When should you think about rehoming a bird?

[Maltee]

In principle, I really believe that when you get a pet, you should be responsible for it for it's entire life unless you absolutely cannot take care of it (like for serious health reasons). I know that rehoming can be very difficult for a bird and can result in even more problems for the bird. But is there ever a point at which you should think about rehoming a bird because of behavior problems? I feel really guilty thinking about rehoming my bird. I'm just not sure where to go from here.

My pionus is a 2 year old, sexed female. I have no other birds. The pionus is attached to my husband, and hates me. My husband is gone at work all day, and I am a stay at home mom, so I am primarily responsible for taking care of her. It has gotten to the point that I can't let her out of her cage at all during the day because if she is out, she will fly at me to attack me. But when she can't come out, she starts acting out by screaming. She won't step up for me anymore. I target trained her, and trained her to step up onto a perch. That worked for a while, but now she'd rather try to attack me than step up, even to get the reward of coming out or getting a treat. I am afraid of her now, which I know doesn't help. If I walk into the room, she will automatically fluff up her feathers and make aggressive sounds toward me. I usually react by ignoring it. I've tried to find a treat she likes to create a positive association with me, but she just doesn't seem interested in the treats.

I feel bad that she spends all day in her cage with little interaction. I'm not sure where to go from here. Is she going through a temporary hormonal phase that will get better in a few months? Or is she going to be like this her whole life? I don't know if I have the skills to work with her, because everything I try seems to work for a little while, but then no longer works.

I started thinking about this because one of the last times I posted here for advice on my bird's aggression, a lot of people suggested I rehome her. Now I wonder if I just can't provide her with a good home and maybe they were right.

And if I rehomed her, I could never just sell her on Craigslist. I'd need to make sure she's going to an experienced bird home that would be her permanent home. I just don't know how I'd find such a home for her. I thought that home would be with me, but all my good efforts don't seem to be working.

[Michael]

So you rehome the bird... then what? What makes you think someone else will be more caring, more patient, or more trying than you? More likely than not, the next person will be zealous at first and think they are a saint and rescue the bird from some horrid owner until they find themselves rehoming it out for the same reasons. The only way to break the cycle is to figure it out and make it work. Otherwise, more likely than not, the next person is going to eventually give up just the same and probably sooner than you did since it seems you have some attachment.

Target training is definitely a good start and a part of it, but not all of it. When done right, the bird would not be attacking you. Have you seen my book about this?

[Wolf]

Hi again, I am sorry that you birds aggression has intensified instead of continuing to improve. I believe that the last time we talked there was some progress with her. The biggest problem in dealing with this effectively is that this is breeding season which makes her hormonal to begin with, and then to add insult to injury, she is also going through puberty. This is a major transitional period in her life, not only does it cause her hormones to go haywire, it is also the time when she would un bond with her parents and seek out her life mate after which her hormonal stage from this will dissipate.
The only good things to this are that breeding season is coming to a close, which may or may not give her and you some relief from this intensity of raging hormones. Then once she makes it through puberty her hormonal level will drop back down and that will be the bird that will be for the rest of her life. I can't tell you how long puberty lasts with this species of parrot, but there are a few of them on this forum and they could give you that information. I suspect that it may coincide with breeding season, but I don't know.
If you can deal with her on a daily basis, perhaps providing her clean water and food and just keep talking to her 2 or 3 times a day for about 15 min. per session and your husband deal with getting her out of her cage and getting her to flying and the rest of the interaction until she stops trying to attack you, she should settle down and then normal taming and training methods will work again. The hard part is to get through this period without anyone getting injured. If you can just hang in for a little longer this stage of her life will pass and you will have major improvements occur.

[JaydeParrot]

Some may disagree, but if my tame bird tried to be aggressive towards me I'd tell it off.

Mine used to scream alot for no real reason (seemed to just enjoy the sound of it's own voice) my neighbours would have eventually asked me to rehome my birds so I yelled back at them for a few minutes, I haven't had a problem since.

My male Sennie attacked me and caused a small cut milimeters above my eye, my family was horrified and claimed that I should put him in a cage before I recieved a worse attack. I ignored them, put glasses on, immediately put him back on my shoulder and prevented him from leaving my shoulder for over an hour (if a horse throws you off get straight back on). A year on, he no longer draws blood.

My sennies sometimes have snapped at me when I put food in their bowls, I just tell them to MOVE!! which they usually do. On the odd occasion that one's actually bitten me I've scooped it up, held the bird close and gently told it to calm down, not letting go until the bird stops growling/trying to bite.

If my bird growled at me from inside the cage, I would just say STOP and the bird would generally stop growling.

If it was a bird I didn't know I'd walk over to the cage and lean against the cage, calmly watching the bird until it stopped growling, by ignoring the bird you're doing what it wants- Leaving it alone, if you stare at it everytime it growls, it may decide it isn't getting the correct responce and stop.

The point is, by backing off and ignoring or leaving the situation for a while you're rewarding the bird by showing that it scared/upset you.

You don't need to try to be boss with the bird, you just need to let it know that you're not scared of it and you're not going to tolerate aggressive behaviour. NEVER hit or physically hurt a bird as their bones are fairly brittle and the bird will actually become more aggressive if it's scared of you.

Anyways that's my two cents, hope it was helpful, .

[Maltee]

I target trained her according to the directions on the sticky in the parrot taming forum.

If you can deal with her on a daily basis, perhaps providing her clean water and food and just keep talking to her 2 or 3 times a day for about 15 min. per session and your husband deal with getting her out of her cage and getting her to flying and the rest of the interaction until she stops trying to attack you, she should settle down and then normal taming and training methods will work again. The hard part is to get through this period without anyone getting injured. If you can just hang in for a little longer this stage of her life will pass and you will have major improvements occur.

Thank you. I was hoping to hear that and it gives me hope to hold out for a few years, after which, hopefully things will be better. I took care of my parent's Meyers for 10 years, and while he would get ornery at times, I never experienced this kind of personal attack from him. That's why this pionus has thrown me for a loop.

I'm not sure if the "tough act" will work for my bird. It seems to work for my husband, but she likes him in the first place. I do know my being scared of her is probably a problem. But if I were to tell her "NO" or "stop" she would just throw herself at the cage bars repeatedly, screaming at me and trying to bite me through the bars. Only once, as an experiment, I tried standing there by her cage calmly watching her, and she continued frantically trying to attack me for over 45 minutes. I have kids to take care of so I can't stand by her cage all the time for an hour until she decides to calm down, so I feel like the only thing I can do is ignore her. Telling her "stop" does sometimes work for the screaming, but for the aggression, it only makes her angrier.

[Wolf]

Most of the time when a bird goes through puberty they end up changing their favorite person and this new favorite could be anyone that the bird knows male or female, however they sometimes will keep the same favorite person. You just never know what they will do. If you stay calm and remain steady and continue with talking to her and trying to be her friend, she may still not bond to you but you have a good chance of being accepted as a member of her flock, which would mean an end to the aggression towards you. On the same note she could decide that you are to be her special person, but then she could reserve the right to correct you if you are not acting as a proper mate or if she thinks something is bad for you she might bite to make you move away from it.
You position in her eyes as a rival or as a mate, although special, also means that she may decide to take action for or against you if she thinks that it is required of her. Although the bites are definitely not as severe if you are the chosen mate.
My Senegal came here on her own and decided that I was the best choice to get in the house with, so she came to me and I brought her in where she has remained every since. Once in the house, she decided that my lady Pam was to be her special person. Pam could do anything and it was fine with Kiki, but I could no longer touch her without suffering a nasty bite. Then early this spring, Kiki decided that I was her mate and Pam gets bit on a regular basis, this is improving now though. As her mate she has decided to correct me on numerous occasions as I was not acting the part of a devoted Senegal male. But she will allow me much more freedom when I am handling her. Kookooloo, my Grey parrot bonded to me on first sight and she has very definite ideas as to how I should act when in the company of other humans or birds. We do not always see eye to eye about this and she does get frustrated at how slow I am in learning how to be a proper Grey male mated to her. It does get interesting at times.
I think that if you can hang in there a bit longer that as the hormones dissipate from her blood so that she can stabilize and calm down, that we will be able to make significant progress with the reduction of her aggression. I also think that an update on your interactions with her as well as your husbands interactions with her and also what interactions that she sees between you and you husband will help to provide suggestions to help you make it through this period of time.
Just so it is clear to anyone else reading this, the sticky that you used on target training your bird was Michael's method, and can be found under the basic training section of this forum.

[Maltee]

Hmm, I've never heard that their favorite person can switch. I don't care if I'm never her favorite, I just want to establish enough trust with her that I can safely handle her and let her out, etc. I sure hope this puberty thing doesn't last too long. I don't remember what it was like with my Meyer's, but I don't think it was this drastic.

Today I was just particularly frustrated because I couldn't even get her out of her sleep cage this morning for several hours. I had her stick trained to come out of the sleep cage, and that worked for a short while, but not anymore. She now might step up on the perch, but the moment I bring her out she fluffs her feathers and starts making aggressive moves at me. Now, I sit near her cage at the computer until she has calmed down and decided that she's hungry and practically begs to come out. Unfortunately, this morning I didn't have enough time to wait for her and tried to get her out right away - big mistake. I just had to leave her there and come back later. I've found that if she's aggressive when I get her up in the morning, the whole day will be like that. If she comes out nicely, the day will be nice.

So, right now, I'm just kinda concentrating on getting her up in the morning without aggression by doing things on her terms, so I don't set her off. I don't know if there's a better way to do it, or if this is just what I need to do for now.

My husband is more "tough" with her. He never hurts her or anything, but if she gets an attitude with him, he can tell her "no" and make her step up and she respects him. If I were to try the same thing, she would just go crazy and attack me. I am too afraid to just stick my hand in there like my husband does to "make" her step up. I don't feel like that would improve my relationship with the bird, so I don't see much point in trying it anyway.

[JaydeParrot]

What if your husband told her to behave around you. I tend to pick up my sennies and put them on other people's shoulder, telling them to behave if they seem annoyed. Maybe your husband 'ordering' the pionus to be nice to you might help?

[Wolf]

Actually it is quite common that they change their chosen person when they go through puberty, and is probably the number one reason that avian rescues have such an overwhelming number of birds. It stems from the normal behavior of parrots in their natural environment.
Parrot babies are born completely helpless and totally dependent upon their parents. The parent birds must teach their young everything, I mean that baby parrots do not even know how to eat or drink and must be taught by mom and pop. So you see this stage of their life is very similar to human babies. All of their behaviors are also taught to them by their parents, in short they bond to their parents and remain with them until puberty. Then puberty happens and life suddenly changes for them. They leave their parents and hang out with other parrots who are going through the same things and now they learn all about how to get along with each other and seek out their mates.
Up until now they were babies tightly bonded to their parents and did baby parrot things. Now, suddenly, life is different for them and they are adults complete with raging hormones. Surely you remember those years in your own life and probably nothing really made any sense to you then. Well they are experiencing the same type of thing, in a much shorter span of time. Any way they find a mate to whom they bond to. This bond may last their entire life, but sometimes it does not. Sometimes for reasons that no one knows they may suddenly reject their mate and choose another one and bond to that one.
the change that you are experiencing with your bird is the change from childhood to adulthood. During this time they will reject the old bonds with mom and pop, in this case, you and your husband. They then will try to establish a new bond from whomever is available for them to choose from, your family. Anyone in your household is fair game for her to choose as her mate. Until now you were the parents and now she will choose her mate. We see it as her new special person but she sees it as her mate.
From your posts, it appears that you are the person who feeds and waters her as well as cleaning her cage. Does your husband do any of these things? When he is playing/ working with her does he touch her back or stomach areas? If he does touch her back as in petting her, then he should stop this right away as for a bird it is an erogenous zone and causes her to get sexually excited and with no means on release, this will become increasingly painful to her. If he is doing this, then her sexual organs are growing and growing and once they pass a certain size it begins to hurt. The longer that she remains in a sexually excited state, the larger her sexual organs grow and the more painful it becomes. The more painful it gets the more aggressive she will be. I am sure that I have mentioned this before, although probably not as detailed.
Some where we are missing something because the pieces of this puzzle are not quite fitting together as they should. I am not there to make observations of the various interactions that are occurring with her, I must depend upon you to do this for me. I really need more information concerning the various peoples interactions with this bird. If you are uncomfortable with that on the open forum please use the PM function to talk to me, it works the same as e mail.

[Maltee]

Yes, I do most of the caretaking for her - feeding, watering, and cleaning the paper in the morning. My husband sometimes feeds her in the evening, and he is the one who put her to bed in her sleep cage.

My husband knows not to stroke her down her back, though a few times (just yesterday in fact) I have caught him stroking her like that and reminded him to stick to scratching her head. So, sometimes he forgets.

It's weird, because you and everyone else seems to be saying this - "we must be missing something." This morning I called her breeder for advice and she said the same thing. She said it seemed very uncharacteristic of a pionus. I really don't know what I'm leaving out. There have been no changes in the household for more than a year. Her aggressive behavior started in the spring time, around March, and has gotten significantly worse this month. I will PM you and maybe we can figure something out.

The breeder referred me to a local licensed bird trainer, so maybe I can get some help from him.