Questions:
Answers:
1) Can I get a bird that won't bite?
The simple answer is NO. Biting is a birds natural defense and they will resort to it when they are frightened, scared or startled. Asking for bird that won't bite is like asking for a dog that won't bark, or a cat that won't scratch. Now having said that, we can assure you that a handraised bird will not bite anywhere near as often (or hard) as a wild caught bird. This is due to the fact that they do not get scared or frightened near as easily (because of the intense human interaction they have gone through during the hand raising process).
Birds are very oral. By this I mean that they use their beak and tongue like a hand. They pick things up with their beak and they examine them with their tongues. Because of this, people often interpret the bird grabbing them with their beak as biting. This is not the case. Since they bird can crack a walnut with his beak, you would know if he was really biting you -there would be no doubt in your mind. Most often they are just trying to climb up on you, or "taste" your skin, or determine if your finger is food or not. Birds are very curious and explore, taste, and examine everything within their reach. Occasionally as they examine new things and try to determine if it is edible, they may start to apply too much pressure. This is when we simply say "no", and they begin to learn what is OK and what is not OK to do/chew on.
2) What about discipline?
Young parrots are a lot like young humans. They need to be taught proper manners and boundaries. Even though we start this training while the bird is at our place, you will need to continue this training at your home. Just like a kid, when the bird comes to your home, he or she will test their boundaries to see what they can get away with. You need to set rules and consistently stick by them. If a bird is biting, we use the word "No" in a forceful way and if that does not stop them, we grasp their beak with our fingers and move it. If this does not work, another thing to try is to blow some air from your mouth on them after you say no. They do not particularly like this and it gets them to stop what they were doing. It is a good distraction technique. Another method if you are standing and the bird is on your hand is to say no and simply drop your hand (in a fast motion) a few inches. This will cause the bird stop biting and to hang on and catch his balance. Eventually they figure out what they are not supposed to do, and associate the word "no" with something they should stop doing.
Another way that birds are a lot like kids is that they will do whatever it takes to get attention. Negative attention is better than no attention at all. Just like a kid, the worst thing you can do when your bird is acting up (biting or screeching) is to make a fuss over it and start giving it attention. This just reinforces the bad behavior. Try to pick times when your bird is sitting quietly to pay attention to it. If the bird is out of the cage and in the same room with you and begins acting out, try giving it a timeout by putting the bird back in its cage or moving the bird to a perch in another room where no one is. You want to make sure that the bird is not getting what it wants, but instead is getting something that it does not want as a result of acting out.
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