by Pajarita » Tue Feb 21, 2023 10:09 am
Hi, Starky and sennie, welcome to the forum. First of all, I am very sorry you are going through this. I feel for you because, in my personal experience, male sennies can be super aggressive and, because they are also stubborn and fearless, they can do a lot of damage with their little beaks. I've cared for lots of parrots, from budgies to macaws, and the ONLY bird that made me fear going into the birdroom was Sweetpea Senegal who, thankfully, is now my friend.
Now, if you reside in the Nothern Hemisphere, this is not Senegals' breeding season but that doesn't mean the problem cannot be hormonal because keeping them to a human light schedule and free-feeding protein food can make them produce sexual hormones not only out of season but all the time which makes the poor bird not only terribly sexually frustrated but also physically uncomfortable. There are other things that also make a difference on this like the bird being kept caged and alone for hours and hours, improper caresses, feeding animal protein, depriving it of flight (clipping), etc. So, the first thing I would recommend is for you to re-evaluate your husbandry (because, as much as we hate this fact, when a parrot is aggressive it is always because of something we did or did not do). Is he kept at a solar schedule with two hour exposure to dawn and dusk? Are you feeding right? Does he have at least 5 hours of out-of-cage and 3 of one-on-one? Is he clipped?
After you correct all the possible problems, start target training with his high value item as reward. Not more than 3 sessions of a few minutes each in the middle of the morning because the time of the day you interact with him is also important. The thing is to make his circadian cycles as close to their wild counterparts as possible - so, breakfast at dawn, interaction and flight mid-morning, rest at mid-day, maybe more interaction and more flight mid-afternoon, dinner at dusk and sleep in complete darkness.
Mind you, he will need months to get his endocrine system back on track and you might not find relief from his aggression for what might seem like a long time but, if you do everything right, he will become loving again.
PS I have found that the 'moodiness' that a lot of sennie owners believe is part of their personality doesn't really exist - well, at least none of the sennies I've cared for were moody. In my personal experience, a healthy, well-fed, well-adjusted sennie is not moody at all... I find them to be SUPER intelligent (Sweetpea Senegal is not only my best talker in terms of a large vocabulary, he is the only bird I have and ever had had that speaks cognitively), very loving and patient with humans (my Zoey Senegal is the only bird with whom I can do anything I want and never ever bites).