My parrot doesn't want to stay inside her cage!

[koukikoukis]

Hello everyone,
I am new here and i just have a quick question. My little Ria ( 5 months old CAG ) doesn't want to stay inside her cage, and everytime i put her inside, she goes to a corner and starts "digging" for about half an hour or maybe more.... Can anybody tell me if i am doing something wrong with her?
Thank you very much!

[lisarn3]

I doubt it.  Birds are flock animals.  Not solitary animals.  She probably wants to be with her "flock". 
Would you like to be locked in a single room?  Likely no, neither does she.  Remember also that at 5 months she is literally just a baby.  Babies want to be with their family, not alone.

[alicat]

digging in the corner of the cage is very much a baby thing she will grow out of it.
before they learn to vocalise its how they seem to ask, when she gets a bit older it will no doubt change to a whistle, or the ringing of a telephone, cos they see the telephone noise makes someone go to it 
we hear from people with baby parrots often report them doing this scratching the floor.
lisas right, she is just sa baby and its a big wide world, she wants to explore and play and be with her people.

[feika]

hello and welcome to the forum from Ali/Captain. Digging is purely a baby thing and there is nothing to be worried about. She is probably alone for the first time her life hence she wants to be with you more and more. It is advisable to follow a routine with her as you are not likely to be with her ALL the time so you should prepare her to have some alone time as well.

Tell us something about how you got her and what is she like, and how's her cage, and what are you feeding her, if you don't mind, because we love to hear stories from other CAG owners.

[koukikoukis]

I got Ria from a pet store that had her ordered by a breeder ( i couldn't find any breeder myself in the town i am living in )
I got her when she was 4 months old, and the pet store owner told me to feed her formula 3 times a day ( i fed her with a syringe )
Gradually i started offering her other foods ( fruits, cereal, vegetables ).
Now she is 5 months old (she learned how to fly about a week ago), and i feed her formula once a day ( at noon )
Her other meals, consist of a mix of seeds, nuts and pellets ( that i buy from the pet store ), fruits( bananas, melon, grapes, peaches, pears) and vegetables ( peas, zucchinis, corn, carrots...).
Sometimes i will give her cheerios ( a brand of cereal that she likes ) as a treat.
Her cage has the following dimensions
0,45m x 0,45m and 0,60m height

[alicat]

her diet sounds great, but i hope you dont mind me saying so if your dimensions are correct her cage is way way too small for her.
realy you need to change this as a priority and i can understand her being so unhappy being in there.
she needs to be able to stretch her wings and flap them, and there is no way she can do that in there.
i will go and get you a link to a more suitable size cage for your baby to give you an idea and then il be back.......

right im back now.
this is the very minimum size cage any of us would recommend for an african grey parrot. some of us have cages a lot larger than this one!
you will probably have seen smaller ones than this with "african grey" in the heading, suggesting it is suitable but they are not. its very bad of sellers to suggest they are suitable as it leads to an unhappy bird.

this is a link to one on ebay in the uk....http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MONTANA-NEW-JERSEY-LARGE-PARROT-PARAKEET-BIRD-CAGE-/250896600586?pt=UK_Pet_Supplies_Birds&hash=item3a6a9a4e0a#ht_1002wt_652

i am so glad we discovered there was more to your birds problem than baby scratching in the corner that we first thought

xxx

[feika]

If I deciphered the dimension right, then roughly they are 18 x 18 x 24 inches (a meter is 39 inches) which is an appropriate size for the FIRST cage for your grey. If your baby gets lots of out of cage time, then this is a very suitable size cage to me (if my calculations are right). But with time you should work on giving her a bigger home (cage) so that she may be able to live in it happily and be busy inside so that you don't have to be there all the time to take her out and get relaxed.

[koukikoukis]

Dear Alicat and Feika,
first of all let me tell you that i didn't expect so much support ( thanks again ! )
I can tell that you all love your birds very much.
Yes i found a converter on the net and 0.45 meters is approx 18  inches.
Right now i don't have the money for a bigger cage, so i plan to get her out as much as possible.
I have also made a stand for her, but she seems to like a chair in the kitchen better. I will become a frequent visitor here, so you will get many updates from Ria :-)

[alicat]

the comment about the stand just made me smile.
i have a stand here that has never been stood on by any of my lot, but they all like to sit on the back of my office chair  which is just inches from it.
we do love our birds very much yeah, and its lovely to have a place we can chat with other likeminded folk , from various parts of the world.
where are you from? im in the uk.

xx

[koukikoukis]

i 'm from Greece !
Maybe by now it sounds like a third world country, but we, the simple people, are doing our best ( oppose to our politicians...)

[feika]

Good to have you on the forum, like Alicat said, the common love is our birds and we do talk about non-bird related issues as well.

[alicat]

i have been on holiday to several of the greek islands in the past , they were extremely beautiful but iv never been to the mainland.
corfu was my favourite, iv been there three times now (dassia) and hope to return again in future!