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Re: Congo
Posted by GreyLady on 4/29/09

On 4/29/09, nj wrote:
> I recently just bought a male congo african grey which is
> only 22 months old... The bird does talk but seems to have
> the identical voice of his previous owner which was a
> man... And his voice is so low you have to really pay
> attention to what he is saying..... My question is now
> that i own him, which im a woman will his voice change or
> get any louder with the new words that is taught to
> him.... Thank you.

It's not that his voice will change. He is not likely to
ever forget what he already knows, although you may beging to
hear it less and less since he won't be getting reinforcement
for it from you. But yes, he is very likely to start picking
up on things you say and in many instances, will probably use
your voice to say a lot of it. I really don't think they
ever forget anything, once they have learned it. It's just
that things they don't hear again, or very often, seem to
get "filed in the archives", only to be pulled out at a later
date. That is my experience with my Grey. He has a gigantic
vocabulary of words, phrases, sentences, conversations and
tunes he whistles. Some I hear often, some will go for
months before I hear them again. He speaks using his
previous owners voice, my voice, hubby's voice, the voice of
all my other speaking birds and one that is distinctively,
his own voice. Some of his words and phrases are sometimes
spoken with the voice from which he first learned it, and
sometimes from his own voice. The possibilities are endless,
once you know you have one that is interested in speaking at
all. Just keep carrying on conversations with him and I'm
sure you will hear your own voice before long. One good way
to work on conversations is to explain things to him, give
him the words and phrases for what you are doing and for a
variety of items. Such as, "here's your dinner", "take a
bath", "here's your water", "play with toys", on and on.
Talk to him as if he were a human child, just learning to
talk and to recognize things. No matter how much one thinks
they know about Greys, they usually prove out to be far
smarter than your wildest imagination. Be prepared to not
understand everything at first. They often go through
several versions of something before they get it just right.
He is also likely to do what I call "closet talking" until he
thinks it's right. He will practice when he thinks you can't
hear him. Always give him an encouraging response of some
kind, whether you understand the words or not. As soon as
you are pretty sure what he is working on, repeat it back to
him. They thrive on verbal acknowledgements from us and
encouragement. That can make for some of the best talkers.

Posts on this thread, including this one

• Congo, 4/29/09, by nj.
• Re: Congo, 4/29/09, by GreyLady.
• Re: Congo, 5/25/09, by khasley.