Recently adopted umbrella cockatoo

[ramo9924]

So i recently adopted a 35 year old male umbrella cockatoo he is a fairly well behaved overall and loves being affectionate. They didn't handle him as much as they should have, so her is minorly cage aggressive but that has been easy to already start to change the behavior. I have manged pet stores and trained plenty of young parrots when it comes to basic behaviors. But i am having a problem with him stepping up when he is on or in his cage. If he is off the cage he will do it 100% of the time. He will dance and do stuff to get my attention and when i come over and try to get him to step up he just trys to insist i just scratch his head. after trying enough times he can get a little nippy so ill go sit down wait for a bit and then try again. Have been following this pattern but haven't had any change yet. So i though i would try this and see if anyone had any tips to help speed things up. Only way to get him off the top of the cage when i have to put him up is to try and guide him in but the previous owner would chase him off the cage with a pillow till he would try and fly off so trying to guide him usually makes him panic and i want to get him over this asap so i don't have to stress him when i leave for work or put him to bed more then i have to. Appreciate any advice tanks

[liz]

Welcome to t forum.

[shiraartain]

Welcome to the forum! I only have experience with smaller birds, so I'll leave it to one of the other members to help out. As for going into the cage, why don't you put your too's favorite treat in there so that they go in on their own?

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum. We will try to help you as best we can but we need more information so as to give you the right pointers. The questions might seem not related to behavior but, directly or indirectly, they are so, please, indulge us.

How long have you had him?

What is his normal routine?

Diet?

What kind of light schedule is he on now?

If you've had him for less than six months, also which schedule was he on before?

When you ask him to step up, is this to your arm, hand or a stick?

[ramo9924]

I have had him almost a month. He gets some time out of his cage before i head to work. He gets fresh water and seed in the morning, have been trying to get him to eat fruits but no luck yet. I dont think his previous owner ever gave him fresh food. Also not yet eating treats or food from my hand, originally wouldnt even take it now he takes it from me and throws it. He has a couple toys and variety of perches in his cage. Once i get hone from work he is out with me till i go to bed. Id say his average light schedule is 10am to 11pm. Im not sure what his schedule was before. I use hand or arm when i ask him to step up, we will always do either as long as he isnt on his cage.

Thanks everyone for the welcoming

[liz]

Welcome to the forum.

I a getting tired so I will throw short sentences to get you started before someone else comes on to help you.

One month is way too short for him to learn and trust you. It is also too short for you to understand him.

I feed soaked grain and veggies for breakfast. All but Rambo took to the grain right away. I hide a nut in his grain. He has to taste the grain to get it and with the nut I know he will not starve while I am trying to get him used to it.
I give my birds seed to finish filling their bellies so no one goes to sleep hungry.
I turn on their UVs at 9 am when I serve breakfast and off at 5 pm when they get supper.

[Chantilly]

Hi Ramo, welcome to the forum!
I have not had too much experience with cockatoos, perhaps to get him to step up for you from in the cage rather than asking for a scratch (please correct me if this was not the problem) you could offer him a favourite nut/seed/fruit or even a peice of cardboard to shred, holding your arm out and the treat at a distance that he would need to step up to get.
As for cage time, I find with my conure(teeny tiny in comparison to an umbrella cockatoo though) putting a perch on the cage door, so as when you open it you can get your cockatoo to step onto the perch and then shut the cage door. You could bribe him onto the perch in a similar fashion as to getting him to step up from the cage with a seed or nut or shreddable once again(it dosnt matter what but it has to be something he wants.)
what i mean by the perch was something like this http://parrotwizard.com/perch/
you can buy similar things at pet shops out of wood with the bark on it, calcum grit(I think thats what they are) or sand perches(bad for the birds feet) Hopefully this helps .
~Chantilly

[Pajarita]

Well, his previous owner must have fed him something else besides seeds because, otherwise, he would have been dead years ago (seeds are too high in protein and lacking in lots of vitamins and antioxidants) or maybe his previous owner is not his original owner and he got better food before he went to him/her.

I've had five cockatoos, 1 Citron, 2 umbrellas, 2 Lesser Sulfurs, all gotten as adults (the youngest was 17 years old), four came from a seed diet and one from a pellet diet and they all took to the gloop like a fish to water so you might want to try that for his breakfast (you will find several recipes in the diet section). They are all great eaters of veggies, fruits and greens -which is hardest thing to get other species of parrots to eat. I only have two now, the two LS2s, one, Linus, is 25 and came a few months ago, and the other, Freddy, is now 23- 24 and came to me when he was 21 -both are eating great, even the one that has only been here a few months. This is not so much due to any personal credit, mind you, but because they are natural good eaters and all parrots like the gloop and transition to it easily.

The first thing I would recommend you do is take him to an avian vet for a completely check-up and get not only a CBC and an avian chem but also a bile acids because, at his age and given his previous and current diet, you want to have the whole picture when it comes to his health (long term high protein intake causes liver and kidney damage).

The second thing I would recommend is that you change his diet asap. I don't mean to scare you or sound like an alarmist but parrots die on an seed-only diet. I would feed him gloop with raw produce for breakfast and nuts for dinner (you can later on switch to a seed/nut mix but, for now, I would do just nuts because they are more nutritious than seeds). I would also put him on a multivitamin/mineral supplement (you can reduce it to once or twice a week later on but all parrots need to have vit D3 supplemented or they can't absorb calcium into their bones). If the avian vet you take him to follows the current trend of advice, he will tell you to feed him Harrison's High Potency but, personally, I would strongly advise against it.

The third thing I would do is do research on avian photoperiodism because the light schedule you mention he is on simply doesn't work for birds. It's a bit of a complex subject but every bird owner needs to be informed about it for the simple reason that all birds are photoperiodic - and that means that their entire endocrine system (the one that controls appetite, sleep, sexual hormones production or non-production, molt, etc) is controlled by the numbers of daylight hours there are in the season (photo meaning light and periodism from the word period) so by keeping him to a schedule from 10 am to 11 pm, you are giving him 13 hours of 'day' when, if one goes by the current season (winter for us and resting season for birds), he should be getting only 9 hours max (think of the birds in the trees and chickens). So, as far as his body is concerned, he is in the middle of the breeding season and producing sexual hormones when, in reality, he should not be producing any. This is a problem for parrots because their sexual organs are dormant until their body registers the number of daylight hours when they should start producing sexual hormones and 'activate' their organs which start growing preparing for reproduction, so, when you keep a parrot producing sexual hormones longer than it should or all the time, his gonads grow so large that they end up pushing other organs out of the way and causing chronic pain. They also make them aggressive as well as throw their entire endocrine system out of whack.

His possessiveness about his cage (not wanting to step up away from it) is a symptom of sexual aggression (his cage has become his nest and he is protecting it) so, once his system is clean of sexual hormones (it takes a while for the screwed up endocrine system to go back on track and for all the sexual hormones to disappear from his bloodstream), he will be much more manageable (he will also eat and sleep better and be in a better mood).

In the meantime, just get to know him without forcing him to interact with you. Like Liz mentioned, a month is nothing for them. You might already love him but he doesn't know you enough to trust you completely so you need to give him time to realize that he can. Talk, whistle, sing to him and just spend time with him but always on his terms. Eat fruits in front of him and offer him a piece (I take a bite from one end and offer the other to the bird -you don't to pass all the nasty bacteria we have in our mouths to him). It works out better in the long term if you take your time and allow him to always take the next step in the relationship. Cockatoos are extremely affectionate birds and, unless they are disaffected from an incorrect upbringing when babies, they turn around faster than other species so, if you play your hand right, you won't have long to wait.