Senegal parrot male is very aggressive

[Pajarita]

She doesn't looks stressed out, she just looks interested in what is going on but he looks to be on 'high alert' mode (by the way, I forgot to mention it before but my male is also a bit smaller than my female).

Use a T perch to get him to step up and move him from one place to another, don't let him bite you!

I don't know if there are any other toys in their cage but the perches are too large (they need to have a smaller diameter so their toes 'wrap' around them with the claws from the front toes and the back toes almost touching but not quite) and too evenly round (bad for their toes and feet). Use tree branches with smaller branches growing from them (they like to chew on the little ones) and get them chewable toys (not made out of wood but of straw, wicker, raffia, cardboard or paper - mine love a line called Pinata from Planet Pleasures:http://www.planetpleasures.com/pinata.php) .

You said that he had 'attacked' the female when she perched on the cage but if what he did was try to bite her toes, it's not really an attack, t's normal behavior and it doesn't mean aggression or anything. I don't really know why but, for some particular reason, no bird likes another one perched on their cage no matter how much they like the other bird.

As to his screams... well, I tell you, people always say that senegals are 'quiet' parrots but that is only true of the ones that are happy because the ones that are not can scream all the time. I got a female years ago because the owner was afraid she was going to be evicted from the bird's constant screams. Once she came here, she stopped in two weeks. A couple of years went by and her previous owner (who always kept in touch and had seen that she did not scream at all here -she came to visit a few times) moved to a house and wanted her back so I gave Tobita back to her along with her mate - 24 hours later, she called me to ask me to come and pick her up because she had not stopped screaming.

He is afraid, confused, does not trust you and, to make matters worse, he is jealous of the attention you pay his female and his female pays to you so you need to win him over - it's as simple as that!

[Wolf]

I can't honestly say that I agree that the female isn't showing stress but I will say that she has years and years of experience that I don't have and given my age I doubt that I could live long enough to gain this amount of hands on experience. So I would follow her recommendations over mine with this. Just so that you know.

[steviema]

Hi Pajarita,

it is difficult to find the exact size of perches here. The only thing I can do is, to build them by myself.

I cannot find an online store or local pet shop where I can find the exact needed size of the perches.

About the toys:

1.
http://www.parrotshop.de/vogel/spielzeu ... -spielzeug
2.
https://parrots-parcel.com/produkt/wriggle/
3.
https://parrots-parcel.com/produkt/fireworks-pinata/
4.
https://parrots-parcel.com/produkt/leather-kabob-small/
Is this one better?

The female bird is interested in everything I am doing. This is correct. Today also my brother got a bad bite. After the bite the female immediately went to the male and was a little bit angry on him. The male bird, btw. Not my brother.

You're right, the male is having a problem. To win him is extremely difficult. We are talking to him slowly, feeding him with grapes, nuts, doing the best we can. Don't know what else to do.

If you're getting close to the cage with your face or fingers he is even attacking the cage bars. Man! What's wrong with him. It is frustrating for me of not seeing an improvement. Well, also for him I think.

To put him on a perch for taking him from A to B is a good idea. The problem is, that he is not afraid of me and therefore he will come close on the perch to reach my fingers. Definitely!

When he is out of the cage, and nibbling on our leather couch or our antique cupboard I have to put him down. Not easy!

Trust me, I am a really nice guy and I am loving birds but this parrot makes me crazy. He reminds me a little bit of a "Critter". Do you know the movies? A little bit old school.

[Wolf]

More familiar with " Gremlins" but yeah I understand. I know and understand what his problem is, but haven't explained it right for you. That is alright because I don't mind, I will go over this until you understand what is going on with Franz.
Franz and Lucy come to live with you in your house. What Franz is experiencing, you get to be Franz.
You and your girlfriend are taken to a strange place by this huge giant that you have never seen before, You can't understand the giant and he keeps pushing and poking at you and you try to ask him to stop. He just keeps on poking and prodding you and grabbing you. You again try to ask him to stop telling him that you a very scared and to please stop he is also doing this to your girlfriend and you are asking him to stop , because he is scaring her and also asking him to stop treating your girlfriend this way. He just won't listen no matter how you beg and plead and object to all of this, so you bite the crap out of him and he puts you down. You are scared and all alone except for your girlfriend in some strange place with a giant that is pushing you around despite your objections and is also doing the same thing to your girlfriend, but he will stop for a while when you bite the crap out of him.
So as Franz, what are you thinking, how do you feel about this? What can you do to protect yourself and your girlfriend in these circumstances?
Does this help you to see this through his eyes? He is intelligent at least as intelligent as a 5 year old child would be and with the emotional capacity of a 2 year old. Is any of this making any sense to you? Does this help you to understand what Franz is thinking and feeling? If not I am perfectly willing to try again as long as it takes.
This is very important because if I can get you to understand this from Franz' point of view then you will understand his current behavior and most of his future behaviors as well. The bird will make sense to you.

[steviema]

I understand what you're telling me.

Following your description would mean it would be better to stay away from both of them. Whatever I am doing it would be bad either for him or her. But only sitting in the room doesn't bother him. In the corner of a room doesn't bother him. Is he interested and watching me? Not really.

How should he learn then.

Personally, this is my opinion: his mind is hurt. Maybe because he is missing this old bad guy, or because he was treated like he haven't liked to. The old man took him out of the cage very often and put him in his hands because he was thinking that the bird has liked it. But it seems like he didn't.

The old guy didn't do this with the girl. Therefore she is normal.

And both of them are hand breeded.

[Wolf]

Partly correct and partly not. He needs you to spend time with him and so does she, but he needs hands off time with you which limits you to talking and singing to him with an occasional treat offered until he begins to relax with you. Don't ask him to step up or anything else, just lots of talking and praise and reassurance as well as the same type of hands off time out of his cage. Be patient and wait for him to come to you acting appropriately, no biteing. You may have to distract him a little with a small plush toy at first to keep him from biting just to help him with not biting. The old man's actions were such that he taught Franz that it did not matter how much he protested or asked the old man to stop what he was do it to Franz that it did not matter, that the old man was not listening and was going to keep abusing Franz. So Franz learned that his only recourse was to bite as hard as he could to prevent the old man from continuing this way. And it worked the old man got rid of him. So yes Franz is hurting mentally and emotionally from this treatment and needs time to heal and he needs your soft words to help to reassure him as well.
The female apparently did not have to suffer in this same way, probably due to Franz' actions. So she is ready for a more hands on relationship, but you need to work with her in another room than the one she shares with Franz. Franz is jealous about the time you spend with her, this could be because he sees her as his girl or it could be further related to his treatment, but the end result and remedy for now is the same. Work with Lucy without Franz watching.

[Pajarita]

I don't know what you were told by the idiot old man who had them before but these are NOT babies. They are adults and they are bonded to each other so the male is doing what male parrots do: he is protecting and defending his mate. It doesn't matter that you are not trying to hurt or even 'steal' the female from him. It doesn't matter that this is not what you have in mind, it's what he perceives reality to be and he is acting on it as he was programmed by nature to do.

But, although I think it's going to take you a looong time, you can change his way of thinking. It took me five years to get a highly aggressive Senegal male to love me but it did happen (see this thread: http://www.theparrotforum.com/viewtopic ... 25&t=13202) and I did not really do anything so, if you work hard at it, you can make it happen in less time (right now, Sweetpea is standing next to the laptop on my left and pushing my hand with his head asking for scratches). Do as Wolf says, just talk, sing, whistle and give them treats while they are both in the cage as often and for as long as you can. Make SUPER sure that they are kept at a strict solar schedule because males are 200 times more aggressive during breeding season so you simply cannot afford to have him hormonal all year round which will cause him pain and make him even more aggressive. Use the T stick to make him step up (you can make it yourself with two branches screwed to one another in a T shape). He can't bite your hand while on it because you will be holding the vertical 'leg' of the stick while he will be perching on the horizontal (make the vertical part as long as it needs for him not to reach you). Work with them separately and away from each other (another room). At the beginning, it will just be for him to be able to fly a bit and start feeling comfortable in this room because you need to get to a point where he will not outright attack you to start training but, as you see that he is becoming more interested in his surroundings and calmer, when you can ask him to 'Step up' on the T stick and he does it calmly, when he takes treats from your hand and looks at you attentively when you talk to him, etc you can start target training him. But remember that for this to work, you need to be able to reward him properly - and for the rewards to 'work' they have to be what we call 'high value' food items which is ALWAYS a high protein something like a nut or a sunflower seed. But a high value item loses its value if the bird can get it all the time so you cannot free-feed high protein (meaning put seeds, nuts, pellets, nutricakes, etc) in a bowl in the morning and leave them there for the bird to eat all day long. You need to feed them cooked whole grains mixed with cooked pulses and veggies (see all the different 'gloop' threads in the diet section) for breakfast and all day picking and a good seed mix with a tree nut for dinner (an almond, hazelnut, pistachio, cashew or half a walnut, half a Brazil nut, etc). This will work for you three ways: 1) because the nuts or seeds will remain high value and 2) because lower protein means lesser aggression and 3) because their seed dinner is a great incentive for them to go back into their cage in the evening.

Use A LOT of praise all the time, birds know when we are praising and they love it -use phrases like Good bird! Pretty bird!, etc in a cheerful, high pitched voice -like you were talking to a baby.

Establish routines and try to do your interaction (talking, working with them, etc) in the middle of the morning (after they eat, drink, preen) or before dinnertime. These are the times that birds in the wild interact with each other and when they are most receptive to doing it with us.

[steviema]

Ok.

Just to clarifiy. The age of both of them is a maximum of 7 months. I have signed and stamped official papers for them. You know The mentality of Germans. When it comes to papers and law we are 100% accurate.

BTW, when I have picked up the birds there were also two other ones left. No couples so far. In total they were 7 at the beginning.

[Wolf]

Neither of us, Pajarita or myself can say a lot about the papers, we don't know if there is a way to prove that the papers belong to these birds or not. What we do know is that from what you have told us this man that you got the birds from should never be allowed to ever touch a bird as he abuses them. And both of us know that this male sounds like a mate bonded male and that this species of parrot does not mature until it is 2 to three years of age. This is an established fact of biology and we can't influence or change that. This is why we both asked concerning the ages of the birds.
I don't know what is going on about this discrepancy and can't advise on that or what to do about that, I can only make suggestions to help the birds and that is based on whatever information that I can get to help explain the birds actions, but it is based mostly on the actions of the birds themselves because we can't always get any background information.
My Senegal hen showed up here and acted very similar to the way that your male does, but she was going through puberty and was hormonal as well as scared. It took most of a year for her system to correct and normalize.
I know that most hormonal imbalances in parrots are caused by being fed foods that are high in proteins and by not having a solar based light schedule, but I do have difficulties in thinking that these would cause an immature bird to start producing these hormones at least a full year before his body would even begin producing them.
Fortunately I don't have too. If you stop to consider the fact that the information that Pajarita has given to you also tells you how to feed him from the time of weaning until his death of old age many years down the road and it also tells you the appropriate light schedule for this bird that should be maintained for his lifetime. The remaining information and suggestions are exactly as you and I have been discussing.
I can honestly say that my involvement with parrots is short and only comprises about 5 years of a lifetime of animal training and that Pajarita has over 30 years of experience with parrots. I know that although we don't always agree with each other, it is almost always in minor matters also that we have only spoken in person once, over the phone once and maybe 5 or 6 times through e mail or PMs. I trust her experience is what I am trying to say.

[steviema]

I trust her explanations.

The only thing to consider is the age. The laboratory does exist. The birds are marked. Also the papers are correct and specifically written for each bird. Call it a serial number if you want to.

Maybe this is a hint for both of you to understand his behavior.

The solar schedule is a good starting point for me.