My Meyers Parrot Training Progress

[seagoatdeb]

My style of training is to wait until they indicate they want to do it. lol...so i never push. If he isnt ready by next week to be comfortable in the car, I will cover his cage. I think he might be be though, each day he is making so many breakthroughs. I cant ever cover my redbelly, she is very afraid of covers. When I bought her she had one of her toes amputated and had been placed in confinment for it to heal. When she was removed from confinment, she was attacking everyone. One employee had bad deep bite marks with skin missing...and she was only 4 moths old. Even though the employees told me I should purchase the sibling, and my daughter was afraid of the scared biting bird, I only wanted her. The rest of my family thought I had enough birds already and didnt know why i was buying a biting bird from a pet store. But what could I do, I fell for her immediately and she fell for me and she has never bit me. But she is afraid of being covered, even 17 years later, so she never is. She is never afraid to go anywhere tucked inside my jacket though, as long as I am there she is not afraid of much of anything. The Meyers is watching intently, how she plays with me, so maybe someday he will try. She will fling herself upside down and I have to scramble to catch her..lol

[seagoatdeb]

one of the reasons the Meyers is making such fast progress is he watches Gaugan the redbelly do things and starts pointing and making little chirps he wants to do it too, but he has to wait. I cant put her down to pick him up right away or she will be mad at him. So by the time I go to get him he is really motivated.

[Pajarita]

Yes, parrot see, parrot does and watching other birds is the best way for them to learn (it's the way nature planned it, after all). My redbelly is the sweetest thing, though. No aggression toward people or other birds whatsoever!

[seagoatdeb]

My red belly is sweet too. She was bady traumatized as a baby. She does learn to like others but she limits what they can do with her. When I got her it was from a pet store, not a place I purchase birds and I was not going to buy a parrot. I already had several birds and my daughter had a parrot too. But I saw the two red belly babies and they were so cute I had to go to look, after all I lived really close to that pet store. I went one day and only one redbelly was in the cage. i asked if they had sold the other one but was told they had to amputate her toe becaue of the infection from the injury she got when she was shipped and had her foot caught by the band on the cage bars and she was in isolation and was biting everyone. He showed me the deep wounds on his fingers. I insisted on seeing her and the salesman came out with a glove on with a bird viciously attacking his glove. I could see she was a very sweet loving bird under her fear and began talking to her. She melted before my eyes and pointed her body at me. i put out my finger and she hopped on it. I was hooked and had to purchase her. From the time I got her home she did not want to be in a cage and she could not be covered. I would put her in her cage late at night and talk sweet to her until she feel asleep. Berfore a week was up I had a little sweetie who was so tame and so affectionate. I took her everywhere and she loved to go and she loved car rides. She learned early on that some humans are predators that can devour your toes, so new people have to work hard to earn her trust. Once you earn it though, she is very sweet and shows her appreciation to people with a little kiss if they do what she likes. She is without a doubt the most packed full of personality parrot I have been with.

[seagoatdeb]

On to my Meyers, he is becoming more tame by leaps and bounds. He now wants to be on me and crawls all over me. He calls for me when I leave the room and is trying to regurgitate to me. He hates going back into his cage at night and I have to coax him with treats..lol ( bribery always works)

[Pajarita]

Yes, indeed, bribery does it every time Beautiful baby!

[seagoatdeb]

He is a very good looking boy. He was bought to be a show bird and then the breeder decided she wasnt going to be ready for the show. Today Sunny the Meyers decided he was going to bond to me and not like anyone else, so I called my daughter over to help him to stay socialized to others.

[Pajarita]

Well, don't worry about that. Baby parrots don't interact with the rest of the flock until they are on their own -before that, they stick to their parents- so his behavior is perfectly normal and I would wait until he is older to introduce him to other 'flock mates' (I follow nature as much as I can on everything when it comes to my animals and it works like a charm)

[seagoatdeb]

Well today I think I found that my poor little Sunny bird may have been traumatized by someone. First he was scared of outside even a patio door open with a screen on it scared him to the point of panting. Other than that he has been progressing by leaps and bounds. He loves new toys and will fly to me if I am cooking or eating with no fear of different rooms. New things dont frighten him. So why only the outside? My daughter Kara comes over everyday to be close to my two parrots, because, she will inherit them if I go and I also make sure I am close to hers. Sunny loves Kara, she comes over with a treat for them every time and he is excited to see her and will allow her to pet him. Today, Kara came over with a treat for the birds and Sunny was pointing toward her when he heard her on the stairway, but when she entered he panicked and flew. I picked him up but when we got close to Kara he panicked again. I brought him to his cage through the dining room so we werent close to Kara. The only thing different about Kara was the light orange shirt she was wearing. I gave Kara a blanket to put over her and went to see Sunny and he was panting and frozen in place. I kept petting him and reassuring him and he finally began to look all right. This looks to me like he was traumatized. Later, I held a scissors next to him and opened and shut it, thinking it may have been a mean insensitive clipping and then a transportation that frightened him but he had no reaction to the scissors at all. I think he may have been traumatized by someone or something and light orange was involved. He did not react normally frightened, he was panting and it took a lot of reassurnce from me to settle him down. He has been fine since then playing and eating with gusto. I made some new foot toys and he was so happy to get to play and chew on them. I see now why the breeder wanted to sell him when she had bought him for show, she must have seen some of this. She also had told me he was 2 and a half months old, but when I asked her for the breeders contact info, because I wanted to know what sub species of Meyers he was and his actual birthdate, she told me his birthdate and he was 4 and a half months old. So, she was a little less than honest.

[Wolf]

It is surprising what they remember and how they tell us about these memories without the use of words. I just mentioned a breeding stallion and son of Seattle Slew that I worked with for many years. I was eventually able to describe two different people that had abused him right down to their hair color and what they did to abuse him to the point where he killed them. These description were later verified on security footage in the horses barn although they were long before my time with him. The syndicate that owned him put me through the wringer over the things that I learned from this horse as those films were locked up in their safe and I had no access to them.