Est. 2014 · Midland, TX · USDA-licensed
Most places selling you a pair will not tell you that two greys often end up preferring each other. We will, before you spend anything, because the answer changes which birds you should actually take home. Every bird here is captive-bred in the USA at our USDA AWA licensed aviary and leaves with its own CITES Appendix I documentation.
Often, yes — if you house them together all day and treat them as a unit. Two greys close in age will make each other the primary relationship and reduce you to staff. It is not inevitable. Separate cages, fifteen to thirty minutes alone with each bird daily, and training them one at a time keeps both birds people-focused. If you cannot give that time, one grey will love you more than two ever will.
That paragraph is the whole page in miniature, and we would rather you read it before you look at a single price. Buying a companion pair of African Greys is not the same decision as buying two African Greys, and the difference is entirely in what you do after they arrive.
Below you will find every pair and single we currently have, the three genuine routes to owning two birds, what a documented pair costs elsewhere, and the protocol we hand every pair buyer. Our honest case for buying one bird instead sits in the middle of the page rather than buried at the bottom, because for a fair number of households it is the right answer.
Everything below is a real bird in our aviary right now, priced from our live inventory rather than from a template. The filter sorts by how you would take them home, because that is the decision most pair buyers are actually making.
Browse by route
Ships nationwide · $185 airport · $350 home
Ready-Made Pair $3,500
Two birds, one reservation
DNA sexed · CITES papered
Jins (male, about six months) and Jeni (female, about four) were raised alongside each other here. Unrelated, both hand-raised, both papered.
Ships nationwide · $185 airport · $350 home
See Jins & Jeni →
Either Bird Singly $1,900 / $1,800
You are not obliged to take both
DNA sexed · CITES papered
If one bird is the right answer for your household, say so and we will place one. Neither of them is held hostage to the other.
Ships nationwide · $185 airport · $350 home
Ask About One →
Build Your Own Pair $2,300 + $2,500Two birds, $4,800 in total
Two singles you introduce at home
DNA sexed · CITES papered
Roys is a confident male, Amie a steadier female. Bought together they arrive as two individuals, not a unit, which is the configuration that keeps both birds people-focused.
Ships nationwide · $185 airport · $350 home
See Roys & Amie →
Build Your Own Pair $1,600 + $1,500Two birds, $3,100 in total
The Timneh alternative
DNA sexed · CITES papered
Both Timnehs, both out of Levi and Rily. Smaller, quieter and typically talking earlier than a Congo, at the lowest two-bird figure we offer.
Ships nationwide · $185 airport · $350 home
See the Timnehs →
Breeding Referral From $3,000
A different purchase entirely
DNA sexed · CITES papered
Adults we hold back for breeding, closed-banded. This is stock for an aviary, not a companion pair for a living room.
Ships nationwide · $185 airport · $350 home
See the Adults →
Either Bird Singly $1,700
One bird, complete on her own
DNA sexed · CITES papered
Bery is a female Congo who came out of hand-raising exceptionally people-oriented. She is the bird we point first-time owners toward.
Ships nationwide · $185 airport · $350 home
Ask About Bery →One deposit of $200 holds a pair, not two deposits. It comes off the balance and it stops us showing those birds to anyone else while you arrange the rest.
If a bird sells, it comes off this page rather than sitting here as bait. We would rather show you four birds that exist than twelve that do not.
That gap matters more than it sounds. Jins reached each developmental stage first, and Jeni copied him through most of it, which is part of why they settle so easily together.
If you read nothing else on this page, read these five lines. They are the ones buyers tell us they wish someone had said before they bought.
The receipt
A single documented Congo. A ready-made pair is $3,500, and our proven breeding pairs run $3,000 to $5,500.
This is the question buyers ask us privately after they have already paid someone else, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassuring one. A grey is built to live in a flock and to pair-bond within it, and when you supply a second grey you have supplied the flock.
A pair bond is a preferred social partner, not a marriage and not necessarily a mating. Two greys who preen each other, call to each other across a room and choose the same perch have formed one. World Parrot Trust field material on grey social structure describes flocks that break into stable pairs well outside any breeding season, which is exactly what we see in our own aviary among birds far too young to breed. ↗
In our experience it takes all three together, and removing any one of them changes the outcome. The birds are unrelated, they are close in age, and they are housed together with constant access to each other and little separate handling.
Buying two at once raises the odds, because neither bird has an established relationship with you to fall back on. A grey that has lived with you for two years before a second arrives usually keeps its human bond intact.
It does, and not in the direction most people assume. Unrelated birds of similar age are more likely to pair-bond than siblings raised together, which is one reason the pairs sold as ready-made are the ones most likely to end up self-sufficient.
Read enough owner threads and you will find people whose two greys adore them and people whose two greys barely acknowledge them. The difference is almost never the birds.
They are unrelated, they are eight weeks apart, and they have been housed together since they weaned. We are telling you that about our own flagship pair because it is true and because the protocol below is the answer to it.
Everything above is one half of the trade, and reporting only that half would be as misleading as the sales pages that report neither. There are real things a pair gives a grey that a single bird never gets.
Greys are notorious for choosing one human and defending that choice against everyone else in the house. It is the most common behavioural complaint we field, and it lands hardest on families. A second bird spreads the social load and takes the edge off it.
A grey alone in a quiet house for nine hours is an intelligent animal with nothing to do. Lafeber's companion-bird behaviour library treats enrichment and social contact as core husbandry rather than enrichment extras, and company is one form of that contact. ↗
Often, in households where the birds would otherwise be alone all day. Not reliably, in households where one bird would have had constant company anyway.
Plucking has dietary, medical, hormonal and environmental drivers, and an avian vet works through all of them. The Association of Avian Veterinarians directory is where to start if you are seeing it. ↗
If a seller offers you a second bird as a fix for a plucking grey, they are guessing with your money.
This is the part nobody hands you at the point of sale, and it is the whole difference between two birds that love your household and two birds that live in it. None of it is difficult. All of it is daily.
Fifteen to thirty minutes with each bird, alone, out of sight of the other. Not shared time in the same room. The point is that each bird experiences you as its own relationship rather than as a feature of the environment they share.
Target training, step-up, recall, simple foraging puzzles — done individually. A bird that has learned something with you has a reason to seek you out. Two birds trained together learn to watch each other instead.
Two cages is the structural version of everything above. It gives you a way to separate without a confrontation, it lets each bird have its own territory, and it means an illness in one bird is not automatically an illness in both.
Fifteen minutes is the floor and thirty is comfortable. Two birds therefore need roughly an hour of your undivided attention a day before you count any shared time at all.
Partially, and slowly, and it is far harder than preventing it. This is why the first thirty days matter more than the first year.
Splitting two birds who have lived together for years is not a neutral act, and we would not recommend buying a pair on the assumption you can undo it later.
Our house method puts every chick through family handling and out-of-cage routine with several people. With a pair we run it twice, in parallel, deliberately keeping the two birds' sessions apart so neither learns to rely on the other's confidence.
We sell more birds by answering this honestly than we would by avoiding it, and it is the reason Jins and Jeni can be split. A pair is a configuration, not an upgrade.
A Congo African Grey lives roughly 40 to 60 years in good care. Buying a pair is not one long commitment, it is two overlapping ones, and the second bird will very likely outlive the arrangement you are imagining today. Households that think that through and still want two are the ones a pair suits.
If you want the closest possible relationship with a parrot, buy one. If this is your first parrot, buy one — a single grey is a large enough project on its own. If your daily free time is genuinely limited, buy one, because two birds without individual attention is the configuration that produces the outcome at the top of this page.
This is the route we quietly recommend most often. Take one bird, build the relationship, and add a second in a year or two if the household still wants it. The established bird keeps its human bond, and the new arrival learns from a grey who already trusts people.
A single grey in an empty house needs foraging work, radio or background noise, a window view, and a real reunion when you get home. That is a manageable list, and it is a smaller commitment than a second bird.
Three genuinely different purchases get called "a pair", and conflating them is how buyers end up with breeding stock in a living room. Here is what separates them.
| Route | What you get | Best for | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ready-made pair | Two birds already raised alongside each other | Households out of the house on weekdays | $3,500 |
| Build your own | Two singles you introduce yourself at home | Owners who want both birds people-focused | Sum of the two birds |
| Proven breeding pair | Bonded adults, closed-banded, kept for production | Established aviaries, not companions | $3,000 |
A ready-made pair is easier on arrival and harder afterwards. Two singles are harder on arrival — you run the introduction yourself — and easier afterwards, because neither bird arrives already committed to the other.
Aviary stock valued on its breeding record is priced by what it produces rather than by how it behaves on a hand, and most of it is not hand-tame at all. If someone offers you a proven breeding pair as a family companion purchase, they are selling you the wrong animal.
None of them, honestly. A first-time owner is best served by a single hand-raised bird, and we would rather say so here than after your deposit clears.
Slightly, and we would rather show you the arithmetic than let it look like a bulk discount on animals.
Jins on his own is $1,900 and Jeni on her own is $1,800, so taking both separately would come to $3,700. Together they are $3,500. The $200 difference is not a volume discount — it is the handling and administration that genuinely only happens once.
What happens once: the reservation, the crate booking, the flight arrangement, the conversation with you. What happens twice, at full cost: DNA sexing, the avian vet examination, the disease panel, the CITES documentation, and sixteen weeks of hand-feeding and socialisation.
No. Airport pickup stays $185 and home delivery stays $350 for the reservation rather than per bird.
That sentence is the entire economics of a pair, and any seller offering a much steeper pair discount is discounting something else.
A second bird adds paperwork, screening and rearing time. It does not add a second flight, a second crate fee, or a second round of our time on the phone with you.
Pair pricing is the widest spread in the whole African Grey market, and the spread itself is informative. Our $3,500 sits between two very different kinds of listing.
Browse the classified boards and documented adult Congo pairs are asking between $6,500 and $8,000 — a DNA-tested pair in Georgia at $8,000, bonded pairs in Maryland and Illinois at $6,500 each. Those are adult, settled, often proven birds, and the prices are real.
At the other end, retail sites advertise African Grey pairs around $1,800, frequently with no breeder name, no licence number, no certificates and an add-to-cart button. Those two figures are not measuring the same thing.
No, and this is where most anti-scam advice gets lazy. Price alone tells you very little. What the price sits next to tells you everything.
Ask for the certificates, the licence number and a live video call with both birds. A legitimate seller under market has a reason. A fraudulent one has an excuse.
Jins and Jeni hatched here and were hand-fed here. There is no importer, no broker and no middleman between our aviary and your house, and that gap is the whole reason our pair costs roughly half what a comparable documented pair asks elsewhere.
They are the two birds most people arrive on this page looking for, so here is everything we know about them.
Jins is a male of about six months and Jeni a female of about four. They come from different parents, they were hand-fed by us, and they have shared space since weaning. They are not a mated pair and they are years away from being one.
We tell them what section six of this page says: these two meet every condition that produces a self-sufficient pair. If you take both, the protocol is not optional. If that sounds like more than you want to take on, take one.
Yes. Jins is $1,900 and Jeni is $1,800 on their own. We would rather place one bird into a household that will work with it than push two into a home that wanted one.
The pair price exists because they are easy to place together, not because we refuse to separate them. Say which bird suits you and we will talk it through honestly.
If you want two birds but want both of them people-focused, this is the route we would steer you toward. Two singles, introduced under your own roof, on your own timetable.
Roys is a confident male at $2,300 and Amie a steadier female at $2,500. They are siblings out of James and Lois, which means they already know each other but were not raised as a bonded unit — a middle ground between a ready-made pair and two strangers.
Our Timneh pair option is Elad at $1,600 and Evie at $1,500, both out of Levi and Rily. A Timneh is smaller, generally calmer and often talking earlier than a Congo, and two of them is the least expensive two-bird route we offer. ↗
As companions, yes — the photograph above is our own birds. As a breeding pair, no, and we would not set one up. Different subspecies, and it is not what either bird is for.
Two birds means two complete document sets. This is where a lot of pair listings quietly fall apart, because papering one bird is cheaper than papering two.
Each grey leaves here with its own CITES Appendix I documentation, its own DNA sexing certificate, its own avian veterinary health certificate, and its own hatch certificate carrying its band number. Nothing is shared and nothing is summarised onto one page.
Our DNA-sexing process runs on every bird we list, because a grey is monomorphic and nobody can sex one by eye. A pair sold with one certificate is a pair where somebody guessed. ↗
Yes. The documentation attaches to the bird, not to the transaction, and a pair is two birds.
Every bird we list is PCR screened for PBFD and polyomavirus and examined by an avian veterinarian. With a pair that screening carries extra weight.
Both diseases are screened by PCR rather than by observation, on both birds, before either is listed. Peer-reviewed literature on circovirus transmission in psittacines is unambiguous that close contact is the main route, which is exactly what a pair is. ↗
Two birds in constant contact share everything. An unscreened pair is not two independent risks, it is one shared one — and it is why we will not sell a pair where only one bird has been tested.
Neither ships. We do not split a pair to move the healthy half, and we do not hold the result back to save a sale. The written health guarantee behind every bird runs seventy-two hours from arrival, with a twenty-four-hour window on shipping. ↗
Yes, with the right paperwork, and owning two changes nothing about the legal position beyond doubling the documents.
The CITES appendices listing places Psittacus erithacus in Appendix I, which governs international trade. Captive-bred birds are legal to own and transfer domestically with proper documentation, and every bird we place is captive-bred in the USA. ↗
Not materially. You keep two sets of papers instead of one. USDA APHIS animal-care licensing information covers the breeder side of that arrangement rather than the owner side. ↗
The uplisting from Appendix II took effect in January 2017. Any seller still describing greys as Appendix II is working from stale information, and that is worth noticing.
Shipping a pair is genuinely different from shipping one bird, and it is the question the old version of this page got asked most.
Birds already settled with each other travel together in a single IATA-compliant live-animal container. Birds that are not go into adjacent compartments on the same booking. We make that call per pair after watching them, not by policy, because a stressed bird in a shared crate is worse than two calm birds in separate ones.
Both figures are per reservation rather than per bird. Airport pickup puts them on Delta, United or American cargo to your nearest major airport; home delivery brings them door to door.
Airport pickup
$185
Charged once per reservation, never twice for a pair. Delta, United or American cargo into your nearest major airport, and you collect both crates at the counter.
Home delivery
$350
Door to door on the same single booking, with both birds handed over in person and each bird's file handed over with it.
If you are inside a two-to-three-hour radius of Midland you are welcome to collect in person, meet both birds first, and skip shipping altogether. It is the arrangement we prefer for a pair.
Always. We will not split a pair across two bookings, because the arrival is stressful enough without separating them for it.
The container, the labelling, the temperature limits and the handling all follow IATA Live Animals Regulations, which is the standard the airlines enforce at the counter.
The first month sets the pattern for the next forty years, and with two birds it is the month that decides whether you get a pair or a flock of two that tolerates you.
Week one is separate cages and, if you keep other birds, separate rooms. Week two brings the cages into the same room with no contact. Weeks three and four allow supervised time out together, always watched. Only after a month, and only once both birds are calm, would we leave them unsupervised.
Thirty days minimum, in a separate airspace, before any new grey meets an existing bird. Both of ours arrive screened, but screening is not a substitute for quarantine.
A month, at the earliest, and longer if either bird is showing territorial behaviour at the cage bars.
Every introduction we have seen go badly started with two birds put straight into one cage on day one.
It is the one thing we ask of pair buyers, and it costs nothing but patience. Our full care routine covers the rest of that first month. ↗
Pair listings attract fraud because the ticket is bigger. These are the checks we would run on ourselves, and they take about ten minutes.
Ask for both birds' DNA certificates by name. Ask for the breeder's USDA licence number. Ask for a live video call with both birds in frame. Ask what happens if you only want one. Ask the hatch dates, then check them against whatever the listing claims about the birds' status.
Our full scam-pattern breakdown covers the rest, but three claims are immediately disqualifying on a pair listing: a bonded pair of four-month-olds, a breeding pair of yearlings, and worldwide shipping inside a few days. ↗
Because a four-month-old grey is barely weaned. It can have a companion. It cannot have a pair bond in any sense that survives contact with the word.
That single fact disqualifies a large share of the pair listings currently ranking for these searches.
We have watched that exact listing rank first for breeding-pair searches. Whatever those birds are, they are not a breeding pair, and the seller either does not know or is counting on you not to.
Both of these buyers came to us looking for two birds, and both are quoted exactly as they wrote it.
After weeks of searching for an affordable African grey parrot pair, I finally found C.A.G.s, and the experience exceeded every expectation. Teri patiently answered all my questions, provided recent photos, health records, and explained the personalities of both birds before I committed. The pair arrived healthy, well-socialized, and already comfortable around people. It's rare to find such quality, transparency, and fair pricing in one place. If you're looking for an affordable African grey parrot pair, I highly recommend C.A.G.s for their professionalism, ethical breeding practices, and exceptional customer service.
Finding a reliable African grey parrot pair for sale wasn't easy until I discovered C.A.G.s. Their honesty, professionalism, and knowledge immediately gave me confidence. The birds were exactly as described—healthy, affectionate, and beautifully cared for. Even after delivery, the team continued providing advice on diet, enrichment, and acclimation. I couldn't be happier with my experience, and I highly recommend C.A.G.s to anyone searching for an African grey parrot pair for sale from a breeder that genuinely cares about both the birds and their new families.
We went through the pair listings currently ranking for these searches and checked them against what we publish. This is what the difference looks like line by line.
| Check | C.A.Gs | Typical listing |
|---|---|---|
| Both birds DNA sexed | ✔ Certificate per bird | ✗ Often one, or none |
| Named breeder and licence | ✔ Mark & Teri Benjamin, USDA AWA | ✗ No name, no number |
| Birds named and photographed | ✔ Jins and Jeni, our photos | ✗ Stock or reused images |
| Will sell you one bird | ✔ Either bird singly | ✗ Pair only, no exceptions |
| States the bonding risk | ✔ Section four of this page | ✗ Never mentioned |
| Shipping claim | ✔ United States only | ✗ "Worldwide, 1–4 days" |
| Written health guarantee | ✔ 72 hours, in writing | ✗ "5 year guarantee", unenforceable |
Three guides cover the ground a pair buyer usually wants next.
Also from our aviary
A proven producing duo for an established aviary is valued on what it has fledged, not on how tame it is, which makes it a different listing from every companion bird above.
Candled Congo eggs for a working incubator answer a different ambition entirely, and that page is blunt about who should not buy them.
The Benjamin Home-Raising Protocol behind both birds is what we mean whenever the phrase "hand-raised" appears on this site.
These are the questions that come up on the phone, answered the way we answer them on the phone.
They can, and it is the single most common regret we hear about pairs. Two greys housed together all day, close in age and unrelated, will often make each other the primary relationship and treat people as staff. It is not automatic. What decides it is husbandry: separate cages, daily one-to-one time with each bird, and training them individually rather than as a unit. If you cannot commit to that time every day, one bird will give you a closer relationship than two.
Yes, and it is worth stating honestly because most sellers only give you one half of this. A single grey that bonds hard to one person is prone to jealousy and can become aggressive toward everyone else in the household. A pair spreads that. They also have company during the hours you are out, which matters for a bird this intelligent. You trade intensity of human attachment for stability and company.
No. We offer them together at $3,500 because they were raised alongside each other, but either bird can go on its own — Jins at $1,900, Jeni at $1,800. We would rather place one bird in the right home than push two into the wrong one.
Plan on fifteen to thirty minutes alone with each bird, every day, on top of whatever time they spend out together. That is the number that keeps both birds people-focused. Two birds do not halve the work; they roughly double it.
Yes, as companions. We keep Congos and Timnehs alongside each other here and the photograph on this page is our own aviary. What we would not recommend is pairing a Congo with a Timneh as a breeding pair — different subspecies, and that is not what either bird is for.
For a companion pair it does not matter. Two hens or two cocks will keep each other company perfectly well. Sex only becomes decisive if you intend to breed, which is a different purchase and a different page.
Not on arrival, and in our experience not ever, if you want both birds tame. We ask every pair buyer to run two cages. Shared housing accelerates the pair bond and removes the separation you need in order to work with each bird individually.
Two complete sets, never one shared file. Each bird travels with its own CITES Appendix I documentation, its own DNA sexing certificate, its own avian vet health certificate, and its own hatch certificate and band number.
It depends on how settled they are with each other. Birds that already share space travel together in one IATA-compliant container; birds that do not go in adjacent compartments. Either way both birds fly on the same flight, and we make that call per pair rather than by policy.
No. Airport pickup is $185 and home delivery is $350 for the reservation, not per bird. What does double is the paperwork and the handling, which is why a pair is not simply half price per head.
Documented adult pairs are currently listed elsewhere between $6,500 and $8,000, and undocumented listings advertise pairs around $1,800. Ours sits at $3,500 because we bred and raised both birds here, so no reseller margin sits in the price. A low price with papers is value. A low price without them is bait.
Congo African Greys are not sexually mature until roughly three to five years. Any listing advertising a four-month-old or fifteen-month-old bonded or breeding pair is describing something that cannot happen, and that alone tells you what the listing is worth.
Tell us which birds you are looking at and how much time you realistically have each day. We will tell you honestly whether a pair or a single is the better fit, and we reply within twenty-four hours.
