My Quaker, adopted/rescued when he was at least 10 years old had been abused or mistreated. He will step up if scared but not otherwise. I’ve had him for 5 years. He no longer bites and is trying to trust. Yesterday, he flew onto my head. I put my finger there and he stepped up. He stayed long enough for me to thank him and say good step up. He’s not food or toy motivated. I know he likes me. He likes to have whispered conversations with me and I’m talking to another one of the boys, he will body check them so that he is front and center. So if it takes another 5 years to get him to step up, I’m ok with that.
12:58 yep finally someone said it exactly as it is.. 👌 for God's sake people, they are birds and they have their own behavior in anger, happiness, fear just like people..
Thank you. So true! I tend not to even mention to anyone that my boy is cage territorial, cause of the responses it gets, but he was an abused rescue, who knew only a cage & abuse, so I've never had an issue with him trying to protect it, even though "experts" try to tell me it's "bad". Tbh, when I think about it right now, he's really not very cage territorial at all anymore, probably because he knows I don't get upset over it, so there's no need to be. For changing his food, I put his dish onto a door that I could open to change the food, so it wasn't in his cage while touching it, for his waters, I put treats onto my hands while changing them & then later switched to just treating after changing them without bites, nowadays we have a routine, where he expects me to put my hand there, but wait until he comes over to his water dish, then I take it out while he's there watching & replace with a fresh one, while he sits there guarding & supervising the whole process, then move my hand to the second dish & repeat. Food I've had to move, because he's changed sleeping spots, so poos into it in it's old spot, but really no issues putting my hand in to change, or anything else really, as long as I respect both my birds while in their cages & if either decide I can't enter at any given time, I have to remove my hand, wait a few seconds, then try again & continue to repeat until accepted if necessary. If I just persist, thinking whatever it is will just be quick, then the screaming at me & warning bites escalate to proper bites, if I withdraw, then try again it de-escalates to allowing me eventually & overall reduces the chance they'll object next time. Girl is probably more cage territorial than boy now actually. I do still see both of mine as cage territorial/protective of their cage though, I just don't think that's "bad" for birds with an abuse history, they need their own space where they can feel safe. So nice watching videos supporting this & really valuing the bird & their needs, rather than trying to force the birds into pigeonholes to fit human needs :) btw, an update on step up training with mine, I'm still working on the stuff you gave me, we're doing a long perch now & have started sometimes moving my hand a few cms to the side while on the hand with my boy (other times he'll only do one foot on, depends on his mood). Girl's still really only doing one foot step up's, but boy's making progress. Still a LONG way to go, was always going to be a super long process, but we are making progress, I just need to be super patient. Both of them are starting to treat me like furniture & putting at least one foot on for their own convenience & without hesitation, in particular, they tend to hold me at THEIR location with one foot on my hand now, so as to make sure they get the treat instead of me moving over to the other bird, so I think that's a really good sign of their comfort with my hand & having a foot on it, but still a long way to go before I'm going to be able to really move my hand with a bird on it. I think we will get there though if I persist with the daily training, using the stuff you helped me with, so thanks again & I'll give you more updates when we actually get further
I really loved reading about your birds! I'm a massive proponent of cooperative care so it makes me really happy that you respect their needs! You're an awesome bird parent!
Great post, I have a good example! Sophie will be super cuddly and adoring, then suddenly start fussing then progresses to biting. At first I didn't understand it, then I realised that the biting was shortly followed by a poop - she was telling me 'hey, mummy I need the bathroom...hey put me down, I gotta go!' However, she is fully flighted so why she can't just take herself off to do her business I don't know but this is just how she rolls 😂 When she does fly off and poop on her own I always give her a round of applause🎉
When I was on a train with my lovebirds they started to make a lot of noise, my boyfriend told me to make them "shut up" because of the other people on the train. I told him I'll not put them in the dark because of what other people think, they are animals and is they're way of communicating. People also think that my female lovebird bites people because she's spoiled (which she is) but is just her personality, female lovebirds are very prone to biting, she doesn't bite me as often as she does other people (maybe once a day and mostly is my fault, because I take away things she wants to play like my keyboard).
IF it's actually a problem for them to be noisy in that situation (I personally don't think it is, I'm like you, they're just communicating/being birds) a trick I've found is bird videos to scream to earlier to get it out of their system. My birds are time shifted to be up later with me, but I have an elderly neighbour who sleeps early, so I make sure to give them a good scream earlier in the day regularly, so that they're quiet naturally after the neighbour's gone to bed. I have particular videos that really set them off & cause them to scream, that I make sure I play regularly to make sure they are having good screams & I find in doing that, they are actually naturally very quiet most of the time now. They still chatter, but just quiet chattering to each other, rather than calling to the rest of the world. They actually lived with a neighbour of mine before he died & I rescued them & I know they used to scream all day & late into the evening almost every night & have him screaming at them to shut up (which they wouldn't), but nowadays, they just don't feel a need to scream in the way they used to, the screaming at video bird flocks before I need them to be quiet definitely works well for me. I think I personally would be thinking more about how to make my boyfriend "shut up" than the birds in the situation you describe there though
IMO the same goes for dogs. Barking, begging, chasing wildlife, resource guarding etc are not bad behaviors in and on themselves, and shouldn't be treated as such.
Thanks for all the sound advice. I am a newby to the parrot world. I have two parrots and the history is they are both rescue with a lot of broken baggage. One is one year old and the other is about 5 or 6 months and is injured with a broken wing and never expected to fly but now does. The older one gets so jealous and she dive bombs and pecks the younger one and I have to cover the head of the younger one with my hands so he does not get hurt. The older one calms down with a little time. I notice the aggressiveness increases when I hold the younger one. I cannot protect the younger one since they freefly in the house. What do you suggest.
The blue hat thing is so real though I know birds who don’t like when I wear long sleeves and I’ve got one that starts biting me when I pull out my phone cuz he doesn’t like it/know what it is
I have a green cheek conure and I raised her since 4 weeks old syringe fed. She follows me everywhere including the refrigerator. She saw me eating something and she decided to scrape the back of my neck to let me know SHE WANT SOME… so out of her cuteness I fed her from my mouth. 👎🏼 I know, that was not good and took me awhile to stop her asking. I was the one who reinforced the bad habit GREAT TUTORIAL Courtney 🙏🥰
You and your bird can best answer that. From an effective training standpoint its a treat your bird craves. My conure likes safflower and hemp seed best - they have the highest value to the bird and hence will motivate him best. He will accept millet and oat groats as treats but they don't motivate him as much as the high value treats.
@@Ansonidak I agree. To add even more weight to what you say, that it's a individual bird thing, my lorikeets won't even eat hemp seeds & have no real interest in eating safflowers either. They will eat millet, but not enough for it to have any treat value, I've recently discovered they will absolutely work for bread & I've known for a while for popcorn (but not unpopped corn seed). Mine like fruit juice & lettuce best, also fresh grass (one likes the grass, the other the seeds on the grass) as well as other green veggies & also really junky foods, like chips/fries & mealworms. I tend not to use the veggies as treats, because I like to give them in unlimited quantities, but they will work for a mix of healthy & unhealthy foods. Yoghurt was actually my boy's absolute favourite, but it caused problems with his arthritis, so I had to dump that unfortunately. He'd do ANYTHING for a lick of yoghurt! My girl is almost as extreme for the soft centre of a piece of fried sweet potato. She's even plunged to the ground trying to fly to me to get it, when helping me cook it in the kitchen, seems to forget that due to a decade in a tiny cage before coming to live with me, her wings are fused & she can't fly & just throws herself off her perch in the direction of the sweet potato on the cooktop! My boy, depending on his mood, may or may not eat the sweet potato that the girl just did that for, depending on his mood. My girl also has no interest in mealworms, despite boy doing the same thing as girl does with sweet potato to get them (he can fly though, so no splat from him) Girl does like eating bits of steak though (or at least sucking the juice out of it then dumping it) & boy has no interest at all in that. Just a case of trying the widest variety of foods possible & seeing what ones they really love imo. (then deciding what treats you consider acceptable to use for training, when balancing health & reward value if they really like unhealthy stuff) Trying each seed individually is a good starting point to potentially find good training treats, after that, if no results, nuts or other foods, just trying one after another until finding something that clicks. Anything fatty or sugary has good potential to be a hit, but so do other foods
Really like the idea of introducing an alternative behaviour to birds, replacing the 'problematic' ones, to serve the original function. Great talk!
My Quaker, adopted/rescued when he was at least 10 years old had been abused or mistreated. He will step up if scared but not otherwise. I’ve had him for 5 years. He no longer bites and is trying to trust. Yesterday, he flew onto my head. I put my finger there and he stepped up. He stayed long enough for me to thank him and say good step up. He’s not food or toy motivated. I know he likes me. He likes to have whispered conversations with me and I’m talking to another one of the boys, he will body check them so that he is front and center. So if it takes another 5 years to get him to step up, I’m ok with that.
Sometimes my bird climbs up on my head and magically I get the urge to cook five star meals while he's making a nest. It's the strangest thing.
😂
12:58 yep finally someone said it exactly as it is.. 👌 for God's sake people, they are birds and they have their own behavior in anger, happiness, fear just like people..
So true. Someone said before birds also scream for a reason. I took that to heart and this what I just heard in flock talks. Thank you. ❤
Love this perspective, such a helpful way of looking at their behavior!
Thank you. So true!
I tend not to even mention to anyone that my boy is cage territorial, cause of the responses it gets, but he was an abused rescue, who knew only a cage & abuse, so I've never had an issue with him trying to protect it, even though "experts" try to tell me it's "bad".
Tbh, when I think about it right now, he's really not very cage territorial at all anymore, probably because he knows I don't get upset over it, so there's no need to be. For changing his food, I put his dish onto a door that I could open to change the food, so it wasn't in his cage while touching it, for his waters, I put treats onto my hands while changing them & then later switched to just treating after changing them without bites, nowadays we have a routine, where he expects me to put my hand there, but wait until he comes over to his water dish, then I take it out while he's there watching & replace with a fresh one, while he sits there guarding & supervising the whole process, then move my hand to the second dish & repeat. Food I've had to move, because he's changed sleeping spots, so poos into it in it's old spot, but really no issues putting my hand in to change, or anything else really, as long as I respect both my birds while in their cages & if either decide I can't enter at any given time, I have to remove my hand, wait a few seconds, then try again & continue to repeat until accepted if necessary. If I just persist, thinking whatever it is will just be quick, then the screaming at me & warning bites escalate to proper bites, if I withdraw, then try again it de-escalates to allowing me eventually & overall reduces the chance they'll object next time. Girl is probably more cage territorial than boy now actually.
I do still see both of mine as cage territorial/protective of their cage though, I just don't think that's "bad" for birds with an abuse history, they need their own space where they can feel safe. So nice watching videos supporting this & really valuing the bird & their needs, rather than trying to force the birds into pigeonholes to fit human needs :)
btw, an update on step up training with mine, I'm still working on the stuff you gave me, we're doing a long perch now & have started sometimes moving my hand a few cms to the side while on the hand with my boy (other times he'll only do one foot on, depends on his mood). Girl's still really only doing one foot step up's, but boy's making progress. Still a LONG way to go, was always going to be a super long process, but we are making progress, I just need to be super patient. Both of them are starting to treat me like furniture & putting at least one foot on for their own convenience & without hesitation, in particular, they tend to hold me at THEIR location with one foot on my hand now, so as to make sure they get the treat instead of me moving over to the other bird, so I think that's a really good sign of their comfort with my hand & having a foot on it, but still a long way to go before I'm going to be able to really move my hand with a bird on it. I think we will get there though if I persist with the daily training, using the stuff you helped me with, so thanks again & I'll give you more updates when we actually get further
I really loved reading about your birds! I'm a massive proponent of cooperative care so it makes me really happy that you respect their needs! You're an awesome bird parent!
@@theConcernedWyvern orh thank you :)
Great post, I have a good example! Sophie will be super cuddly and adoring, then suddenly start fussing then progresses to biting.
At first I didn't understand it, then I realised that the biting was shortly followed by a poop - she was telling me 'hey, mummy I need the bathroom...hey put me down, I gotta go!'
However, she is fully flighted so why she can't just take herself off to do her business I don't know but this is just how she rolls 😂
When she does fly off and poop on her own I always give her a round of applause🎉
Love this!🫶
When I was on a train with my lovebirds they started to make a lot of noise, my boyfriend told me to make them "shut up" because of the other people on the train. I told him I'll not put them in the dark because of what other people think, they are animals and is they're way of communicating.
People also think that my female lovebird bites people because she's spoiled (which she is) but is just her personality, female lovebirds are very prone to biting, she doesn't bite me as often as she does other people (maybe once a day and mostly is my fault, because I take away things she wants to play like my keyboard).
IF it's actually a problem for them to be noisy in that situation (I personally don't think it is, I'm like you, they're just communicating/being birds) a trick I've found is bird videos to scream to earlier to get it out of their system. My birds are time shifted to be up later with me, but I have an elderly neighbour who sleeps early, so I make sure to give them a good scream earlier in the day regularly, so that they're quiet naturally after the neighbour's gone to bed.
I have particular videos that really set them off & cause them to scream, that I make sure I play regularly to make sure they are having good screams & I find in doing that, they are actually naturally very quiet most of the time now. They still chatter, but just quiet chattering to each other, rather than calling to the rest of the world. They actually lived with a neighbour of mine before he died & I rescued them & I know they used to scream all day & late into the evening almost every night & have him screaming at them to shut up (which they wouldn't), but nowadays, they just don't feel a need to scream in the way they used to, the screaming at video bird flocks before I need them to be quiet definitely works well for me.
I think I personally would be thinking more about how to make my boyfriend "shut up" than the birds in the situation you describe there though
IMO the same goes for dogs. Barking, begging, chasing wildlife, resource guarding etc are not bad behaviors in and on themselves, and shouldn't be treated as such.
Yep!
Thanks for all the sound advice.
I am a newby to the parrot world. I have two parrots and the history is they are both rescue with a lot of broken baggage. One is one year old and the other is about 5 or 6 months and is injured with a broken wing and never expected to fly but now does. The older one gets so jealous and she dive bombs and pecks the younger one and I have to cover the head of the younger one with my hands so he does not get hurt. The older one calms down with a little time. I notice the aggressiveness increases when I hold the younger one. I cannot protect the younger one since they freefly in the house. What do you suggest.
Yay! A new upload 😊 hi
❤️
The blue hat thing is so real though I know birds who don’t like when I wear long sleeves and I’ve got one that starts biting me when I pull out my phone cuz he doesn’t like it/know what it is
😂 it’s so interesting how certain objects just really throw them for a loop!
I have a green cheek conure and I raised her since 4 weeks old syringe fed. She follows me everywhere including the refrigerator. She saw me eating something and she decided to scrape the back of my neck to let me know SHE WANT SOME… so out of her cuteness I fed her from my mouth. 👎🏼 I know, that was not good and took me awhile to stop her asking. I was the one who reinforced the bad habit
GREAT TUTORIAL Courtney 🙏🥰
Those cute bird faces can be so hard to resist sometimes!
I agree @@FlockTalk
Which treat is best to train a African love bird
You and your bird can best answer that. From an effective training standpoint its a treat your bird craves. My conure likes safflower and hemp seed best - they have the highest value to the bird and hence will motivate him best. He will accept millet and oat groats as treats but they don't motivate him as much as the high value treats.
My relative’s grey loves peanuts
@@Ansonidak I agree. To add even more weight to what you say, that it's a individual bird thing, my lorikeets won't even eat hemp seeds & have no real interest in eating safflowers either. They will eat millet, but not enough for it to have any treat value, I've recently discovered they will absolutely work for bread & I've known for a while for popcorn (but not unpopped corn seed).
Mine like fruit juice & lettuce best, also fresh grass (one likes the grass, the other the seeds on the grass) as well as other green veggies & also really junky foods, like chips/fries & mealworms. I tend not to use the veggies as treats, because I like to give them in unlimited quantities, but they will work for a mix of healthy & unhealthy foods.
Yoghurt was actually my boy's absolute favourite, but it caused problems with his arthritis, so I had to dump that unfortunately. He'd do ANYTHING for a lick of yoghurt! My girl is almost as extreme for the soft centre of a piece of fried sweet potato. She's even plunged to the ground trying to fly to me to get it, when helping me cook it in the kitchen, seems to forget that due to a decade in a tiny cage before coming to live with me, her wings are fused & she can't fly & just throws herself off her perch in the direction of the sweet potato on the cooktop! My boy, depending on his mood, may or may not eat the sweet potato that the girl just did that for, depending on his mood.
My girl also has no interest in mealworms, despite boy doing the same thing as girl does with sweet potato to get them (he can fly though, so no splat from him) Girl does like eating bits of steak though (or at least sucking the juice out of it then dumping it) & boy has no interest at all in that. Just a case of trying the widest variety of foods possible & seeing what ones they really love imo. (then deciding what treats you consider acceptable to use for training, when balancing health & reward value if they really like unhealthy stuff)
Trying each seed individually is a good starting point to potentially find good training treats, after that, if no results, nuts or other foods, just trying one after another until finding something that clicks. Anything fatty or sugary has good potential to be a hit, but so do other foods