Is it normal for handfed baby senegals to be nippy?

[cml]

Stop thinking in sessions, and start thinking "when the parrot is ready" . Its impossible to say how many sessions something takes, especially so without being there and seeing it.

Something might take only a few sessions to learn, some things months of hard work with multiple sessions a day.
You need to re-think your whole approach here, dont rush things, it seems to me you are still wanting everything to happen RIGHT NOW. It will be different with different birds, Stitch learns very fast, whereas Leroy takes longer to learn. Yours is a baby, and you really shouldnt rush things, you have plenty of time ahead of you. A parrot is in many cases a life-long commitment!

Ive taken a lot of time and energy to try to illustrate this in this thread, with examples of my own training and failures with Stitch and Leroy, and lots of other people have been helping as well. I am starting to feel that you arent reading through whats been written here? T

[Nir]

Stop thinking in sessions, and start thinking "when the parrot is ready" . Its impossible to say how many sessions something takes, especially so without being there and seeing it.

Something might take only a few sessions to learn, some things months of hard work with multiple sessions a day.
You need to re-think your whole approach here, dont rush things, it seems to me you are still wanting everything to happen RIGHT NOW. It will be different with different birds, Stitch learns very fast, whereas Leroy takes longer to learn. Yours is a baby, and you really shouldnt rush things, you have plenty of time ahead of you. A parrot is in many cases a life-long commitment!

Ive taken a lot of time and energy to try to illustrate this in this thread, with examples of my own training and failures with Stitch and Leroy, and lots of other people have been helping as well. I am starting to feel that you arent reading through whats been written here? T

I just meant how do I know when she's ready since she is doing the target training well now.

[Andromeda]

Stop thinking in sessions, and start thinking "when the parrot is ready" . Its impossible to say how many sessions something takes, especially so without being there and seeing it.

You need to re-think your whole approach here, dont rush things, it seems to me you are still wanting everything to happen RIGHT NOW. ... Yours is a baby, and you really shouldnt rush things, you have plenty of time ahead of you. A parrot is in many cases a life-long commitment!

+1

I just meant how do I know when she's ready since she is doing the target training well now.

Before you proceed to "step-up" do targeting for a few more days at least, but increase the demands. Target her inside the cage, outside the cage, across the cage, etc. Once you can target her to different places and get her to go several feet back and forth to target you can start the "step-up" training.

First you want to place your hand somewhere and keep it still. Practice targeting her closer and closer to your hand (not all at once!) and when she will target near your hand you can hold the targeting stick so she has to step onto your hand to reach it. At this point continue to keep your hand still and reward that for a while before you move your hand with her on it, and when you do start to move your hand only move it a short distance, reward, and target her back off your hand again. Eventually (again, over time, and not all at once) you can carry her for longer distances and stop rewarding for step-up.

Slow down!

[Nir]

cool. Will target train for couple more days. reason i want to tame her as soon as possible instead of taking months is so i can start socializing her to everyone. At this point there is no way i can risk having any kids or even friends near her since she will bite. Mike emphasized socializing a lot. I figured that no way i can wait a lief time to just tame her since the socialization will take a major hit.

Also I have a feeling that if i put my finger anywhere near reachable then she will go ahead and bite regadless of target training. I had purchased a training video from birdtricks (i believe michael learned from them as well so it seems legit) and 1 of the videos had a video of teaching to step up with using 2 sticks. placing 1 stick near her mouth so she doesnt aim at the other perch to bite it when you use it to step her up. And slowly you keep moving your finger closer and closer to the edge and keep moving the other perch which will be near her mouth further and further away. Would that be a better approach if the targeting method to step up doesnt work?

And not sure why everyone is repeating that i want everything "now" and that i have to rethink . I know that this will be a long process to tame and i am sure every person who bought home a new baby had to go through this blood biting phase in the beginning a la mike and others. So i will keep trying. I already emphasized that i will go as slow as possible. But i am a newbie in this and i dont understand everything, This is why i am asking questions on when is the right time. Just because i might ask "dumb" questions doesnt mean i will just fast forward this. I will go as slow as needed. i am "reading through " what everyone is saying but understanding how to implement it isnt exactly easy for a first time bigger bird owner but i am doing the best i can.

I will take it as slow as possible. I will keep target training her. Right now i can get her to go across the top and around edges but she seems confused sometimes when i tell her to climb a ladder to a different perch. She sometimes does it but sometimes doesnt. Also getting her inside her cage is kinda hard so far since she rarely climbs the side of the cage to go inside by herself. But i will keep trying.

[Andromeda]

And not sure why everyone is repeating that i want everything "now" and that i have to rethink . I know that this will be a long process to tame and i am sure every person who bought home a new baby had to go through this blood biting phase in the beginning a la mike and others. So i will keep trying. I already emphasized that i will go as slow as possible. But i am a newbie in this and i dont understand everything, This is why i am asking questions on when is the right time. Just because i might ask "dumb" questions doesnt mean i will just fast forward this. I will go as slow as needed. i am "reading through " what everyone is saying but understanding how to implement it isnt exactly easy for a first time bigger bird owner but i am doing the best i can.

I don't think anyone thinks you are asking "dumb" questions and there is nothing wrong with being a newbie. I understand that you are having some trouble implementing things because it is certainly one thing to read about something and another to try to do it in practice.

However, the reason why people are saying you want everything "now" despite the fact that you are emphasizing that you will go as slow as possible is that yes, you say you'll go slow but then you say things like this:

reason i want to tame her as soon as possible instead of taking months is so i can start socializing her to everyone. ... I figured that no way i can wait a lief time to just tame her since the socialization will take a major hit.

...in addition to the fact that you have only had your Poi since the 16th, meaning it hasn't even been a week, and you're already wanting to push past targeting when she's only been doing that for a few days!

By no means am I trying to attack you personally (you are doing a lot of research and are here asking questions and that is wonderful) but please understand that your mindset in regards to taming is way off. I don't think it's intentional but I just think you're inherently misunderstanding parrots. Birds are not domesticated like cats and dogs, and unlike a cat or a dog they don't naturally trust humans and they don't naturally desire human contact.

The bird should not be on any schedule but its own. You should not be thinking in terms of "I want to tame her as soon as possible so I can socialize her immediately" because this is very demanding of a young bird in a brand-new environment. Rather, you should be thinking "my long-term goal is to have a tame, well-socialized bird."

No one is saying it's going to take a "lifetime" to tame her but taming is a process that takes time because more than anything you have to earn the bird's trust in regards to being handled. If it takes weeks or months for her to be comfortable with handling, that's fine, and socialization long-term will not suffer if you're not able to have other people handle her for a few weeks or months due to having to tame her first.

The reason why everyone keeps telling you to slow down is because you can majorly blow it with your bird if you push it too far, too fast. You have to understand that when you are clicker-training you are "capturing" everything you click, and what I mean by that is you need the bird to be calm when it hears that click. If you are pushing the bird too far, sure, maybe it's doing the desired behavior but if the bird is agitated or fearful or aggressive while doing said behavior and you click and treat you have just "captured" the fear or aggression as part of the behavior!

Also I have a feeling that if i put my finger anywhere near reachable then she will go ahead and bite regadless of target training.

That just means she's being pushed too far, too fast.

I had purchased a training video from birdtricks (i believe michael learned from them as well so it seems legit) and 1 of the videos had a video of teaching to step up with using 2 sticks. placing 1 stick near her mouth so she doesnt aim at the other perch to bite it when you use it to step her up. And slowly you keep moving your finger closer and closer to the edge and keep moving the other perch which will be near her mouth further and further away. Would that be a better approach if the targeting method to step up doesnt work.

I think you just described using a perch to distract from a bite, but this is exactly the purpose of the targeting stick: distracting from a bite.

If you don't think you can target your bird closer and closer to your hand work on targeting your bird onto and off of a hand-held perch first. If the first thing your bird does is go for your hand once on the perch, don't give it that opportunity! Use the targeting stick and treats to distract it, meaning target it onto the perch, click, treat, target it right off, click, treat. Once it will sit on the perch without going for your hand you can slowly move your hand across the perch so there's less and less perch and the bird is closer to your hand.

The BirdTricks.com blog has a very good post about overcoming "hand hatred": Overcoming Hand Hatred with Alexandrine Parrot. Your bird is far too young to have "hand hatred" because that is something that is learned, but the reason why I am linking it is because the article has a good series of pictures and videos showing how over time (two months) they taught a biting parrot to step-up, and the videos on Michael's article on step-up are currently not working. Hopefully the visualizations will be helpful.

[Nir]

great post andromeda. Ya i am understanding more. From everything i heard, i had thought that your supposed to start socializing from day 1 or else she will become a 1 person bird. So i do want to do this as efficiently as possible but if by efficient it means take more time then thats what i will do.


about the hand hating thing, do you think she has developed the hating hands during weaning? perhaps something happened ? the breeder said that his bald spot is because of "energetic preening " by one of his older redbelly hens. but i wonder if something more happened. I just never seen a baby sennie so aggressive when a finger or hand goes near her. biting fine but biting hard enough to draw blood is what surprises me. Arent the bites at this age supposed to be weaker? lol. i will surely take a look at that article.

but point made about taking more time. Also i use sunflower at the time so sometimes i try not to give a treat after every target and instead make her target to couple places before giving treat. is that ok or should i give her treat after every target?

Also about training, i usually go to her at random times since she ALWAYS wants sunflower it seems like. Sometimes when i pass by the cage she usually comes closer and makes a kind of gesture that she wants a sunflower. So i end up doing a small 5 min session of targeting and then only reason i stop is because i dont want her to just eat sunflowers. Also cause i dont want to come to a point where she gets tired of it. I do this several times a day. I got all the time in the world at the moment since i work from home and i got a sports injury so cant train in the gym either (only for this week).


also you hit it on the dot that i my mindset is way off. Your probably right. But i think i am slowly grasping it a bit. Before i thought that if i do couple sessions of something and he is getting it right that i can move on. But i think i should keep doing it until He is fully comfortable with it.

1 last thing. Anything else i can use as a treat instead of sunflower that might be more efficient then a sunflower and more healthy?

edit : just read the article. That is amazing! Perhaps when its time i can also start by getting her to perch on my arms instead of my finger.

[marie83]

Tbh if a sennie of that age is drawing blood it sounds like shes been handled really badly by the breeder and she has already learned to bite to be left alone, that is not normal. Its one thing getting a curious, hard nip but what you are describeing is another altogether.
Please listen to everyone else and slow right right down, by rushing your just going to make things worse what you need to be doing is teaching the bird your going to be respectful of it being a bird. Thats not to say it should be able to do exactly what it wants but you cant force things on it either.

[Nir]

Tbh if a sennie of that age is drawing blood it sounds like shes been handled really badly by the breeder and she has already learned to bite to be left alone, that is not normal. Its one thing getting a curious, hard nip but what you are describeing is another altogether.
Please listen to everyone else and slow right right down, by rushing your just going to make things worse what you need to be doing is teaching the bird your going to be respectful of it being a bird. Thats not to say it should be able to do exactly what it wants but you cant force things on it either.

well this was my view on this but from what i read on this thread this might be normal for a baby. Maybe i do have to give her more time.

i have met many babies in stores and they did the ocasional curious bite. Sometimes i had to like try my hardest to get them to bite so i can see how it feels. But with my new baby, trying is not needed. I just have my finger or hand or any part of my skin in reachable distance and she will bite and will keep grinding her beaks in and wont ever let go. I actually tried to just withstand it until she got tired and that was a big mistake since she has good stamina lol. I have been respecting her space and will continue to do so. Only time i go near her is to target train her and give her a treat. she never bites when i give her a treat.

1 positive thing about her however is that she doesn't seem too phobic about anything. from day 1 she comfortably got on top of her cage and chilled. She had no fear of coming out of cage. Then couple days later i tried to see if she would come to the tree and she was fine there also.

[Andromeda]

about the hand hating thing, do you think she has developed the hating hands during weaning? perhaps something happened ? ... biting fine but biting hard enough to draw blood is what surprises me. Arent the bites at this age supposed to be weaker? lol. i will surely take a look at that article.

Biting to draw blood is a learned behavior, if the very first bite she gave you drew blood, I agree with Marie that she was mishandled by the breeder. However:

I just got my sennie 3 days ago and although she is making progress, anytime i put my finger near her cage or try to put my finger on her head to pet through the cage, she bites it.

...i was able to step her up after a gazillion bites. (i mean bites where she actually latches on to and presses hard . it drew blood once).

Based on this there is a very real possibility that she learned to bite to draw blood from you (no offense intended, just being honest). In the very first response to your post cml said:

Nipping is very normal, and from the sounds of it, you might be reinforcing it into biting. Your little parrot is scared, in a new environment and not used to you, its natural that she doesnt want you handling her.

And I think that's what happened, you had a scared bird in a new environment that was nipping (normal) but the bites were negatively reinforced meaning the behavior (nipping) was followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus (your hand) which lead to an increase in the frequency of the behavior (nipping).

Basically the bird learned "the scary hand goes away when I nip" (this is called a conditioned response) and with that as a foundation you attempted something called "flooding" which is what happened when you continuously exposed the bird to an aversive stimulus (your hand) without giving it the opportunity to escape. A major disadvantage to flooding is that it can backfire and cause an increase in the strength of the conditioned response (biting) and it sounds like that's what happened.

You thought that by tolerating "a gazillion" increasingly-strong bites that you were teaching step-up, but what you were really teaching the bird was hands are really scary because they corner you and force you to do scary things. The bird already learned that nipping made hands go away, but when that wasn't working anymore biting to draw blood became the solution, and if you ever withdrew your hand after a really hard bite the idea of "the scary hand goes away when I bite really hard" was negatively reinforced.

The bad news is that in less than a week you have damaged your bird's trust and given it a reason to bite to draw blood (or if it was really doing that from the very first bite due to the breeder you reinforced it). The good news is that you're not handling it like that anymore, you are building trust with target training, and your bird is young so you can overcome this fear and biting with time. Realistically the training will take longer than it would have had you not employed flooding.

Also i use sunflower at the time so sometimes i try not to give a treat after every target and instead make her target to couple places before giving treat. is that ok or should i give her treat after every target?

When you are teaching a brand new behavior always reward after every success. This is especially true if you are upping the requirements of the behavior (you are targeting the bird further and further). Once the behavior is learned and you have been using it for a few weeks and you are no longer asking "more" you can switch to a variable ratio (reward every 2 - 4 times, at random) but if you push that ratio too high the bird will stop the behavior because it's not being rewarded enough.

Also about training, i usually go to her at random times since she ALWAYS wants sunflower it seems like. ... So i end up doing a small 5 min session of targeting and then only reason i stop is because i dont want her to just eat sunflowers. Also cause i dont want to come to a point where she gets tired of it. I do this several times a day.

This is perfect, small 5 minute sessions several times a day is great for a young bird that is new to training because you want the training to be fun and rewarding and you always want to end on a high note before the bird loses interest. Instead of training at random times choose a few set times during the day and train then, birds respond really well to structure.

1 last thing. Anything else i can use as a treat instead of sunflower that might be more efficient then a sunflower and more healthy?

You bird has to be motivated so if the reward isn't "worth it" the bird won't train. I know that Michael trains his parrots using pellets but he also offers other things. It is doubtful yours would "work" for a pellet at this point. Sunflower seeds are high in fat but they are small.

Realistically you'll be using fruit, nuts, and possibly millet (depending on what your bird prefers) to train and these treats should be reserved exclusively for training and should not be offered at any other time.

I use walnuts and dried papaya (or other fruit) for my birds. My GCC will train for a small bite of millet but if I offer it as a training reward to my Poi he looks at me like I'm crazy.

[Nir]

andromeda. I put my finger near cage maybe 2 times. I am not stupid enough to keep testing her. But if the 2 times i put my fingers near cage was what did it then that sucks.

I of course exaggerated the "gazillion" part. but only on the first day did i try to touch her and after that i have been patient. I never cornered her. If she went away i never followed her. She usually stood still and i tried to touch her and she bit. But i see the point that even doing what i did, i might have increased the behavior. He drew blood the first day (after he slept the night prior after flight). I did probably reinforce it unknowingly. since then , the only time i got bit is when i go to change his food and she is near it. or if if i curiously try to "see" if she is is over the fear now lol. But i havent done that much anymore either.