New Owner of a Shy Senegal

[musskulls]

Hello, I'm new here and as of today, I am the owner of a senegal named kiwi. He's a great bird. He's relatively quiet, likes to dance and talks A LOT!

As far as I know, he hasn't been handled since he was bought, which was 13 years ago. When he's in his cage, he lets you scratch his head and everything. But once he's out of his cage, he'll fly away when you reach out your hand towards him. I've already been watching videos and researching how to teach birds to step up, but I thought I might as well ask around here for some extra advice.

Thanks!

[laducockatiel]

Well, I think that he is getting too excitied about being out and he just wants a fly about. What you should do is get him used to being out and let him out a lot (2 - 3 times a day) and leave him alone. Or if he goes on your hand in the cage, let him step up and then take him out, while on your hand, feed him his favourite treat. If none of these work then let him out and let him sit on a perch or something, then show him his favourite treat, go up to him and feed him. Try it a lot of times and maybe he'll try too!

Hope this helps and good luck lookin after your Senegal!

C ya

[musskulls]

Yeah, I've let him out 3 times since I've had him. Problem is, he will defensively bite my hand whenever I'm in his cage. He gets out of the cage on his own, but getting him back in is always a struggle, literally. Whenever I approach him, he flies away and sometimes will crash into a mirror, wall etc. So I haven't let him out in a while cause I'm afraid that he'll hurt himself. I think I need to train him to step up before he can be let out again.

[Michael]

You can look into target training him in the cage. This is a case where it may be helpful to make the parrot a bit more desperate for food when you do let him out. I'm not telling you to starve him and you really need to do more research about food management than I have time to explain now. But if he's flighted and somewhat unmanageable, if he's hungry you have a better chance of suckering him to step up for treats or to dump a load of food in his cage and wait for him to fly back into it himself. Last thing you wanna do is let an untame flighted parrot out of the cage just after he ate.

Here's a good quick and dirty way of accomplishing this (but please read the articles and think about this some more before proceeding). Feed him an unlimited meal for one hour in the morning and take it out of his cage. Do not feed him again all day. You may want to setup this regime before the first day you let him out. It is good to have a very specific bed time every night so he gets used to something like food at 8:30PM, darkness at 9PM. Wait until one hour before he normally goes to bed and let him out. Let him be out for a little while and then work on using food to entice him to train, come to you, or to go back into his cage.

[musskulls]

Thanks Michael, I've already read a lot of your articles and I do plan on target training him eventually, but right now I want to wait for him to get adjusted into his new home. We did have a little breakthrough today though, he let me give him a treat while my hand was in his cage!

Thanks for the food management tips, I never thought about taking his food away before I let him out, but I guess that makes sense now.