New Parrotlet owner

[Gale&Yogi]

I was looking for a Parrotlet and googled it. I found some on kijiji locally and saw this 3 yr old male and some young ones. Something drew me to the 3 yr old, and despite his complete untameness and no training, something told me to take him. The breeder had given him to her grown son, and he kept this poor boy in a cage with stale water and a huge dish of seeds. The breeder sold him while he was at college to the lady I got him from. She had him for about 6 months and tried to take him but gave up.

I am a dog trainer that uses only positive reinforcement.

Right now, Yogi is confined to his training cage until he is desensitized to me. I let him come out of the cage at times, and I crate one of my dogs who thinks he is a toy. My other dog, a very soft and tolerant 14 yr old cavalier likes him but finds Yogi pushy. So does my Ragdoll cat, but she likes him, and it appears that Yogi likes her because when she gets up on the table where his cage is, he goes belly to the cage right where she is.

I hope he gets desensitized soon so that I can start taming and training him. I intend to leave his flight feathers long then, and let him out of his big cage often, but only when he has learned to come to me and step up onto my finger and more. I used to do agility with my dogs and would love to see Yogi do bird agility.

One thing is guaranteed though, I WILL NOT GIVE UP ON YOGI.

[Gale&Yogi]

Should have been tame not take. iPhone auto correct

[liz]

Welcome to the forum.

He is no wild. He is scared. Birds are more like kids than dogs so they learn just like a kid would.

Giving him a perch at face level will help. That shows him that you respect his space. They are afraid of hands since they are prey animals but not afraid of faces. What I did was put all my new ones in the most active room in the house so they can be in the action without having his life pushed with being the center of attention.
Talk a lot so he can get used to your voice even when you are not talking to him. Share food with him and sing also. They like music and singing. Myrtle learned to dance by watching this old woman dance when around her.

[Wolf]

Welcome to the forum and thank you for taking in this parrotlet that was used as a breeder bird. I have two parrotlets named Paquita ( I call her Keeta) and the male is Rajah. Keeta is a very sweet little bird, even though she is just a little bit bitey. Rajah is a retired breeder bird and although he is a very beautiful and basically very sweet in nature, he is still very much unhandleable, even after nearly two years of patiently working with him. I got him as a mate for Keeta, but after almost a year of living together with her, he became abusive and plucked the feathers off of her head and neck within just about half an hour and he bit and cracked her beak. I have been very lucky, first of all because I caught this as quickly as I did and because her beak has finally fully healed. Despite the abuse of Keeta by Rajah they remain bonded and I can't fully separate them or they both wig out, so they are in separate cages right next to each other.

This is just a basic background about my two parrotlets as at some point it might be helpful for you to know this if you ever decide to get your parrotlet a companion. But the main reason that I am replying to you is to let you know that you are most likely going to need to be extremely patient with your new bird and understand that he may or may not ever decide to bond with a human. This is due to breeder birds being treated much differently than a bird that is going to be sold as a companion bird. The first and most important difference is that they have been imprinted on humans just as the other birds are, but then they are never socialized with humans and they are not usually allowed to form an appropriate bond with a mate as they would under natural conditions. They are very often caught and placed in the females cage until they mate and then returned to their own cages until the breeder has another female for him to mate with. This is a very poor and extremely stressful situation for these birds and among other things it results in a bird that is fearful of humans and does not trust them at all. This conditioning is very difficult to break through so that you can win the birds trust.

None of this is intended to discourage you in any way, rather it is intended to give you some insight into the life of a breeder bird so that you can better understand the reason for your birds behaviors and the challenges before you. I love both of my parrotlets and I will always have a loving home for the both of them as long as I live, and I will never give up on showing Rajah that he is loved and hopefully someday he will let me in and begin to trust me, but he will always have a loving home here with me even if he never comes to trust me.

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum and thank you for taking him in! Just a comment, breeder birds are seldom imprinted to humans because this implies that they were hand-fed and, although you might find some bigger species birds that were handfed and meant for pets but ended up as breeders (usually because people assumed that they wanted this life), none of the little ones are. One of the reasons is that it's too much work to handfeed a little bird so the greatest majority of breeders don't bother but also because parent-raised birds make better breeders.

Now, I don't know if you already know this and, if you do, please just skip over it but birds and dogs are two completely different things. You might be able to use some of your training experience with him but, all in all, you are dealing with an animal which is not going to react the same as a dog. Not ever. Dogs are not only domesticated and have been bred for thousands of generations to be people-oriented (parrots are undomesticated) but they are also hard-wired for obedience and subservience to a leader figure (parrots don't even understand either concept - it's not in their genetic make-up). So I would caution very strongly about using any type of flooding technique, especially with plets which will resort to aggression if things are not going their way.

[Gale&Yogi]

His cage is beside where I sit on the couch. All his perches are at eye level or close to it.

We talk to each other, and when he sits before a snooze, he chirps quietly and gurgles, so I think he likes his new home and owner. I think he is like a 2 year old with new restrictions: he wants to please but likes doing what he likes.

Before I got Michael's book, I would take him out of the cage, and this was the only time he bit me. I have taught him to give kisses, not bites.

Training is hard because he won't take anything from my hand, so the clicker is useless. I have a much better clicker than the box one provided.

Before I got the book, I would let him come out of his cage on his own, just to see what he would do.
The photo I attached is the first time, and he went to Sully for protection from me. In the second it took to get my iPhone, Yogi had hidden under Sully's ear

Here is one video and if you click on the uploaders name you should see all of them: http://youtu.be/n-XwjVltCaw

[Pajarita]

You need to identify what his high value item is and reserve it to be used only as a reward (he will take it, in time, from your hand). But, for this to work, you can't free-feed any protein food...

[Wolf]

The tourquoise mutation must be a very popular color, except for yours having had his wings clipped he looks just like my Rajah. Rajah has not been clipped and the cobalt blue feathers only show on the leading edge of his wings when they are closed, but when he spreads his wings there is a lot of the cobalt blue that shows in his wings and across his back.

[Gale&Yogi]

He doesn't like a lot. He LOVES blackberries and raspberries, not strawberries, melon, grapes, cherries, apples, and he likes rutabaga but not cauliflower or broccoli.

I keep trying new stuff and am happy parrotlets don't eat nuts as I am allergic, and maybe a bit nuts to take this on, but then, everyone loves a nut!

He has been chatty today and I swear I heard him clearly say "how are you?" Which I say to him often.

He is a real card and I love having him.

[Wolf]

Thankfully he does not sound as if he was treated the way that most breeders treat breeder birds.

I think that I would still suggest that you do some in depth research into his natural diet in the wild. Although we can't duplicate their natural diet, we can gain a lot of insight into which foods are better for them that we have available to feed them. Such a small bird as this probably eats more berries than much of the larger fruits, but still may eat some of the larger fruits especially if the have fallen to the ground ( sometimes they break open making it easier for the parrotlet to get a few bites)

Many times, I would say most of the time, the reason that our birds do not eat the variety of fruits, nuts and vegetables that they should, is not because they don't like them, but rather because they do not know what they are or that they are even food. This is not knowledge that they are born with, it is taught to them by their parents in the wild or by us in the case of being born and raised in captivity. The best way to teach them is to share food with them. But when sharing a new food with your bird it is better to act as if you will not let them have any of it while making sure that it is not too difficult for them to sneak in and steal a piece of it. Even doing it this way it may still take some time before they begin to eat the new food. As to nuts, parrotlets probably don't get a whole lot of them due to the shell being so hard for such a small bird, but I know that my parrotlets love almonds so I cut some almonds into slivers for them. One slivered almond may last two or three days for a single parrotlet. I am not positive about that as I feed almonds to most of my birds.