by Pajarita » Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:25 am
Well, of course he doesn't want to go back into his cage and nothing negative needs to have happened in it - I mean, would you like to go back into a jail cell? I know I wouldn't! Parrots are very smart and quickly learn the routines - he knows you want to put him back in his cage and are going to leave him alone for hours so he tries his best to avoid it. This is a common problem with parrots... People often call a bird's cage 'his home' but this is nothing but a euphemism meant to make us, humans, feel better about caging an animal that, in reality, did not evolved to have a 'home'. Parrots, with the single exception of quakers, have no 'homes'. They live out in the open, on the trees with the sky as their ceiling and infinite space all around them. The ONLY birds that like going into a cage are the ones that were never treated right because, when they are, they don't 'like' their cages. Now, having said that, some birds don't really fight you when you put them back - and, in my personal experience, the ones that don't are the ones that spend lots and lots of hours outside of it and go back to eat and sleep, mostly, and only a couple of hours of doing nothing. I don't have any trouble whatsoever getting my birds in their cages - so much so that, in the morning, when I put them back in for their breakfast, I don't even have to go looking for all of them because most would either go in by themselves or be perching on it waiting for me to put them in. But that's because they know that they are coming out again in half an hour and staying out until two or three hours prior my turning off the lights and giving them dinner.
The way I see it, you have three problems here: one is that, as you stated, both you and your wife work full time so the bird spends way too many hours in the cage. Two is that you have a cockatoo which are the neediest species when it comes to company. And three is that the bird is learning to bite - and you do NOT want to happen with a galah because they might be a bit smaller than other species of toos but they do have a powerful bite! At least, that has been my experience from friends that had them. All parrots belong to highly social species that evolved to be always surrounded by their family so they all hate being left alone but there are degrees to this hate and cockatoos hate it the most. It's terribly stressful to them and this is the reason why they are so very prone to becoming screamers and pluckers [doesn't your bird scream during the day when he is alone?]. Parrots don't 'like' having company, they need it as much as they need light, food and water [by the way, a bottle is a real bad idea for a cockatoo and you might want to reconsider it, most especially if you feed pellets]. Also, if you work full time, you are not able to keep your bird at a solar schedule and that will bring trouble down the line as he will become overly hormonal if he isn't already [again, plucking, screaming and even self-mutilating].
Parrots are wonderful, wonderful animals! They are beautiful, super smart, funny, VERY loving, etc. but keeping parrots healthy and happy is VERY hard because a normal lifestyle [full time work, children, vacations, etc] does not allow for the caregiver to fulfill their emotional and physical needs. Of course, this is something that most people find out the hard way because petstores and breeders don't tell you this and, unfortunately, even rescues adopt birds out to people who cannot provide them with a healthy lifestyle. It's a huge problem - and one that has harmful effects on the birds which end up being rehomed over and over, passing from one hand to another... I go into CL every day to flag and every single posting of a parrot for rehoming says the same thing: "I don't have enough time to spend with it".
The only thing that I can think of that will help [short of one of you quitting his/her job] is to eliminate the cage and make a birdroom for him where he can live cage-free [that's what I've done with my cockatoos] plus getting somebody to come and birdsit during the day - it doesn't have to be all day long but, at least, three or four hours so he has something to look forward to every day.