Preening Me - Ouch!

[IndyColtsFan]

So hopefully someone will have some good advice here, and I'm sure the first answer I'm going to get is "this is normal parrot behavior, it means they like you", but does anyone have any positive training tips to avoid being "preened" by their babies?

All of our birds seem to really enjoy preening me, specifically the conures. The problem is, it can be painful at times! They love nothing better than a good amount of shoulder time, but that usually leads to preening my neck and ears while making the most adorable noises imaginable. Being someone who has several small skin tags along my neckline (a life of wearing collared shirts every day!), they just love to get ahold of one of these and try to take it off, which of course is painful. They also like exploring ears, but this sometimes leads to nibbling.

I've attempted the obvious tactic, which is a firm "No bite" and trying to put them down for a few moments, but the little brats are really tricky once they are on my shoulder/neck, and are usually not at all interested in stepping up to be removed when "grooming time" has started. So typically a session of this involves me squirming around, trying to hide my neck with my shirt, scrunching my head against my shoulder, and other such actions. I know they are probably having a blast with all of that as well, and I want to figure out how to best discourage the practice. I've had limited success with a plastic necklace covered in foot toys which Ernie likes to try and detach, but even with that the preening urge sometimes wins over the playing urge.

Any tips or tricks out there to help with this? I love being a "tree" for our birds, but they have to stop eating me!

[liz]

You "ouch" will work eventually. They will learn how much they can do without hurting you. I use "owe" to let them know they hurt me and they will back off.

One day I was so busy and Myrtle was on my shoulder. I don't remember what I was doing but I was consintrating on it and not Myrtle. She pinched me but I did not react with the "owe". She leaned forward and looked in my face then said "owe?"

[Wolf]

Keep on with the things that you have described, but the thing that would probably do the most good in deterring this preening is to put a towel hung about your neck, that way you have protection as you need it. Since the preening behavior is a natural instinctual response, it can be very difficult to train this out of them, but preventing them from being able to do this, may succeed and if it does not at least you can defend yourself.

[IndyColtsFan]

The "Ow!" could work in the long term. Its actually kind of funny because Ernie has taken to responding to most attempts to talk to him with a fairly clear "Ok". If asked if he'd like some food, Ok! Want to come out of the cage, Ok! Stop, that hurts!, Ok! Obviously this isnt true communication, but its led to some amusing conversations on the topic of him being grounded and forced to sleep in a shoebox. ("Ok!") So "Ow!" almost always leads to "Ok!"

I never thought of using a towel to hang around my neck, wonderful idea! I'll try that tonight and see what kind of relief it brings.

Thanks for the tips!

[Wolf]

It sounds kind of funny when someone says it or even when reading it, but it is so true, " The best way to teach a parrot to not bite you is to not get bitten"

Birds are very smooth, probably because it is more aerodynamic, so when they find something that interrupts the smoothness of an area it is instinctive for them to remove it especially with one's mate. It could be a parasite and they are doing their mate a big favor by removing it for them, so although it is an instinctive behavior it is a very useful behavior as well, if you are a bird.

The towel Idea is mostly protection for you, but it also prevents them from seeing and removing these tags, combined with the " ow" and the " No Bite" and sitting him down, it may be able to change the behavior, but if not, it can still help with the problem.