Hormonal Behavior: Continued from another thread

[Eurycerus]

I have to say having Nika bonded with me is a little problematic. No matter what I do she still gets all hormonal and excited by me sometimes, even just getting near her. She's more aggressive towards other people and can have a difficult time focusing when all she wants to do is make babies with me.

This can be punished out of the parrot to a large extent (but never completely) over time. Basically it's a matter of:

-Not encouraging hormonal behavior
-Encouraging incompatible desirable behavior
-Ignoring hormonal behavior
-Avoiding triggering hormonal behavior
-Negatively punishing attention seeking hormonal behavior by entirely voiding it
-Shake off flighted parrots that come over for hormonal activity to make them realize their advances are useless

It is VERY important not to encourage hormonal behavior such as mating dances and such. People like to watch, laugh, and show it to others but it only encourages the bird to try harder. When it doesn't work, the bird just bites instead. The best strategy I have found for dealing with it is food management, weight management, trick training, extensive exercise, avoiding nutritional surplus, avoiding hormonal triggers, keeping light/temperatures fairly constant, not touching places that trigger, not over petting, dropping any petting/touching the moment hormonal activity begins, taking away my attention when hormonal activity begins. Beyond that, extensive socialization, outings, exposures to mild jealous situations, and just dealing with things as they come.

I have tried a lot of things, except weight management because I haven't purchased a scale yet. Also even if I had one I'd be really afraid of starving my parrot. How do you know what's just right vs what's too much? They're such little animals. Her diet has changed periodically as I learn new things. No fruit, low starchy veggies. What are good treats for a hormonal parrot? Maybe I'm using the wrong type of treat.

She doesn't get much touching except during training and since it's structured it doesn't seem to cause her to be hormonal. Her shift is pretty sudden and random. This morning I was trying to show her where her food was, since I'm trying a new foraging technique and she might not know what to do. She suddenly got all hormonal even though I wasn't touching her or really doing much except pointing to her food. During training she'll be doing fine doing tricks or recall flying and then suddenly decide now's a good time to get hormonal. In her cage, same thing, she'll be doing normal parrot things and then get hormonal towards a toy, any toy really. She gets a little excited for a while, squeaking and such, no masturbation, and then she's done. It's very odd.

I'm considering getting one of those fancy lighting systems and am investigating the right one, but even that could induce hormonal behavior if done improperly.

Another thing is I don't always turn away and completely ignore. Sometimes I'll try to distract her away from it, which can be successful, or continue doing whatever I'm doing. So it's not encouraged but not always discouraged.

[cml]

Weight management comes down to knowing your parrots weight baseline. I dont use food management, but I do keep track of both parrots weight and what you do is that you weigh them at specified intervals, and note down their weight. After a few weeks you will have a good idea of what their normal weight is.
In our case Ive been weighing them once a week since I got them, so I have almost two years of data for Stitch, and more than a year for Leroy. Unfortunatly Ive lost some of that statistics, but I still have the last 6months noted down .

Its easy to weigh them, and if you do it only once a week (you need to do it more frequently if you are food managing) you get a good grasp on their weight, health etc.

For ideas on how to build a bird friendly scale, both me and polarn have posted guides and pictures, which I think should be possible to find with the search function (i dont remember where I posted it ).

[Eurycerus]

How big should a scale be? Is this one big enough, from the reviews it sounds pretty accurate? http://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-SC ... B001RF3XJ2

[cml]

How big should a scale be? Is this one big enough, from the reviews it sounds pretty accurate? http://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-SC ... B001RF3XJ2

Looks good, it only needs to big enough to glue a perch onto it .

[Michael]

That's the kind of scale you want but I would suggest coughing up a few extra bucks and getting one that runs on AA or AAA batteries. The ones with the little circle ones are insanely hard to find and expensive when they need to be replaced.

I wouldn't even bother gluing a perch onto the scale unless the birds are really wild. I just plop mine straight on the scale. Ginger told me she'd put a mug down on the scale and put let small birds perch on that.

I guess at this point it would be important for you to explain what exactly you mean by hormonal behavior. There's a bunch of different things that are triggered by reproductive hormones it seems.

Some more Senegal specific things to eliminate or keep in balance are water and nesting areas. Since Senegal Parrots come from dry woodland savannah, rainy seasons bring about abundance and are the best time for reproduction. Some companion Senegal Parrots are known to get aggressive around showers, faucets, or other sources of water. As for nesting behavior, female Senegals are known to get pretty bound up in nest cavity searching and defense. They can get very territorial around their nest. Just because there isn't a hole made in a place, doesn't mean the bird isn't thinking of making a nest there. Certain pieces of furniture, toys, couches, or other places that remind them of a nest can trigger these senses.

Consider food/weight management not as making the bird under weight but as the right weight. Freefeed is already overweight. This overweight abundance that is the result of eating filling foods a lot gives the parrot enough to feed itself + babies so it naturally wants to take advantage and reproduce right now. Originally I didn't start food managing specifically for this stuff but over time discovered that I barely ever run into hormonal issues because my parrots are not overweight and capable of supporting another. I do see more hormonal activity from them when I let their weight creep up or leave them on freefeed while away, so I know they are capable of it.

Since weight management is a delicate subject, I don't really discuss the specifics here but do offer coaching sessions to work out a good weight. But simply put, if you find your parrot's typical weight on freefeed and target something 5-10% less, you're good. They can go as low as 15-20% and stay alive so you don't have to overstress 5-10%. Take 2-4 weeks to make a gradual descent into the new weight. Control weight by counting pellets and diluting diet with vegetables. Avoid sugary treats (fruit and sweet things are ok in moderation, but for pete's sake stop giving pieces of cake, candy, and other ridiculous things people come up with for feeding parrots). Treats become less of an issue if the parrot is weight managed well because they still can't end up overweight. Whereas a parrot on freedfeed that gets a load of sunflower seeds for training as well (even if you manage to get the motivation for training) ends up having way too much.

Food/weight management + training is a very effective solution and puts you 3/4 of the way toward keeping hormonal behavior in check.

[Eurycerus]

Good call, didn't even think about the battery issue. Thanks! I'll check the specs on another one I was looking at.

She is fed two meals a day and powers them down. She didn't used to but I think has gotten accustomed to being fed specific meals and honestly must be quite hungry come meal time. It's pretty much identical portions every day, similar pellet count and amount of cut up veggies. I started out giving her a lot and then paring down until she left an empty bowl. The treats she gets can be almond pieces, banana chip pieces, or sunflower seeds. I don't think there are many folks that give people food to their parrots regularly, and definitely not that type of people food. Certainly never crossed my mind as an option.

We train pretty much every day. Though the time shift seems to have thrown her a bit. I wish I had a specific parrot room, or a room with very few distractions. Oh well, we make do.

I'll buy a scale and start keeping close track and see what I can do about weight management. She's never gotten hormonal around water with me but she can get distracted by dark spaces. :/ I'll go around my room tomorrow and try to eliminate as best I can.

[Michael]

Here's the thing... let's say hypothetically the parrot needs to consume 20 pellets per day to be at the optimal weight. Here are the scenarios:

Freefeed: The bird eats throughout the day and consumes 24 pellets, overweight, food left over

2 Scheduled Feedings:

Unlimited pellets: Bird eats 12 pellets in morning and 12 in evening, still overweight, food left over
30 Pellets per meal: Bird eats 12 pellets in morning and 12 in evening, still overweight, food left over
20 Pellets per meal: Bird eats 12 pellets in morning and 12 in evening, still overweight, food left over
12 Pellets per meal: Bird eats 12 pellets in morning and 12 in evening, still overweight, nothing left
11 Pellets per meal: Bird eats 11 pellets in morning and 11 in evening, less overweight, nothing left
10 Pellets per meal: Bird eats 10 pellets in morning and 10 in evening, optimal weight, nothing left

You see, this is why I find weight management to be necessary. Because no matter how you try, if you give the bird more food than it needs, it will pack it away for a rainy day. Since this isn't the wild, there are no rainy days and it leads to being overweight and hormonal.

Without weight managing, the next best thing is to feed a limited guestimate number of pellets in the morning (or slightly reduced from that so that bowl comes back empty, even if it's the "12" scenario from above) and then feed ONLY unlimited vegetables in the evening. The bird is less likely to overeat on those although it will be able to feel full. That provides a net effect of a slight caloric reduction and is more akin to the "11" pellet scenario above. Works pretty good. Mix that with weight management and it's golden.

[cml]

I wouldn't even bother gluing a perch onto the scale unless the birds are really wild. I just plop mine straight on the scale. Ginger told me she'd put a mug down on the scale and put let small birds perch on that.

I think we've had this conversation before, but the perch has nothing to do with wildness of the parrot .

If I recall correctly, your scale is higher (its a model with a glass platform, is it not?), but with these low kind of house hold scales, there is a real problem with tailfeathers touching the surface on which the scale is standing. This causes the weight to flutter, and the data becomes unreliable. I have tried without the perch, and know this from experience.

A simple T-perch glued onto the perch solves this easily, and at the same time allows the parrot to have a nice place to sit while being on the scale.

Just because it works for you, with your particular scale, doesnt mean it will for everyone else, and assuming it has to do with how wild a parrot is, is not only wrong but unnecassary .

Here's what Ive done, it took no time at all, and enables me to get flutter-free and reliable weight data.

[marie83]

Ollie gets weighed on the edge of a pot which is necessary as the scales are too small to place him directly on it. I'm with cml on this one, sometimes a perch is necessary there is no way I could get Harlie on the pot at all but she is happy with anything that looks perch like so I just need to get round to making one.

[Michael]

If I recall correctly, your scale is higher (its a model with a glass platform, is it not?), but with these low kind of house hold scales, there is a real problem with tailfeathers touching the surface on which the scale is standing. This causes the weight to flutter, and the data becomes unreliable. I have tried without the perch, and know this from experience.

True, but I also have a tiny flat scale that I use when I travel. Parrots can stand on a flat floor so they can stand on a flat scale. I have nothing against a perch but just think it's an unnecessary effort. Even if the perch is needed as a training crutch, I'd eventually transfer the parrot to just standing properly on the scale in case it needs to be replaced or done on the go.