African Grey Parrot Family

This African Grey Parrot family lives in the Languedoc, South of France in the Couscouillette. Cookie, the father, was 'rescued' by us from a local shop after having been imported from Africa where he had been caught. He is still suspicious of men and prefers women and children. His partner, Sugar was bred locally and handfed by me (see video of this) and is very tame. She's also very destructive which is why, after she practically destroyed our conservatory we built them this aviary. Cookie and Sugar produced 'Baby', (http://couscouillette.pagesperso-orange.fr/love.htm) which is very very unusual in captivity. Born November 2009, at the time this video was made she was almost 2 years old. Baby is called Baby as we don't know whether it's a boy or a girl. We allowed the parents to look after Baby from birth which is psychologically interesting as most baby Greys are either stolen from the nest in the wild or hand reared by humans not receiving any care or education from parent birds.
Baby has a pretty cheeky personality. Baby gobbles her treat peanuts fast and then tries to rip the peanuts out of the beaks of her parents. Usually she gets away with it. Baby is nervous of changes in her environment, particularly anything that resembles a stick. This must be an inborn fear maybe an archaic response to African hunters' weapons? Even the local branches when removed for cleaning at that moment terrify her. She's not as comfortable with human touch as Sugar, her mother, who was hand reared. But she's a lot less nervous of them than her father, Cookie.
Sugar speaks perfect 'human' when she's in the mood. She is capable of Incredibly accurate voice replication. Cookie has a smaller repertoir but his 'oooh Fifi' (our little dog) is amazing. Recently he has taken to reproduce glugglug sounds which may be to do with the irrigation sprinkler system near their abode. Baby does a good wolf whistle (as does Cookie) but that's all for the moment.
We just hope that the parents don't decide to have a larger family as three is already more than we bargained for.
Interestingly, when Baby was an egg, mama Sugar had laid an enormous number of eggs during a 3 month period, all of which were desroyed by the parents after having carefully attempted each one to develop taking turns to brood them. Sugar was fantastic, and quite worryingly hardly left the eggs she was brooding for even a few minutes to eat or drink. She was becoming so worn out that we were worried her health was suffering seriously. But since Baby popped out of the egg (see my website for photos of her development) there has been no egg laying at all. (Thank Heavens) The parents took turns feeding the baby who stayed in the 'bedroom' for months at first. At that time the 'bedroom' was intact and dark, since then they have nibbled a lot of it and there is no privacy any more.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Parrot Family
• Socialisation Parrots
• Birds
• Family

[Couscouillette]

Oh, how sweet!

[Couscouillette]

Thank you!! Yes, they are very happy.

[shakillful]

did they breed

[Couscouillette]

@shakillful yes, they did, read all the info I put under the video, including the link to my website!

[pinkdreamer1000]

@JazEve47 same here haha i think they enjoy the bird sounds! :)

[JazEve47]

my grey was very interested in this video.

[chick2550]

they all look so gorgeous and happy!