A Beginners Observations On Breeding African Grey Parrots

By Laura Hamilton Sonora, California

Breeding African Grey parrots is supposed to be difficult. At least thats what the books say. So I guess I feel pretty blessed by the fact that the newly imported pair of Congo Greys my family bought ten months ago has already produced two healthy chicks and is sitting on a new clutch of three fertile eggs. It has been quite a learning experience for me. I took bits and pieces of things I had read from books and heard from various breeders and made up my own way of doing things. I hope my observations will be helpful to those readers who are trying to breed Greys for the first time. Obviously, giving a breeding pair of African Greys a good diet is important. Convincing the Greys that it is important is an entirely different thing altogether. Every day we faithfully chopped up fruits and vegetables and served them along with seed in the food dish only to find them whole and uneaten on the floor the next morning. Those stubborn Greys even refused to eat a variety of seed! Safflower seed was the only kind of food they would touch. It was very frustrating, especially when we found what appeared to be a soft-shelled egg on the floor beneath the Greys cage. In desperation, we switched to a brand of seed that was fortified with vitamins and minerals, including calcium, phosphate and vitamin D3, the nutrients necessary for proper egg production. The Greys health improved tremendously. Finally after about four months of discarded fruits and vegetables, the Greys decided they liked apples. We figured that this was a golden opportunity to get some vitamins into them by sprinkling a vitamin powder on their apples. Fat chance. Those suspicious birds must have thought we were trying to poison them because they didnt touch their apples for several weeks afterward. Slowly they have come to accept a wider variety of seed, bok choy and, when they are in the right mood, grapes and soaked pellets. During and after their laying cycle we supplement their water with Neo-Cal-Glucon so they dont become calcium deficient. Besides providing a good diet, we have found that giving the birds privacy is a necessity if you want to successfully breed them. Our imported African Greys are incredibly shy birds that become absolutely terrified by the presence of humans. They need to feel secure in their environment before they will nest.

To make our Greys feel secure, we put them in a seldom-used room in our house and hung shower curtains around them so that they dont have to see us when we pass through the room. These shower curtains effectively block the Greys view of the room, but do not restrict air-flow. They are hung by swag-lamp chains that allow about two and a half feet of space at the top. There is also about two and a half feet of space near the floor. The Greys cannot see into the room, but they can look outside through a window. I feel it would be cruel to limit their view to the inside of a row of shower curtains. In our experience you should place your breeder Greys in a room well away from your louder, more raucous South American birds. The quieter African birds dont feel secure around the screeching of Macaws, Amazons and Conures. We keep our Amazon in the living room, our Greys and Senegals in the breeding room and our Conures outside. The cage we breed our Greys in is four feet long, four feet tall and three feet wide and is hung by swag-lamp chains as high up as it will go. I feel that the height makes the Greys feel secure. The nest box is whats known as a "Z" box, is made of metal and is placed high in the cage wall on the half of the cage thats away from the window. We used eucalyptus chunks (chunks, not shavings) as the nesting material. In my opinion, if you use a metal box, you should provide whole chunks of wood for chewing since chewing stimulates breeding. We provide the Greys with a vita-lite set on a timer. It comes on at 9:00 A.M. and goes off at 9:00 P.M.. We also put a radio on the timer and tune it to a station that plays soothing music. The music drowns out background noises that might disturb the birds. There is one other silly little thing we do to make the birds feel secure: we whistle to them before entering their curtain space. Actually, we whistle twice. We whistle once to let them know were coming, give them time to settle in, then whistle again. They know we wont bother them unless we whistle, so they are able to ignore most other noises they hear. Greys are very secretive birds, so dont be too discouraged if you dont see any signs that they are ready to go to nest. Before ours did, the only positive sign we saw was that the male fed the female-and this was captured on videotape. Next thing we knew, both birds were spending an inordinate amount of time in the nest box. When we checked the box, they already had two eggs. They laid a third, which proved to be infertile, but we didnt complain. Just before this last clutch was laid, I did get a chance to see the Greys court and copulate. The male puffed up, drooped his wings and made "kissy" noises. I couldnt tell what the female was doing because she was not in line with the peephole. After a couple of minutes of "kissy" noises, the male mounted the female and copulated for several minutes. The "kissy" noises continued throughout. To ensure that copulation was successful, we provided the Greys with two sturdy perches that run parallel to each other about six inches apart. The female can steady herself during copulation by placing her feet on one perch and her beak on the other.

During incubation of the eggs, both the male and female stayed in the nest box. I am not sure if both helped with the actual incubation or if the male just stayed inside so he wouldnt be lonely. But stay inside he did. He came out only to eat, which he had to do a lot of since he was eating for the two of them. When the male finished eating, the female would come out of the nest box to be fed by him. Sometimes she would go get her own drink of water, but I rarely saw her eat on her own during this time. The two fertile eggs hatched three days apart, about twenty-eight days after they were laid. When they were due to hatch we ran a humidifier in the room for a couple of hours each day to make sure the little munchkins wouldnt stick to the shell while they were pecking their way out. Interestingly enough, even though Ive gone through a clutch of Senegals and a clutch of Greys I have not once checked the nest box while a chick was in mid-hatch. They were either entirely in the eggs or entirely out of them. I wonder if the increased humidity had anything to do with the speed of their hatching. For the whole two weeks before we pulled the chicks we worried about them incessantly. *I had read horror stories about how parent Greys often refuse to feed their babies. Until the chicks were about two weeks old, we never found very much in their crops. We nearly pulled them half a dozen times, but didnt because they seemed fat, active, and grew at an astronomical rate. The parents must have been feeding them a very small amount every hour or so. I have talked to other breeders who say that their African Greys dont completely fill their babies crops either until they are about two weeks old. Perhaps Greys got a bad rap when they were accused of being poor parents. Regardless, I still plan on watching the next batch of chicks very closely and will pull them at the first sign of trouble. I hope the things I have shared will be of some help to those of you who are trying to breed African Greys for the first time. Give your Greys a good diet and plenty of privacy and who knows? Maybe youll get lucky as we did. *Editors note: Randy and I have about 8 pairs of Greys between us and have never had a problem with parents feeding babies. I checked with Dave Blynn and of 25-30 normal Grey pairs he has had, he has only had a feeding problem with one pair. However, Dave has seen feeding problems in older Grey pairs, 35 years old and older. It is his opinion that this problem is age related. Among our total 35 to 40 pairs of "normal" young Grey pairs, a feeding problem is a rare occurrence and should not be something owners need to be worried about. Now cockatoos are a different story!
This is a reprint of an article published in the African Parrot Society in the Fall 92 (Vol 2 # 2) issue and contributed by Laura Hamilton. Please do not reprint or redistribute this article in any form without the written consent of the author and the APS.
1996 African Parrot Society Last updated: June 11, 1996 For more information, suggestions, or contributions, please contact us.