Ask Lafeber

Greys that talk

Hi there, I hope you can help me, please.
A friend of mine has a CAG which talks a lot. I’m not sure but I think it’s about 3 or 4 years old. She was recently given another CAG which is about a year old and very tame. She was told not to put this new grey anywhere near her first one otherwise it would stop talking.
I have a CAG. She is nearly 14 years old and talks non stop. I also had two male amazons at one time and all three chatted away all the time. My friend is nervous to put the two greys near each other because she doesn’t want her older bird to stop talking.
Is there a chance that her first bird will stop talking? I would have thought that her first bird will actually help teach the younger one to talk.
Thank you for your advice,
Regards
Thea

Hi Thea,

You are correct – parrots are often more likely to learn from each other than from their human. Of course, some of this will include mimicking each other’s natural calls. But it is a very, very old myth – so old it’s considered an old wives tale! – that a parrot will stop talking around another parrot. It goes along with the myth that a bird that learns to whistle will never talk. A bird’s desire to talk does vary, but they talk to communicate with us, with other birds and sometimes to entertain themselves. They also respond to any attention we give them – positive or negative. So the best way to encourage talking is to give the bird a lot of attention and praise and even the occasional treat when he says things that are OK, and when he screams, or makes sounds you don’t like, you ignore the bird. So by all means, you friend should let the birds be in the same room. That does not mean they will like each other, but they can certainly learn from each other. We actually just had a free webinar by an African Grey expert, about having a multi bird household, with emphasis on having more than one Grey. I would recommend that your friend view this to get advice on introducing the birds to each other – if not physically, then how they can co-exist in the same room and be happy.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda