Galah biting

[maryannelouise]

Need some advice on biting, my sister in law has a young galah who has started biting, it doesn't seem to be out of aggression and is more of a nip than a very painful bite. Any suggestions on what she should do?

[liz]

Owe is a good word to tell her that it was a bit too much. Myrtle chews on me like a teething baby but sometimes chomps down too hard. When I tell her "owe" she knows to lighten up.
Whatever word you use just keep using it.
I do not believe that there is such a thing as a bad bird. There is such a thing of not communicating with the bird to understand what they are thinking. This is how so many birds end up in shelters or closets.
I have watched as one would be premeditating and then pulling off the trick that they wanted to pull on someone. I am sure that other critters also premeditate but I can't see it as much as with a bird. These bird brains have a lot more going on than we will ever understand.

[Wolf]

It would take more information than what was given to give any answer that could be useful. There could be many reasons for this behavior beginning with the human not listening to the bird as it tries to communicate with them. Depending on the age of the bird it could have something to do with the human getting too familiar with another bird or human in front of her bird. More information as to what is going on before, during and after this behavior occurs is needed.

[Tman007]

Please l8ke wolf said more information.
When does he bite
Is it a bite or grab
My galah is just under 2 yrs old and he uses his beak for everything
The words. I use are quit and eazy
I look at not so much as a bite but a grabing to hard.
Sometimes he just gets so excited that he grabs to hard I tell him eazy .
Other times if he just bites to hard I tell him to quit.

[Wolf]

One of the reasons that so much information is require to be useful to you is that each and every bird is extremely intelligent and self aware and they each have their own distinct personalities that can and often does override many species specific traits. Just as you would need to understand what a human toddler is like, that is taking into account his or her unique personality before you can be effective at getting them to change their behaviors so too it is much the same with our birds. It is important to know what the bird is doing and just as important to understand what and why they are reacting to if we want to modify the behavior. Sometimes they are actually responding to something other than what at first it appears that they are reacting to. they all usually have a very good reason for the way that they behave, but sometimes that reason is not what we would expect it to be. They are every bit as complicated and diverse as humans are.