Senegal Clyde takes on a new family

[donnaparty]

I just adopted a Senegal Parrot. Clyde is a 6 year old male (presumably, but seen people be wrong on that). His prior home had to give him up due to a senior member of the family developing some strong dislikes for the bird. When I met him the first time he greeted us as soon as we walked in the room, allowed us to pet him and stepped up for us.

He has now been in our home for 4 days. Once home, he didn’t show any real overt nervousness, but just didn’t come right up to us. I have progressed to now being able to pet him regularly, he takes treats from my hand and we started target training today in the cage.

I love his vocalizations and he appear to really want to interact. I have never had a Senegal before so did a lot of reading and studying before adopting him. I really want to do the right things and create a great home for Clyde. I think so far things are progressing fine. He hasn’t really wanted to step up yet, but baby steps. Any suggestions are welcomed.

[Weka]

Hello and welcome, DonnaParty.

The first couple of weeks or so, a bird is on its very best behavior as it's trying to figure out where things stand in the new location (they have no way of knowing if you are dangerous) so just take it super easy with Clyde and try not to ask too much of him too quickly. Knowing what I know now, I think we'd have taken even more time before having my husband interact directly with our red belly, who now seems to be having fear and/or territorial issues with him.


Best wishes,

Weka

[donnaparty]

Thank you Weka.

So far today he really wants attention. He can't get enough scratching and is singing back and forth with us. I laugh at his antics alot and this evening he greeted me with a chuckle and kept it up til I scratched him some more.

He hasn't stepped up on my finger since I brought him home so I just interact with him in his cage when he comes to the front perch.

I read that it is not a good training tactic to just let them come and go out of their cage on their own. So I offer him to step up, when he doesn't I just scratch him.

Any thoughts on that?

[Pajarita]

Welcome. I think you should wait a couple of weeks before you start training him, you don't want to overwhelm him and create a dislike for interaction from been too pushy. Parrots are very smart and do not like to be told what to do like we would a dog...

Why, exactly, is it not a good idea to allow them to come out of the cage on their own? If this is true (which I don't think it is), there must be a good reason for it...

[cml]

Why, exactly, is it not a good idea to allow them to come out of the cage on their own? If this is true (which I don't think it is), there must be a good reason for it...

I think the important part is that you should let a parrot out unless you have a good way of getting it into the cage again, which generates positive feelings towards the cage rather than negative.

The last thing you want to do is to be forced to towel a new bird and shove it into the cage, generating lots of negative feelings towards the cage. It's much better to have a good and positive way to get the parrot to go where you want it, like target training.