by lwis » Tue Jan 31, 2012 10:39 pm
Green Cheeks seem to be particularly beaky when they are young. Is he biting or beaking?
Does he seem to be displeased or scared when he bites?
Is he chewing or snapping?
Does he draw blood, or is it just a little pinch?
My GCC went was pretty beaky for about a month, but he never seemed to bite out of anger or fear. He would just play too hard. It took him a while before he learned the difference between a gentle nibble and a painful nibble (he is still learning that). I feel that discouraging him from this behaviour would be a little different than discouraging him from a fear or anger bite.
If your bird is biting out of fear, his intent would probably be to hurt in order to protect himself. I which case you would probably want to go about it using one or a combination of the many positive reinforcement training methods that are out there to stop biting.
However, If he is comfortable with you and seems to like you and is biting or beaking because he is still exploring his environment and/or is still learning that some playful biting may hurt people, then this is what helped us.
Time + positive reinforcement + the lack of bad training.
reward him if he beaks you gently, but don't use much punishment if he beaks you too hard - don't put him back in his cage, or make a loud exciting noise, or anything that he may end to use I up using in the future that would require him to bite in order to elicit a response that he would desire from you. After saying that, we would make a 'pssst' sound whenever ours would beak to hard. We tried to use a sound that was similar to the sound he makes when something is causing him discomfort to communicate that we didn't like his biting. It seemed to help a lot, and it definitely interrupted the behaviour, but it did not scare him.
Hope this helps.