Aggressive green cheek conure

[lee ireland]

Hi, i purchased my green cheek conure about 6 weeks ago and when i got him he wasnt tame at all,

over the past 6 weeks we have made lots of progress and was able to step up and complete flight training

but now he has turned into a demon! he shows no signs of aggression but yet bites my hand like crazy if i try to get him to step up, i can still do the step up but only onto my arm as when he bites that it doesnt work out for him as he has nothing to latch onto

he is having lights off from now 7.30-6am it was 8.30-7.30 but the kids have been awake by 5.45am an it wakes him up so i changed the light off times

he is molting and doesnt allow any form f touch to his feathers

he is biting lots of things within his cage and sometimes it looks like he's trying to make them sharper but doing a type of movement with his beak that resembles resharpening a blade

he attacks the stick, the clicker and my hand

this has been happening since 4 days ago and has got worse as everyday passes

unsure what t do as this is new to me

any help much appreciated

thank you

[Wolf]

I really think that your first big mistake was in trying to substitute training for earning the trust of your bird and building the foundation of a good relationship through companionship, communication and love. I think that this is due to a train of thought put out by some trainers that claims that you can use training to gain your birds trust and to build a good relationship. Don't get me wrong as I am not against training. Training can help to deepen the bond and trust that you share with your bird, but it can't deepen what is not there to begin with. This can only happen through hours upon hours of two way communication with your bird as well as by hours of companionship, that is to say hanging out with your bird talking and singing and enjoying each others company.
The first 30 days, although it could be longer, are crucial to this process as your bird has just been taken away from all that it has known and thrust into a totally new and potentially dangerous environment with strange unknown humans demanding things of it while it is terrified and alone. Is it any wonder that after a period of time with the bird desperately trying to communicate with and appease this new human that it gives up and resorts finally to biting to communicate as no one was listening to it anyway.
Now I know that you have been posting on here to try to learn and to improve your relationship with Connor, but I was also concerned that you were getting ahead of yourself while being caught up in the training. In addition to improving his diet and so on, I am trying to help you to learn to see things through Connor's eyes to give you insight into how he perceives what is happening in his life.
Now we are at another milestone in Connor's life and he is molting. This is a very stressful time for him as he is uncomfortable in his own skin and if a pin feather it touched the wrong way then it is painful to him. Try to understand that as much as he wants to be out spending time with you, he can't tolerate being touched right now due to the molting. So I suggest that you just let him out to socialize and explore and to hang out with you but back off on training and touching him until he is finished molting. If you can use a spray bottle of cool water with 100% organic alcohol free aloe vera mixed in it, that you spray him with it on a daily basis. I mix 2 ounces of aloe with 6 ounces of water for this as well as putting the same mix in his bird bath. It helps with the itchy skin and helps to soften the pin feathers.
The " sharpening of his beak" is all perfectly natural for him to do and it is just a part of his daily grooming and upkeep of his beak.

[Pajarita]

Wolf is right, training early on the relationship actually backfires most times but even more so in your case because you also have two things working against you:
1) he is parent-raised (which means he will never regard humans as part of his family)
2) he stayed an aviary bird throughout his infancy because, if he is molting right now, it means that he is, at least, 6 months old, and your getting it just a few weeks ago means he was an aviary bird, living with his family for all his formative months without any close contact with humans.

Mind you, this doesn't mean you cannot tame him, you can, but you can't think of him as a 100% normal pet bird because he is not. In time and with a lot of patience, understanding, love and doing everything right, you will be able to tame him but he will never be imprinted to humans because the window of opportunity for this is long gone so his bond with people will never be that deep -especially if there are children and/or other people in the house (that also works against you).

Also, his light schedule cannot be dependent on when the children wake up. He needs to wake up with dawn and go to sleep with dusk without any artificial lights on and without a cover to his cage or his endocrine system will be out of whack.

Now, as to what to do now... well, you will have to go back to square one because the honeymoon period is over and you are now starting over with a clean slate. Forget about training. Forget about targeting, stepping up or anything. You need to establish a bond of love and trust and, unfortunately, there is no magic word or trick that anybody can teach you, it just takes love, time, patience, persistence and consistency. You need to win him over through his love of food (treats) and his need for companionship so spending hours with him, talking, singing, praising him, allowing him freedom from his cage for hours and hours, etc will do the trick.

[lee ireland]

thank you both!

but by not covering the cage wouldnt that induce any hormonal changes giving its summer time and the days are longer, i hear this time makes them more bity

[Wolf]

Actually we are on the downside of the breeding season and going into the molting phase of their annual cycle. So I don't think that this should present a problem. By not covering them you will be exposing them to the two twilight periods of dawn and dusk which are responsible for regulating their internal, biological clock. If their internal clock is off it will take some time for it to be reset to its proper synchronization with the seasons. It is not fast, but it is the only way to bring it into its proper synchronization and prevent hormonal issues later on, provided that it is maintained. It used to be thought that this was accomplished by the actual length of the day that they were exposed to but their internal clock measures both the length of the day and the length of the night. There appear to be other senses that seem to measure the angle of the light from the sun. This is all still being researched as we still have much to learn in this area.

[Tman007]

Lee I have a GCC and she is now two years old. When I first brought her home last year she would sit on my finger and be so sweet then just look down and bite. If yours is still young or unsure of its self it may just want to make sure it won't fall off your finger. I would have to agree with the rest of the post and work with bonding with the little guy first. One thing you can do is work on getting him us to knowing that a click means treat. and also work on targeting getting him to go touch the target stick where ever it is. I have found out that by target training a parrot you are teaching them to touch the stick not grab it. And by doing this you are showing him to lightly touch the stick and in turn it helps to let him know you don't have to hang on tight to everything. But as far as getting deep into training, you and him need to work on trusting each other. Just my thuoughts. Hope this helps

[Wolf]

I have never used target training to achieve this type of thing, so I don't have any information on it, but who knows, it might help.

[lee ireland]

thank you for all the advice i really appreciate it!

Can i ask,,, when they go through molting does the beak become more sensitive? the reason i ask is because he has suddenly gone off of foods that require him to use his beak more than normal such as opening small nuts ect, earlier he was biting a toy and started squeeling, he is constantly grinding his beak against things also so this al made me wonder if he could be biting out of serious teething ect

[Pajarita]

No, there is no pain as in when babies are teething. Young birds 'beak' things, including us, and this is normal but, again, there should be no pain. And yes, the rubbing their beak as if they were sharpening it is normal.

I don't use target training at all. I've never had and I doubt I ever will. This target training is actually a recent fad which did not exist when I started keeping parrots, and, in my personal opinion, the jury is still out as to its effectiveness in the long term so I stick to what I know for a fact works (23 years and counting). I teach my birds what I need them to learn the same way I taught my children and I teach my grandchildren, dogs and cats: through consistency, persistence and positive reinforcement (but I don't even reward them with treats, I just praise them and give them love) and I don't hold training sessions, either - I teach as I go along, same as a mother would teach her child.

[Wolf]

Just as a thought since you mention that there appears to be a sensitivity in his beak that should not be there, have you tried to check the inside of his beak to see if there might be something lodged there ?