cage newby

[debdans]

I just got a yellow naps. I had a eclectic for 2 years before but wanted to be a breeder.I and he badly need a new cage.He is very aggressive about his 24" wide no playground cage.WILL THIS be a good choice for him. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CZZ8ECE/ref ... K1EGE4P6B4

He is a super talker and not a screamer like my old bird I am home full time with him.

[Wolf]

To be honest I like this one much better for an Amazon
http://www.windycityparrot.com/Double-P ... _2693.html

Tell me, if you will with all of the avian rescues overflowing and turning birds away, why would you want to be a breeder? Also, how much experience do you have with parrots?

[liz]

Where is your eclectic?

[debdans]

I have horrible grammer.And did not word my first post right. I MEANT MY Eclectus wanted to be a breeder NOT ME. My eclectus was a young adult breeder when I purchased as a pet. And he did not do well as a pet are settle in with me. Sad and depressed no matter how many toys are how much I talked to him. So I traded him to a man in Charleston to go with a female.That is were I got my 3 year? Yellow nape, The man will only have 3 birds so not a big breeder
The male yellow nape I was told was a pet and tame.He was tame for his first owner as far as being petted so I have high hopes. He is a little tamer after first week if I use gloves to get him out. Thank God for leather gloves. I was told he was cage aggressive.He will not be a breeder. I am hoping he gets tamer with time I was told he is 3 years and can be handled a little once out of cage. And he talks a lot. I love that. And will keep him for that reason.

[Wolf]

Not the best reason to keep him, in fact, in my opinion it is a very poor reason, but it is a reason and perhaps we can help you with him. I have a 15 year old female yellow naped parrot, she is also quite the talker.
Let's talk about your bird, but first please allow me to say that I mean no disrespect to you with my comment concerning your reason for keeping this bird and that as time goes on you will understand what I mean by it. Does he have a name?
You have a young Amazon male who is probably going into puberty , is hormonal and coming into breeding season. This all tells me that you are going to have a difficult time for the next several months. I doesn't seem to me that you have a lot of experience with parrots, but I could be wrong about that, so please feel free to correct me at any time.
Please be patient with this bird, do not push him, rather allow him to set the pace for all that you do. This is very important especially at this time or this could very easily and quickly turn ugly and not end well.
Forget about training him for a while, Since I don't have to deal with puberty due to my birds all being past it, I am a little shaky one the exact age but I believe that Amazons normally enter puberty between the ages of 3 and 5 years old, with the most common being at 3 years. This is a difficult time for them and it is also the time that they undergo a change in their personalities. They are transitioning from being a baby that is dependent on you for everything into an adult bird who makes his own choices and chooses a mate whom he will remain with for most if not all of the remainder of his life. I don't know your age but try remembering your early teenage years with all of the new stresses and the out of control hormones and compress all of that into just a few months. You said that he was kept as a pet, which also usually means that he was kept to a human light schedule which also increases his hormonal state and breeding season is coming up again an increase in hormones. This all serves to place you in a very touchy situation, especially if you don't have a lot of experience. I really need you to keep in mind that first of all this is not your fault, nor is it the birds fault, secondly that it will pass in a few months. Remember to keep a heavy towel on hand preferably on your shoulder or hung around your neck so that you can get to it easily and hopefully you won't need it. The hormones that are raging through this birds body and brain will manifest mostly as aggressiveness.
What you have described so far is cage aggression or territorial aggression, he is protecting his nesting area, try to respect this and allow him to come out of the cage before you attempt to ask him to step up, it will save you from some potentially nasty bites.
Are his wings clipped or not? There are some things that can help with his aggressiveness but unfortunately with breeding season coming on their effectiveness will be extremely limited until after it has passed. Pajarita is the more experienced in these matter than I, she is also a bit more gruff, but the information is excellent.
You need to put your bird on a solar light schedule right away. This means that his cage is uncovered before the sky starts to get light in the morning as he needs the exposure to the dawn's first light and he needs to have the artificial lights turned off two hours before dark so that he can get the light from the dusk before dark, this is what sets his internal clock and starts and stops the breeding cycle. The second thing that you can control that affects both the breeding cycle and his hormone levels is his diet. He needs to be placed on a low fat, low protein diet as quickly as you can get him to eat it, with lots of vegetables and whole grains. Again the effectiveness of this will be greatly reduced right now with breeding season coming on, but starting now can reduce the intensity of his aggressiveness and reduce the amount of time that he is in breeding mode and hormonal. Keep him away from your face, you don't want to get bitten in the face. If he can fly, it is the only form of exercise that can reduce the amount of hormones in his bloodstream, so if you can safely get him to fly in the room he is in then use this. You may want to make sure that the room is bird proofed and let him come out for several hours a day, just don't allow any other person to go there when he is out until this hormonal phase has passed.
I have to take care of my birds now, but will be back later.

[Wolf]

Hi; I was getting ready to continue and noticed that you are online so I will wait for you before I say more.

[Pajarita]

OK, first of all, let me correct a misconception, no two year old ekkie gets depressed because he 'wants to become a breeder'. I don't know who told you that but whoever it was did not know anything about parrots or even birds in general. I am saying this not to scold you but because if you are going to go into keeping an amazon in the same frame of mind, it is not going to work out. Parrot-human relationships only work when the human puts out A LOT of work and time into them. Parrots are not dogs and making us happy is not part of their psychological make-up so it falls to us to gain their trust and love. And, when you are talking about a male amazon, we are not talking 'depressed and sad' when it doesn't work out with their human, we are talking 'mean and bitey'.

First thing you need to do is stop grabbing him with gloves. This is a complete no-no with birds, my dear. It's not only a flooding technique (which have been proven to backfire in the long run and no longer recommended), the only time their bodies get 'grabbed' is when a predator gets them and, as we all know, this doesn't have a happy ending. Second thing you need to do is make sure he is getting a good diet because zons are highly prone to obesity, high uric acid and fatty liver and all of these are caused by a diet too high in protein. An amazon diet should be low protein, low fat, high fiber and high moisture. I don't use or recommend pellets because I've done research for years and I have concluded that dried-up, processed ground up grains with man-made vitamins are not the best dietary option for captive birds. It's not only highly unnatural, most of them contain soy (which I don't feed to any of my animals) and, besides, nobody even knows what the nutritional values are because the labels never give you specific numbers or even ranges. I feed mine (I have 6 amazons) gloop for breakfast, accompanied by fresh produce, and a small, measured portion of a low protein, good quality seed mix (3 of them get only budgie mix and the other 3 get half budgie, half cockatiel). Amazons are great eaters and bathers, they are independent and tend to be perch potatoes so, as long as you feed them right and keep them at the right light schedule, they are, actually, quite low maintenance compared to other species of parrots. BUT the males can be extremely aggressive when overly hormonal so it's imperative that they are kept to a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk and that they get a lower protein diet during the resting season (winter) to avoid problems. An overly hormonal male amazon is a powerful, large, fearless pissed-off animal that will think nothing of flying to you and biting a chunk of your face so it's essential to avoid this at all costs.

You should get the bird DNA'd to know for a fact whether you have a male or a female because it's very useful information for the long haul. If the bird talks so much, it's most likely a girl because they are the ones that have large vocabularies, males do talk but they are birds of 'few words'

Now, you are going to have to put A LOT of work and time into this relationship because first impressions are very important to parrots and you gave him a bad one (the gloves and predatory grab). He won't do any of the work. They never do because there is no hard-wired natural inclination for parrots to please us and, if they perceive you as not trustworthy, it takes a lot of work to dispel this and convince them we really are so arm yourself of resolve and patience and do everything right because, if you don't, it won't work out, same as the ekkie did not work out. It's never 'them', it's always 'us'. Parrots are naturally affectionate and forgiving but they also have long memories and reach conclusions of their own and, in their minds, the fact that you got the wrong info from somebody is not relevant at all, all they know and all they take into consideration is what you do and what you don't do. The reasons make no never mind to them.

Keep him at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk and sleep when it's night (think of the schedule the birds on the trees follow), allow him as much out of cage time as you can, the more hours he spends out of his cage, the better he will feel (nobody likes to be in jail, right?), feed him early in the morning and when the sun is going down to reproduce the times he would eat in the wild (pet parrots might be captive-bred but they are not domesticated so their needs are identical to the wild ones), don't grab him and don't put your hand in his cage, just open the door and walk away. If he doesn't come out, don't worry, he will. Talk (praise, praise, praise), sing, whistle and generally keep him company. Offer him a treat every now and then. Don't try to force-handle him, don't ask for anything and, when the time comes that you can ask (it might take days or it might take months), don't insist if he doesn't want to do it. Parrots don't react well to discipline, demands or impositions, you need to win them over and trick them into thinking they are doing what they want when, in reality, we are maneuvering them into it. It takes patience, persistence, consistency and mental agility to keep up with them and, when it comes to large, potentially dangerous birds like amazons, it's not only in their best interest but also in yours to do so.

[liz]

I have two Amazons without a cage door. They are family members and have their own place in the household. I always ask them to step up. If it is an emergency I will scoop them up. Never put your hands above a birds head unless he put his head down for you. Never grab a bird. Predators grab them from above. No matter how many generations of captives in his bloodline he will still have the instinct to be afraid of it. What's with the gloves? Can you imagine what big gloves look like coming at him?
The bond you seek starts with respect and trust will follow.

[Wolf]

Hi debdans ; After rereading my last post to you I can see where it may sound a bit condescending of me when I expressed that keeping this parrot just because he talks in not a good reason. I assure you that it is not meant in that manner. I just think that the only reason for keeping a bird is that you care for them, not what they can do, although the talking is a bonus.
My biggest concern is that if you don't have the correct knowledge about this species of bird that you might be seriously injured which would be disasterous for both you and the bird. I would not want this to happen and because of this I am trying to let you know as quickly as possible what you must know to keep this from happening. I am just not always tactful enough in the way that I say things sometimes. And in this particular case, I am very worried about your safety.
Please try to understand that although this parrot in captive bred and raised that it is not domesticated as it still retains all of the instincts of its wild counterparts. And a hormonal adult male Amazon parrot is totally fearless in defending its territory, mate and nesting site and it does not just bite and run it attacks and attacks and keeps attacking until it is either dead or has driven the intruder away. No amount of cute talking can replace your eyes or heal an ear that has been ripped off by a hormonally enraged male Amazon. And that is the reason for my first statement. But if you are aware of these possibilities they can be easily avoided, but if you don't know about these things then you don't even have a chance of defending your self much less in taking the precautions to avoid this possibility. Please don't be insulted and know that my words are coming from a sincere concern for the safety of both you and the bird and for no other reason.

[debdans]

Hi Wolf are any body can I ask for more help.Forget getting him out of cage I give up on that. If I do not use gloves how do I stop him from attacking my hands if I am getting his bowls are any thing to do with cage. I got bit 4 times fast as I could blink drawing blood 2 times.And 1 time again this morning. He was on far side both times when I went to pick up his bowl he flipped out of feeder.
He will take a peanut from my hand but any other activity gets me attacked. He comes after me if I touch any thing. The whole time talking. I did do what you said I got a large blanket to cover his cage a hour before dark. Hopefully in the long run this will help. I was told he was 3 but with huge amounts he says complete sentences might he be older. Below is his picture. Is he a yellow nape are other type. Only a tiny small fingernail spot of yellow on neck.. His cage will be here late week. I can not wait big enough for me to have a chance to clean up bottom before he gets down there to nail me,