how to tame my lovebird. help!

[pscindy_13]

There is just so much to learn and to unlearn about how we interact with these birds that it truly boggles the mind. Twenty years ago everyone was feeding these bird almost nothing other than a seed diet and that is what most breeders still wean their baby birds to. The problem with this is that they need more than seeds otherwise the end up dying at a young age from liver, kidney and heart disease. Still breeders wean their birds to seeds alone and do not teach the baby birds to eat the proper foods that they need to be healthy , they leave this to the new owner yet to nothing to help the new owner to know what foods these birds require nor do they tell the new owner how to teach their new baby bird to eat a healthy diet. This is not intended as a rant, but as important background information to help you, the new owner of your bird. It should help you to understand what is happening and why your baby does the things that it does.
Baby parrots are born without knowing what to eat or even how to eat or drink and depend on the parent birds to teach it these things, but then the babies are removed from the parent birds in order to make them imprint on humans otherwise they would not have anything to do with us. This imprinting causes the baby bird to think of us as a big funny looking bird and a part of their flock. This imprinting is different from bonding.
So now the baby bird is imprinted on humans, some breeders will return the baby to the parents and co parent them along with the babies actual parents, but due to the nature of their business these breeders are few and far between and this reunion only lasts for a very short time as the breeder wants to squeeze in another clutch of eggs before the breeding season is over. The baby bird by this time is eating a formula designed for them and are supposed to learn to trust their human surrogate parent and they are handled and supposedly socialized so that they will accept and bond quickly and easily to their new owners within a day or two. They often wean the baby bird too fast and too soon, apparently waiting only long enough for the baby to start eating the smallest and softest of seeds before selling the bird or shipping it to the pet store to be sold to you the new owner. At this time they bird has no idea of anything other than formula or a few seeds as being food and safe to eat. On top of this the baby bird is torn away from anything familiar to it so it is now terrified of these new people that it doesn't know and the new environment that it suddenly finds itself in. And more often than not these strange giant people want to touch and play with the terrified baby right away and have no idea as to what is going on with their baby bird.
Now understand that these are pretty intelligent birds and so they try as hard as they can to tell these strangers that they are scared, hungry and even beg for the stranger to sit and talk to them and comfort them. They cry and scream because the are hungry and scared ,begging to be held and comforted or to be fed some formula. They run away because they are scared and they bite for the same reason. They know that they must depend on you and are torn emotionally because they need you and they are scared of you at the same time. And it is worse because they are aware of this, they are intelligent after all.
This should help you to understand some things about you new baby and why he does what he does. Now the sitting down next to his cage with him close to your eye level and talking and singing to him will help him to get used to you and your voice and as he sees that you are not hurting him or poking him and that you are bringing him food and water and watching over him he will begin to relax and accept your presence as a good thing and he will begin to want you to stay close to him. In his natural environment he would never be alone from the time he hatches until the time of his death.
At his age you are now his parent and this is the bond that will be established with you as he learns to trust you and this means that you are the one that teaches him all he should know to survive in this new world. It is you who will teach him to play with toys and how to play with tem and you are the one that will teach what he can eat. Let us begin with food.
The best way by far to teach a bird to eat a new food is the very same way that his parent bird would do it and that is by eating it in front of him and then offering him some of it. Eat some more and offer him a piece of the food. You just repeat this process over and over with each new food tat you want him to eat. You set you dinner time and his to be the same and eat with him prepare him a dish of food and share with him, make sure you have a little extra on your plate that is set aside for him making sure that it is safe for him and give him little pieces of it along with his own little dish of food. For a parrot the eating and sharing of food is a social activity and a bonding activity as well.
This has been a long post so I will end here and we can add toys next time.

Wow, this REALLY opened my eyes and helped me understand him a lot more so thanks for that point of view. I always knew he was scared but not that scared and it does explain his behavior with toys and food.

Alrighty then. I'll try that with the food, and hope he learns from me and want to try. While the eye level thing... I'm going to make him a play gym tomorrow but mostly pearches since he doesn't know how to play yet and place it to my eye level. His higher then me standing on top of his cage right now.

I did notice that when I sing "tomorrow" from anny he calms down and seems to like it a lot lol. Earlier today he actually ran towrds me but then changed his mind and ran away again. It was also very cute cause he was trying to reach for the wall and when I told him not to do that or he would fall, he actually stopped! He started at me for a while then ran to the other side of the cage to hide again.

I hope that means progress with him lol

[liz]

Yes, progress.

I use the term "war orphan" for a bird that has been rescued for a bad situation.

Please don't any body take this wrong, but a new bird to you would be like an "orphan" from another country (like India) who has know idea what is happening. He can't communicate. Food doesn't look like the food he is used to. Probably never had a toy. A stranger who can't talk to him has him and he is scared.

[Wolf]

I remember a TV show that was on in the late 60's and/or early 70's. I believe that it was called ' Land of the Giants' or something similar. It was about a small group of scientist who were transported to this other dimension were they were the size of a mouse in appearance and about their adventures their. Because of their size nearly everything was dangerous for them and communication with the giants was limited at best.
I have this show on the brain when referring to new birds in a new place with new humans.

[pscindy_13]

Awesome!! It is progress~ XD

Kk then I'm designing his pearch place as we speak but right now his still chilling on top of his cage higher then me lol.

[pscindy_13]

I did the food method you told me about and he did seem extremely interested in my mango. He looked like he really want to come and try some but then would run away. I left a tiny slice of mango on top of his cage just in case.

[Pajarita]

Try giving him cooked whole grains (brown/black/red/wild rice, wheat kernels, barley, oat groats, quinoa, etc) on a paper plate at the bottom of his cage. Lovies are really the best eaters of all the little ones as long as you make the veggies kind of small for them (so baby peas, sweet corn, cooked and diced carrots, etc) he will eat them - but they also like leafy greens (try starting with red Swiss chard but only just one leaf for one day, not every day because it's high in oxalates) and fruits (try pomegranate seeds, they love them!)

[pscindy_13]

Try giving him cooked whole grains (brown/black/red/wild rice, wheat kernels, barley, oat groats, quinoa, etc) on a paper plate at the bottom of his cage. Lovies are really the best eaters of all the little ones as long as you make the veggies kind of small for them (so baby peas, sweet corn, cooked and diced carrots, etc) he will eat them - but they also like leafy greens (try starting with red Swiss chard but only just one leaf for one day, not every day because it's high in oxalates) and fruits (try pomegranate seeds, they love them!)

Kk! Will do~

[Wolf]

Toys !
The first thing about toys is learning about things that are safe and not safe for your bird and towards that end I had some help in posting a list in the following topic.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12521
The list begins on the second page and is still the best one that I have found to date, you may want to copy it and print it out or print it to a file on your computer so that you have it handy whenever you need to refer to it.
Toys... I think that we call then this because we as humans don't know what else to call them and because they resemble some types of human toys. Although we can train our birds to do things with them other than just destroying them, they don't play with them in the manner that a human would. We can train them to move them about and place them in specific places, we can teach them to recognize them by shape, color and even by the material that they are made from. What parrots normally do with them is to chew them up, sometimes this is to find a treat that we place in them, called foraging, and some are made so that the bird will learn to turn them to locate a hole to get the treat or to open them in some manner for the treat inside and are therefore reuseable. We can teach our birds to chase them and toss them but generally they want to chew them up.
Some toys, they seem to attack as if they are trying to kill it and seem to be quite pleased with themselves with the results of its destruction. It is probably the only thing that they will do with them on their own that could be called play. This is how they learn to fight for their survival and it allows them to learn how to attack something and how to defend themselves, most animals, including humans do this form of "play" as it is really the only way that we can safely learn self defense in our normal activities.
Some parrots seem to really enjoy these activities and like a wide variety of different objects to practice this with and other could not care less about this. I am sure that if raised wild they would practice this to some extent with each other, but I really can't say this for certain. Most animals do practice on each other to some degree, which is why I suspect that the wild ones probably use this method at times.
The birds that we get are, however not raised as a wild bird although they are not truely domesticated either. If we wish to have our parrots play with toys we must first teach them what a toy is and also how to use it. Many people do not take the time to do this and so these parrots for the most part don't play with toys, they will however chew them up on occasion. Store bought toys for parrots are expensive, especially considering how quickly they can destroy them and many of us must resort to either finding cheaper alternatives or make our own toys for our birds. This is where the list that I gave you comes in real handy. The best way to teach them to play with toys is for them to see other parrots playing with them, but if this is not feasible the other way is for them to watch you play with them, and when you have their interest you offer them the toy. or you hang it where they can get to it on their own to practice what they saw.
That really about sums up all I know concerning parrots and toys. If anyone else has more to offer or a different perspective please feel free to add to this.

[Pajarita]

Actually, Wolf, in my personal opinion, parrots don't really 'play' with toys even when you try to teach them to - at least, if they do, I've never seen any of them doing it. What I do see is parrots using their toys as punching bags or to satisfy natural behaviors (chewing, nesting, etc). Even foraging toys are not really toys to them, they are just one or a number of obstacles to overcome in order to get to the food.

[Wolf]

Actually, that is very similar to most of what I said, especially that they don't really see them a toys. I did describe foraging as well as self defense although I failed to mention nesting. I basically said that except for learning self defense and foraging all of the behaviors that we refer to as the parrot playing is learned from humans such as putting coins in a cup or a ball through a hoop.