Ok so I thought I'd start this thread for any other aussie grass keet owners that may come to the forum. This will be the story of our hand taming grass keet. Please feel free to comment with further advice.
Background
Percy is a 5 month old red rump parakeet. He was parent raised and has been with us just over 2 weeks. He is now in quarantine but has been vet checked as well as he had a touch of gas. He is now fully recovered. Percy was very nervous when he first arrived and completely hates hands.
Progress to date:
Percy won't come out the cage on his own but we have been leaving the door open when we are at home. We sit next to him and gently talk to him or hang out in the room which he is now comfortable with this. The first steps were getting him to eat and drink with us in the room. He has now done this and is starting to preen a little when we are in the room, he fully preens with his cover on at night and baths... we can hear this at night.
New training 20/2/13
Today Percy is being introduced to hands. Today we just held the hand just inside the cage and gradually moved it closer to him. When we saw he was becoming uncomfy we stopped the hand where it was. Over the course of the training he started to move towards the hand a look at it with interest. We did his for 30 minutes and then let him rest and put some sunflower seeds in his bowl.
21/2/2013
Thought I'd give it a go today. I placed some sunflower seeds in the centre of my palm Percy seemed interested once again. He gradually bent down but couldn't reach. He stepped on my hand but was a bit too shy and took it straight off. I removed my hand from the cage very slowly and arranged the sunflower seeds in a line from my index finger to my wrist on my palm. Percy took he first seeds after 7 minutes of waiting then went to get the others each time stretching to get the seeds but still taking it from my hands. The next step was placing one sunflower seeds on a pointed finger and holding this as close as I can get using the technique from yesterday, he took this with ease. We will continue with this training until he will step on the hand to eat them. Total training 25 minutes.