Agressive behaviour from my African Ringneck

[Benjamin]

Firstly, I've never owned a parrot or any bird actually. I recently adopted an African Ringneck and I've had her for about 2 months. For the most part she's been very good and has always enjoyed being on my shoulder but lately she's been very aggressive and I'm not sure why.

About a month ago she was jumping around her cage and biting her own wing and I thought she possibly had mites. I took her to the vet and he did tests which came back negative so I figured it might be something to do with her cage being right next to a mirror we have on the wall (she attacks her own reflection).

I moved her cage and she seemed to be fine after that. There wasn't any biting of her wing until recently again. For the last week she's been so interested in the cupboard drawers where we keep the vegetables and drying up towels and so I've let her have free reign to explore and play in the drawers, but yesterday she started jumping around and biting her wing again. There are some metal protectors on the inside of the cupboard door that protect the door from being damaged by the metal drawers which she can see her reflection in. Is it possible her reflection is causing her to attack herself?

She also doesn't want to be on my shoulder anywhere near as much as she used to when I first got her. Initially she'd be happy to be on my shoulder for 2-3 hours while I work on my pc but now I'm lucky if she's on my shoulder for more than 5 minutes before she starts screaming and wants to go to the kitchen counter (she runs up to the microwave and starts attacking her reflection).

I'm not sure what to do. She's bitten me a number of times over the last 3 days when trying to pick her up off the kitchen counter and I don't want to keep letting her onto the counter if her reflection is the cause of this behaviour but I also don't want to leave her in her cage because she doesn't stop screaming until I take her out and let her onto the counter.

[liz]

Welcome to the forum.

How old is she and do you know any of her history?

[Benjamin]

Thanks for the welcome. I adopted her from a friend's grandmother who in turn took her in from the original owner who moved overseas and the only info she could tell me is that she's already laid her first set of eggs so I'm assuming she's in the region of about 4-5 years old. That's really all the info I have on her unfortunately.

I've been reading over a few threads on the forum today and it seems like the general consensus is that too much protein causes aggressive behavior and I'm guilty of feeding her peanut butter. I'll see how things go with not giving her any.

[liz]

Too much protein messes with their hormones. Too much iron does this. Too much sodium does that and so on.
Don't take her eggs until she gives them up.

I have two Amazons. Rambo (who is really a girl but at the age of 30 he won't change names) has been with me for 15 years. I got Myrtle when she was one and she is now 5. Both came with really bad diets and I have been knocking myself out trying to get it right.

Both are hormonal and my precious little Myrtle has turned into a maniac. She didn't do this last year but I had one very bloody day this week. (They never bites.)

Wolf and Pajarita are trying to help me so I won't loose anymore blood. My education is coming in the "she bit me" thread.

[Wolf]

Well if she is laying eggs the she is an adult and there are many things that could be causing the behaviors that you mention and seeing her reflection is one of the big ones. I would definitely block her from things that she can see herself in for a start. But it also seems to me that you have some behaviors that are actually not likely to be related to her reflection as well. Still going with this reflection thing we need to look at other facets of her being hormonal such as diet and light schedules. We need to have a good idea of what her daily schedule is beginning with when she first gets up in the morning, including such things as how much out of cage time she has daily and when she gets the out of cage time, how much of that time is spent in actual physical contact with you, What foods do you provide to her daily as well as when you give her these foods. then when does she go to sleep at night. These are the starting points that we need to help you change this behavior.
Birds are not only very intelligent, they are also so very complex and due to the fact that their bodies are build as different from ours as they are they have many things that affect them in ways that we don't expect because these things either don't affect us or only just marginally affect us. If you will be so kind as to provide the above information then we can try to assist you with your bird, the more detailed the information you provide the more accurate our answers can be. Thank you.

[Benjamin]

Excuse the late response. I've been incredibly busy.

Her diet consists of sunflower seeds, apples, mielies (South African terminology for corn on the cob) and these pellets that my housemate bought which Lizzie never touches. Occasionally I'll feed her chewed up pieces of food from my mouth (ie. potato/veg when having dinner).

She hasn't laid eggs since we got her. She's usually been kept in her cage while we're at work but over the holidays I put her cage next to the kitchen counter and allowed her to roam freely with the cage open. Since being back at work since Monday I've kept her cage open during the day and she's usually on my shoulder from the time I get home from work (6pm till about 10pm) after which I put her in her cage with the cage gate(?) open.

She's been a lot more agressive lately. Lizzie prefers me over my housemate and she's now biting me everytime I try to scratch her neck. I don't know if she thinks I'm going to take her off my shoulder or what the case is but I'm really starting to dislike being bitten as often as I have been over the last 3 weeks.

I'll try keeping her away from anything she can see her reflection in but the one thing I can't remove is her food bowls. I've seen her attack her reflection in it a number of times.

[Pajarita]

Well, she has a real bad diet, my dear, and feeding things from your mouth is real bad for them because humans have lots and lots of bad bacteria in their mouth which parrots have no good antibody response to (they are undomesticated species so their bodies have not had a chance to adapt to human bacteria).

Peanut butter is not only high in protein, it's also super high in Omega 6 and, as she is getting no Omega 3 in her diet, you are creating a dangerous imbalance that will promote inflammation.

The light schedule is also not good for her. It will make her overly hormonal and hormonal bird = aggressive bird!

She needs to be switched to a better diet with more produce (not only in quantity but also in variety) to provide natural vitamins and, although you can still offer seeds, it needs to be a mix of lower protein ones and some nuts (more nutritious than seeds unless we are talking quinoa or hemp). I feed my birds gloop (several recipes in the diet section) accompanined by raw produce (one fruit, one veggie, one leafy green) in the morning and a good quality seed/nut mix for dinner.

She also needs to be put on a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk (meaning no artificial lights before the sun is up or after the sun is halfway down to the horizon in the evening -this is when you would serve her dinner). Keeping them at long days as you are doing now makes them produce sexual hormones constantly, something that nature never meant for it to happen and which makes them sexually frustrated, physically uncomfortable and very aggressive.

Once her hormones are at a normal level (it will take a few months of a good diet and a solar schedule for her endocrine system to go back on track), you can start training her. In the meantime, allow her out of cage time regularly (parrots need 4 hours of out-of-cage time every day) and, if you can make her fly, it would be great because flying will help dissipate the extra sexual hormones from her bloodstream which will speed things up). Spend as much time as you can with her but I would not recommend you have any type of physical interaction with her until she is not so aggressive. Use a stick to take her in and out of her cage and put her on a stand near you so you can spend time with her. Talk and sing to her, offer her a treat every now and then, eat with her in the mornings (her food, not yours but you can give her a little piece of a whole grain toast, for example), sharing food is a bonding tool because parrots always eat with their family.

[Wolf]

This has just been one of those days when life just happens, nothing major, just enough to interfere with things. I have tried three times to reply to you today, but as I said life happens, so I have not been able to do any more than just get started when I have to address other issues.

Lizzie sound to me as if she is hormonal among other things. IRN's are not the easiest birds to begin your introduction into the world of parrots simply due to the amount of time that is required to keep them from regressing to more wild behaviors, even though they have been bred and hatched in captivity. Because of the changes that should be made for your birds well being It would be helpful for us to know what part of the world that you live in.

It sounds like you work a great deal of the time and that makes it difficult for you to make some of the changes that are needed and because of that, I need to ask about your housemate and if this person is involved to any great degree with your bird as well as asking if they might be able to help you with the bird at least in helping the bird to have the interaction that it needs while you are at work. With the time of day that you are telling us that you are getting home, it is already dark, at least where I live, and that is why the question as to where you live. Perhaps you have the time to care for and interact with your bird more in the mornings and your housemate could take over in the evenings, so that the bird can not only get the exposure to the types of light that is needed to eliminate the hormonal behaviors that it and you are having to deal with as well as to allow the bird to get up and go to sleep more in tune with its normal waking and sleeping patterns. This along with some dietary changes will go a long way towards reducing Lizzies aggressive tendencies. Pajarita has stepped up and given you the basics of the changes that Lizzie needs and I am hoping to not only encourage you to make the changes but to help you find a workable way to bring them about. I am also hoping to help you to know more about why the birds requires these changes as well as how and why they affect the birds behaviors, so please feel free to ask any questions you need to.

So let's look at this hormonal thing a little closer so that you understand what is happening with it and why.

Birds are photoperiodic, which is to say that certain of their bodily functions are affected and controlled to a large degree by light as well as the type of light that they receive. They have an internal biological clock that is used among other things to measure the length of the day as well as the length of the light and dark periods of the day. The proper functioning of this biological clock is dependent upon the bird being exposed without interference of artificial lights, to both of the twilight periods that occur each day at dawn and again at dusk. These two periods of twilight set and reset the biological clock as well as acting like the start and stop switch on a stopwatch, so these two periods start and stop the period of measuring the daylight and dark periods each day. These measurements signal the birds endocrine system to start or to stop producing sexual hormones and so control the beginning and ending of the birds reproductive cycle. These same hormones also increase how aggressive the bird becomes. Diet is also a major factor in the reproductive cycle and in the amount of aggressive behavior that the bird exhibits because of the level of protein in the diet as the proteins are also used by the birds body to manufacture the hormones.

At the start of the breeding cycle the birds gonads are very small, which is a big help for the bird as they are all internal so space is at a premium. They are about the size of a pea in a bird the size of an African Grey, so they are even smaller in your bird, but during the breeding season they swell up and increase in size to over 100 times their dormant size. So although things get a bit tight inside the bird it is ok. The problem occurs when due to the amount of protein in the diet and or the light schedule of the bird is wrong and the endocrine system does not signal for the end of the breeding season so the birds body continues to produce hormones. When this happens the birds gonads continue to keep getting larger and larger and this increases their internal pressures far beyond their limits resulting in intense pain for the bird. In addition to this there is the additional pressures created by the gonads putting more and more pressure on all of the birds other internal organs, which increases the amount of pain as well as interfering with the proper functioning of these other organs. Eventually this pain will result in the bird plucking out its feathers and self mutilating itself creating big holes in its body as the bird tries desparetly to reduce and stop the pain. It also ends up creating a bird that can not tolerate even the lightest of touches due to the pain and so it bites to prevent being touched.

This is why the light schedule and one of the reasons for the bird being fed a good healthy low protein diet is so vital to the birds well being.

Here is a link viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12521 that has a list beginning on the second page containing safe and toxic foods, woods, plants and other things for your bird. There are also several topics in the health, nutrition and diet section of the forum that can help you a lot in what and how to feed your bird a good healthy diet. We will be happy to assist you in this area as much as we can.

I am hoping that this will be helpful for you. I need to help a neighbor in just a couple of minutes so I need to close this for now, I will be looking forward to hearing more from you soon and will see what I can do to help you with the biting issues that you and Lizzie are going through when I next post here.

[Benjamin]

The light schedule is also not good for her. It will make her overly hormonal and hormonal bird = aggressive bird!

She also needs to be put on a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk (meaning no artificial lights before the sun is up or after the sun is halfway down to the horizon in the evening -this is when you would serve her dinner). Keeping them at long days as you are doing now makes them produce sexual hormones constantly, something that nature never meant for it to happen and which makes them sexually frustrated, physically uncomfortable and very aggressive.

She's exposed to natural sunlight from the moment the sun comes up to the moment it goes down. Unfortunately she's also exposed to artificial light because her cage is in the lounge area and we spend our time there in the evenings. Our flat doesn't have a seperate room to keep her in.

She needs to be switched to a better diet with more produce (not only in quantity but also in variety) to provide natural vitamins and, although you can still offer seeds, it needs to be a mix of lower protein ones and some nuts (more nutritious than seeds unless we are talking quinoa or hemp). I feed my birds gloop (several recipes in the diet section) accompanined by raw produce (one fruit, one veggie, one leafy green) in the morning and a good quality seed/nut mix for dinner.

Thanks. I'll have a look at the diet section.

Once her hormones are at a normal level (it will take a few months of a good diet and a solar schedule for her endocrine system to go back on track), you can start training her. In the meantime, allow her out of cage time regularly (parrots need 4 hours of out-of-cage time every day) and, if you can make her fly, it would be great because flying will help dissipate the extra sexual hormones from her bloodstream which will speed things up). Spend as much time as you can with her but I would not recommend you have any type of physical interaction with her until she is not so aggressive. Use a stick to take her in and out of her cage and put her on a stand near you so you can spend time with her. Talk and sing to her, offer her a treat every now and then, eat with her in the mornings (her food, not yours but you can give her a little piece of a whole grain toast, for example), sharing food is a bonding tool because parrots always eat with their family.

She gets roughly 4 hours out of cage time. I don't know if I'll be able to stop any physical interaction with her though. She always wants to be on my shoulder.

[Benjamin]

@Wolf

Thanks for your response. It looks like the environment we have her in isn't good for her then. Lizzie doesn't like my housemate at all. Lizzie tries to bite Calli (my housemate) every time she gets near. It sounds like Lizzie will be better off living with someone who can give her the time and attention she needs because I can't with the hours I work.