his left foot/leg and does not grasp the perch or your finger with that foot. To hold him, you have to use your thumb to hold the lame foot and he will grasp with the other quite well.
According to his owner:
-He doesn't like to be pet/touched.
-He doesn't like toys.
-He prefers seed food and is fed a seed/pellet mix diet with grapes/bananas/peanuts for a treat. He eats the seeds and tosses the pellets.
-He doesn't like baths/water.
I work from home and his owner works 3rd shift and sleeps all day, which means I'm the one to listen to his screaming while working/trying to talk on the phone. I'd imagine when the owner had his own apartment, Duck was covered with a blanket most days so that the owner could sleep. When duck was with at Dad's house, he was in a common room and made a lot of noise, to the extent that Dad was ready to kick him out after 2 months.
Duck has quite the vocabulary and at dusk every night he whistles loudly/annoyingly and says 'night night' over and over again until you cover him up with his blanket. Because of his lame/arthritic foot, he sleeps on the floor of the cage and will frequently screech about "night night time" during the day and enjoys a nice nap during the day under cover, probably due to his unconventional sleeping schedule for many years with an owner who worked nights. If you cover him up and he doesn't have clean paper to sleep on, he will continue the night night screaming. when he first did this hubby said he didn't want to go to sleep, but he wouldnt come out of the cage for either of us. I noticed the soiled paper, changed it, covered him back up and no more noise.
I've been working with him for the past month or so and, according to me:
-He LOVES head scratches!
-He LOVES beak scratches!
-I got him his first toy in YEARS and after 3 days of it hanging outside his cage, showing it to him and him pecking at it from the top, I put it inside his cage this morning and within 30 mins he was ringing the bell like a champ!
-I make him a salad every day when I make my lunch and he eats it! He will eat greens/lettuce better if you hold it and feed it to him. bell peppers and carrots he will eat from his treat bowl.
-He doesn't HATE water! I filled a small pyrex with water for him and he immediately drank long drinks of it. He has a water bowl in his cage, but maybe he was just thirsty. I put it inside his cage and he immediately stepped down to the bottom of the cage and drank out of it, but didn't perch on it. I put my hand in it and dripped water on him and he looked up at it as if to drink the drops and spread his wings as if to catch every drop. I'm not all up on my bird body language, but this was not a bird who hated or was scared of water.
He doesn't step up for me consistently, and due to the leg/foot problem, he uses his beak as a 3rd leg/balance point. I've become very familiar with his beak and he lets me touch it, grab it, hold it for "balance" while he steps up and scratch it. I can even let go of the hold on it and he will keep it rested in my hand to get continued scratches. He has tolerated extensive beak touching where other birds may have gotten aggravated and gotten nippy.
He displayed some mating behavior to me at first, but I read online what it was and immediately stopped petting his back and that has mostly subsided.
He screams for attention and I redirect him (from the other room) by whistling back to him and when he quits screaming, i will go downstairs and pay him attention for a few minutes and this has greatly reduced his screaming episodes.
The biggest problem I have is that I believe after a couple weeks of reading about the bird, I know more than his owner knows after owning him for 17 years.
I showed his owner how I could scratch his beak the other day and when I walked away, the owner tried to do the beak wrestle/growl that he does with him and he lunged at him and bit down hard. The owner jumped back in fear and yelled at him.
From my observations, the owner only touches his beak to stabilize him for stepping up, beak wrestling/growling play and holding it as a form of dominance while scolding him for whatever behavior the owner has determined is undesirable.
When he wakes up in the afternoon and the bird is screeching, he walks up to the cage, apologize to him, asks him if he wants attention and gets him out. His socialization time with the owner is pretty much him standing on a finger in front of his face while the owner watches TV or sitting in his travel cage on the table in my back yard while the owner talks to his girlfriend on the phone. He wakes at 3 and leaves for work at 5.
He is not clipped, but does not fly and doesn't have any glide if he doesn't perch properly... it's a barely controlled crash landing to the floor. I understand he has been clipped in the past, and may have never learned to fly to begin with.
Ive spent a lot of time with Duck, since I work from home, and he's learning new words and/or now saying them in my female voice instead of his owners male voice. He was chatting up a storm this weekend and everytime my 8 year old stepdaughter didn't know what he said she'd say "what?" and he repeated it back to her 3 times consistently. She was ecstatic about it and fed him peppers as a reward.
Duck's owner seems to be a bit peeved that his bird is making friendly with me and acting aggressively toward him. I could pull back, but that doesn't make my work day any easier as I work from home and have two day sleepers in the house (hubby works 3rd shift too).
So, if you've read through this all, I guess you want to be rewarded with photos! Since I have none on my laptop, you'll have to settle with a video my 8 year old stepdaughter made of him about a month ago. Forgive the dizzying zoom she uses throughout it! If you can make it to the end, you will see her give him kisses! This past weekend she was here and she is now giving him beak and head scratches, it took her about a day to accomplish this once I showed her how to sneak in and get it. And this is a bird who never liked to be touched!
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF6zYk5kEzs"]Aryn and Duck - YouTube[/ame]
Duck, and his owner, could both use some work/training... but I'm not 100% sure to go about it since any of my newly read internet advice is not necessarily making an impact on this bird owner of 17 years. Unfortunately, I believe when Duck's owner gets a place of his own, any progress Duck has made will be lost.
Duck is a very friendly bird, doesn't bite, even with 8 year old girl fingers poking into his cage for hours. He will step up for his owner on anybody/anything, but not for me. He will step up, but not consistently. He has "arthritis" in his left foot/leg and does not grasp the perch or your finger with that foot. To hold him, you have to use your thumb to hold the lame foot and he will grasp with the other quite well.
According to his owner:
-He doesn't like to be pet/touched.
-He doesn't like toys.
-He prefers seed food and is fed a seed/pellet mix diet with grapes/bananas/peanuts for a treat. He eats the seeds and tosses the pellets.
-He doesn't like baths/water.
I work from home and his owner works 3rd shift and sleeps all day, which means I'm the one to listen to his screaming while working/trying to talk on the phone. I'd imagine when the owner had his own apartment, Duck was covered with a blanket most days so that the owner could sleep. When duck was with at Dad's house, he was in a common room and made a lot of noise, to the extent that Dad was ready to kick him out after 2 months.
Duck has quite the vocabulary and at dusk every night he whistles loudly/annoyingly and says 'night night' over and over again until you cover him up with his blanket. Because of his lame/arthritic foot, he sleeps on the floor of the cage and will frequently screech about "night night time" during the day and enjoys a nice nap during the day under cover, probably due to his unconventional sleeping schedule for many years with an owner who worked nights. If you cover him up and he doesn't have clean paper to sleep on, he will continue the night night screaming. when he first did this hubby said he didn't want to go to sleep, but he wouldnt come out of the cage for either of us. I noticed the soiled paper, changed it, covered him back up and no more noise.
I've been working with him for the past month or so and, according to me:
-He LOVES head scratches!
-He LOVES beak scratches!
-I got him his first toy in YEARS and after 3 days of it hanging outside his cage, showing it to him and him pecking at it from the top, I put it inside his cage this morning and within 30 mins he was ringing the bell like a champ!
-I make him a salad every day when I make my lunch and he eats it! He will eat greens/lettuce better if you hold it and feed it to him. bell peppers and carrots he will eat from his treat bowl.
-He doesn't HATE water! I filled a small pyrex with water for him and he immediately drank long drinks of it. He has a water bowl in his cage, but maybe he was just thirsty. I put it inside his cage and he immediately stepped down to the bottom of the cage and drank out of it, but didn't perch on it. I put my hand in it and dripped water on him and he looked up at it as if to drink the drops and spread his wings as if to catch every drop. I'm not all up on my bird body language, but this was not a bird who hated or was scared of water.
He doesn't step up for me consistently, and due to the leg/foot problem, he uses his beak as a 3rd leg/balance point. I've become very familiar with his beak and he lets me touch it, grab it, hold it for "balance" while he steps up and scratch it. I can even let go of the hold on it and he will keep it rested in my hand to get continued scratches. He has tolerated extensive beak touching where other birds may have gotten aggravated and gotten nippy.
He displayed some mating behavior to me at first, but I read online what it was and immediately stopped petting his back and that has mostly subsided.
He screams for attention and I redirect him (from the other room) by whistling back to him and when he quits screaming, i will go downstairs and pay him attention for a few minutes and this has greatly reduced his screaming episodes.
The biggest problem I have is that I believe after a couple weeks of reading about the bird, I know more than his owner knows after owning him for 17 years.
I showed his owner how I could scratch his beak the other day and when I walked away, the owner tried to do the beak wrestle/growl that he does with him and he lunged at him and bit down hard. The owner jumped back in fear and yelled at him.
From my observations, the owner only touches his beak to stabilize him for stepping up, beak wrestling/growling play and holding it as a form of dominance while scolding him for whatever behavior the owner has determined is undesirable.When he wakes up in the afternoon and the bird is screeching, he walks up to the cage, apologize to him, asks him if he wants attention and gets him out. His socialization time with the owner is pretty much him standing on a finger in front of his face while the owner watches TV or sitting in his travel cage on the table in my back yard while the owner talks to his girlfriend on the phone. He wakes at 3 and leaves for work at 5.
He is not clipped, but does not fly and doesn't have any glide if he doesn't perch properly... it's a barely controlled crash landing to the floor. I understand he has been clipped in the past, and may have never learned to fly to begin with.
Ive spent a lot of time with Duck, since I work from home, and he's learning new words and/or now saying them in my female voice instead of his owners male voice. He was chatting up a storm this weekend and everytime my 8 year old stepdaughter didn't know what he said she'd say "what?" and he repeated it back to her 3 times consistently. She was ecstatic about it and fed him peppers as a reward.
Duck's owner seems to be a bit peeved that his bird is making friendly with me and acting aggressively toward him. I could pull back, but that doesn't make my work day any easier as I work from home and have two day sleepers in the house (hubby works 3rd shift too).
So, if you've read through this all, I guess you want to be rewarded with photos! Since I have none on my laptop, you'll have to settle with a video my 8 year old stepdaughter made of him about a month ago. Forgive the dizzying zoom she uses throughout it! If you can make it to the end, you will see her give him kisses! This past weekend she was here and she is now giving him beak and head scratches, it took her about a day to accomplish this once I showed her how to sneak in and get it. And this is a bird who never liked to be touched!
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF6zYk5kEzs"]Aryn and Duck - YouTube[/ame]
Duck, and his owner, could both use some work/training... but I'm not 100% sure to go about it since any of my newly read internet advice is not necessarily making an impact on this bird owner of 17 years. Unfortunately, I believe when Duck's owner gets a place of his own, any progress Duck has made will be lost.
