need help amazon AGGRESSION !! PLEASE

[atichargr]

Hi , I have a double yellow headed amazon, she is 16 years old. . She came into her breeding season while I was home after having surgery. I think I gave her too much attention during this time. Recently she has become aggressive, she stays out side of her cage, and now when you walk by her she will dive bomb you even landing on you and nipping you. She had done that to guests and my wife and my dog.. Recently she has started to do it to me.. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on what to do to combat this behavior. Or do I just need to keep her locked in her cage more? She has been free to do what she wants for the last 16 years. I hate to lock her in her cage, but something needs to be done we need to be able to move about our house with out her attacking us. She will land on the floor and mate with the dogs toys . Any one have any suggestions??

Thanks,
Simon

[liz]

When they are hormonal they are not responsible for what they do. Just hang on and it will pass.

One thing that my Amazons taught me was that they not only like to make noise but like to make others make noise. Aunt Betty is a screamer and the birds just love to torment her and make her scream. I finally got through to her that they are not being mean. They just want her to scream.

She is now controlling her response and they have slowed down on picking on her.

[Wolf]

Parrots will normally get hormonal once or twice a year depending on the species, most of them just once a year. The things that we have that we can help control this with are light and food. The light controls their internal biological clock that tells them it is time to breed or to stop and it must be natural light and it must be the light that occurs from when the sky start getting lighter in the morning all the way through the dawn until full daylight and then the dusk period until full dark when they should sleep. It takes both of these periods to work sort of like the start and stop button on a stop watch. It does take time to work. The other is to lower the fat and protein content in their diet and this works best when used in conjunction with the lighting.

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum! Are you sure you have a female and not a male? Because, in my personal experience, it's only the males that get aggressive when they are hormonal - all the hens I've had just get very affectionate. I have two female amazons brooding right now (a yellow nape and a blue front) but they are fine with me and pretty much anybody else they know -it's the males that you have to watch out for

As you can see by what I just told you and, although they are at the very tail end of it (we are past the summer solstice), they are still in breeding mode so your bird's behavior is pretty normal. If you are keeping your bird to a strict solar schedule and you start reducing protein intake half-way through molt, it should be OK.

What you can do to make your bird more comfortable (and alleviate the situation until it goes into molt) is give it a nice, thick cardboard box. Both the hens I mentioned are spending their entire days (and I am NOT exaggerating, mind you, they only come out to eat and drink) inside them (just make sure you have a 'supply' because they do chew them and you will have to replace them as they get destroyed).

[liz]

Rambo is passionate about cardboard boxes. The first time I took the old one away and gave him a new one he squealed with excitement so loud that my Momma thought I was hurting him. He loves to turn cardboard into mulch and needs his boxes changed regularly.

[Pajarita]

Yes! Mine scream in excitement, too, when they get a new box so I make a game of it. I show them the box and go: "Look what I have for youuuuuu! You want it? Uh? Uh? Here it goes! Ready - set - GOOOOOOOO!" And I swing the box forward and back when I say the 'ready' and the 'set' and let it go when I say 'go'! They LOVE it and scram real fast to get to it while they click and scream in excitement.

[liz]

We had never heard such a scream. If I had not been with him I would have run to him to find out what was wrong.

[Chantilly]

My GCC is very hormonal at the moment! agree with Liz 100%, it is not their fault, just hold on and it will pass.

Welcome to the forum! Are you sure you have a female and not a male? Because, in my personal experience, it's only the males that get aggressive when they are hormonal - all the hens I've had just get very affectionate. I have two female amazons brooding right now (a yellow nape and a blue front) but they are fine with me and pretty much anybody else they know -it's the males that you have to watch out for

... Thinking Tilly is a boy now she went CRAZY today, very very aggressive, I let her get at me without reacting hoping she would just decide to stop figuring it was hormones-she was not biting because I had annoyed her (I had not annoyed her), she was biting because she felt like biting anything that came within 30cm of her.
Ok- not to hijack the thread with a mabye grossish question, but...:
I am wondering if you can tell the gender of a parrot by the way they mate you
Tilly sits in my hand and clucks away rubbing her pelvic? bone back and fowards without actually moving her body- whereas Shrek will do this big mating dance around my foot or hand, hold on to me with her feet and then wag her tail back and forwards on the surface below (floor).

[liz]

When Myrtle came along I was told she was female. She started out being a little sissy girl that had to be a girl.
Her first hormonal season she would lift her butt and back up to me. That is when I realized that Rambo was actually a female. I just can't break myself from saying she.

Rachel's little bird she named Walker was claimed to be a boy. He humped every toy in his cage. I check all my birds first thing every morning and found him dead with an egg in his cage. He was a she but had not acted like one.

[Pajarita]

No, Chantilly, in reality, you can't tell if a bird is male or female by the way they masturbate because, with birds, there is no actual penetration (as there is with mammals) only contact (they just rub their vents against each other's). People say that if the bird lowers its chest and raises its rump then you have a female and, if the bird rubs himself in a upright position, you have a male but I have found that this theory, although correct for most birds, is not 100% so I would not rely on it.

But, why are your birds so very hormonal that they are masturbating in the middle of your winter? Have you tried to figure it out?