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New Owner

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New Owner

Postby Forson » Fri Sep 30, 2016 8:24 pm

Hello, I purchased a male senegal parrot which has been with me for close to two months. It does not know how to step up and anytime I extend my hand or a perch, it either withdraws or tries to attack my finger or bite the perch. It tries to play, eat or feel at home when I am not watching or making any movements in the room, but immediately it sense I am drawing close or even going about activities in the room, it tries to take cover. Fortunately when I try to give him food through the cage bars or by sticking my hand in the cage, it will stretch out to take, but once i try to make a movement, it will be steady and won't eat till I walk away, other times it will just drop the food at the least movement and begin to pace from left to right as though it's taking cover. It has the appearance of "I am not dropping my guard", and it won't allow me to pick it out of the cage, so I leave the cage open and it finds its way out, and when i try to get close, it flies off to a higher paltform so i cant reach it. Also, getting it back into the cage is another challenge, not even with its favourite food. The only observation is, it knows I pick the cage out every morning to clean the cage and change it's food and water, so once it sense daybreak, it begins to make noise and climb the cage bars to wake me up and it won't stop until I awake. I observed it also makes noise when the food is finished in the bowl and will only eat corn, nothing else. I need some enlightenment, perhaps there is something I am missing or doing wrong especially with the fear after being with me almost two months. Also the fact that, it won't eat nothing except corn and still aggressive.
Forson
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 3
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal Parrot
Flight: Yes

Re: New Owner

Postby Wolf » Sat Oct 01, 2016 7:59 am

Hello and welcome to the forum, glad that you found us so that we can try to help you develop a great and lasting relationship with your new friend. We will try and answer your questions and actually have a few of our own so that we can better help you and your bird.

First of all have you given him a name or did he already have a name when you got him and if you know it what is his age. Both of these are important bits of information if we are going to give the best possible answers. I understand that you said that he currently only eats corn, but this is totally an inadequate diet for him, so we need to know what foods you are offering him as well as when, please let us know. The more that you can tell us about both this birds past and his current lifestyle, schedules and so on the better answers we can give you.

Two weeks or even two months is like nothing to a parrot and except for stress this is especially true for the new parrot, who is normally very terrified for a period of time in its new home. Parrots do not handle change very well, they are pretty much a territorial species since they are prey animals. This is important to understand as they need to know what predators might be lurking in their environment, it is a matter of safety for them.

Depending on the parrots age, when you first get your bird and bring it home you are stepping into the role of either parent bird or possible flock mate or mate to your bird and after the bird knows that you mean it no harm, it will begin to trust you and come to depend on you for a portion of its sense of belonging, security and well being. The question that you have is how do you get to this point in the first place..
I apologise for this post as it could get to be rather long and I will try to keep it a bit shorter by providing a link or two to topics that might be useful to you and your bird where appropriate.

The first thing that you are going to need to do is get the bird accustomed to your presence and to the sound of your voice. To this end you will need to spend a considerable amount of time in the same area as your bird without trying to interact with it other than simply talking to him, using his name ( so that he learns it and knows you are talking to him), giving him a lot of " good bird" type of praise and dropping a treat ( such as a piece of almond) in his food dish now and then. While you are doing this do not look at him directly, instead look at him from the corner of your eyes, ( predators watch prey with a full frontal stare). These things will allow your new friend to watch you while you do things in the same room or area without putting any pressure on him and it will also allow him to get accustomed to the sound of your voice. Along with the occasional treat in his dish this will help him to relax and begin to look forward to your being in the same space as he is in and it will help him to see you as a giver of good things that he can eat. It will begin to help him to feel more safe and secure and start the process of earning his trust. You will know that this is helping as your bird will stop moving towards the back of the cage and will most likely start coming towards the front of the cage to see you when you enter his area.

After a week or so of doing this or when ever he stops moving away from you when you come into the room you can start the process of gaining his trust and hand taming him. Here is a link to help you with this process. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15840 Do not be concerned that the method outlined was written in response to another members question about a different species of parrot, this is the method that I have used with great success with all of my parrots and I have 5 different species of parrots.

I think that as far as giving him time out of the cage to fly and explore his area, I would start by only letting him out for a couple of hours just before his dinnertime, which should be about dusk. This is because that is when they normally eat in the wild, just before they fly to their roosting area to go to sleep for the night. This should make getting him back in his cage easier in the long run. If you are consistent with doing this he will learn to go back to his cage on his own about dinnertime. He will not do this right at first and you may have to catch him after it gets dark and putting him in his cage and allowing him to eat before turning the light back off so he can sleep, but he will learn this as part of his daily routine. Parrots love schedules and regular routines that they can count on as it helps to provide them with a sense of security and of knowing when certain thing will occur, a sense of some control over their own lives if you know what I mean.

Here is a link to toxic and non toxic items for parrots viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12521 The actual list begins on the second page of this topic and it include woods, plants, foods as well as items that you may have in your home that you need to be aware of. The primary reasons for my including this list at this point is to help you to provide a safe environment for your bird as they are notorious chewers of things as well as to help you with your birds diet. Your parrot needs to learn to eat a large variety of fresh, raw organic fruits and vegetables as well as a limited amount of protein foods such as a few tree nuts and a good quality seed mix. Some people prefer to feed pellets over the seed mix, but I am not really a fan of pellets. The best way to teach your bird to eat this variety of fruits and vegetables is to eat them in front of him and then when he starts demanding some for himself, share some with him. The sharing of food is a socializing activity for parrots as they normally eat with their flock ( you) and is also a bonding activity. The best times to share this type of food with your bird is first thing in the mornings before you give it its regular breakfast, just before the bird takes its normal mid day nap and about an hour before the birds dinner time. This is usually an ongoing process since most breeders do not wean their birds to fresh raw produce, only to seeds or pellets. Parrots are taught by their parents what foods to eat, what these foods look like as well as how to find the foods. You will have to teach these things to your bird, even though the best time to do this has probably already come and gone. So do not get discouraged if the bird refuses to eat this food right away. I consider this process to be a long term thing just like cleaning its food and water dishes is or any of the other daily chores in caring for my birds.

I think that I have answered the majority of the questions that you have asked with what I do with my own birds and tried to share some of my reasons for the way that I care for my own birds. I hope that you and your bird find this information useful to you. Please feel free to ask any other questions that you may have.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: New Owner

Postby Pajarita » Sat Oct 01, 2016 1:44 pm

Welcome to the forum! Please answer Wolf's questions so we can give you specific pointers but, just as a clarification, ALL handfed birds know how to step up and the only reason why they don't do it is when they don't trust you -which is the problem you are having right now so don't worry about that, it will come.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: New Owner

Postby Forson » Thu Oct 06, 2016 5:27 pm

Hello Wolf, I appreciate your effort to explain some things to me. I began to do as you said but first of all you requested for some information and so want to give that out first before attending to other matters. Oswald is a name I gave to him myself, some weeks after I brought it and he is 3 yeaes old. I bough some mixed seeds food called Vitakraft. The fear of my presence has dramatically subsided. Oswald doesn't run from me when I approach it or show signs of not wanting my presence. I decided to get it out of the cage and allow it to live in my room. It has been out for about a week now and very comfortable, it doesnt run when I come close and it doesn't attack my fingers but love it when I hand feed it.
The challenge now is, it still won't step up, or allow me to touch it, the closest I have come is to quickly touch the beak, that all.
Again it won't eat anything apart from the corn, or palm nut. I gave it apple, carrot, nuts, berries, millet, sunflower seeds, - even witht the new feed I bought, it only takes the corn in them and leaves the rest.
I recently gave it a taste of an apple drink and it liked it but I fear it's too sweet or acidic for its biological system,.
Of late it tends to sleep alot, the least chance it's sleeping, like today it spent most of the day sleeping. What do I do now about these challenges.
Trying to attach photo of the food and bird but the forum say they are invalid . Thank you.
Forson
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 3
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal Parrot
Flight: Yes

Re: New Owner

Postby Wolf » Fri Oct 07, 2016 6:44 am

Sometimes the best way to proceed is to begin all over from the beginning, whenever we get a new bird, we very often use a shortened or modified version of the method of hand taming that I shared with you. It helps by giving the bird a refresher in learning that we can be trusted as well as giving the bird a better opportunity to adjust to its new environment and to us. In this situation it appears that Oswald may be one of those birds that is " high strung" or nervous and as such may have needed either a refresher or just more time for him to accept and trust you. Normally a bird that trusts you will step up onto you without any issues all on its own. Basically I think that you can either just wait this out or you could wait until after Oswald goes to roost and return him to his cage and re hand tame him. Either way, with a little patience he will come around and things will work out just fine, I think.

Changing a birds diet, especially when it only picks out a very few items to eat can be a long and frustrating process for us. The reason that the bird does this is that it was not weaned properly onto the types of foods that it needs to eat, or sometimes these few food items are all that a previous owner gave the bird to eat. Both of these result in the bird not recognizing any thing else as being food. I have birds that I have been working with for close to four years to get them to accept and eat fresh raw foods and really expect it to take several more years before they are eating an adequate variety of these healthy foods. If I did not look at it as just another part of caring for the parrots needs such as that of cleaning its food and water dishes or cleaning its cage, it could become very frustrating to me.

Perhaps the best way to begin the process would be in addition to sharing raw fresh fruits and vegetables with him, would be to get some steel cut oats and cook that and then mix the foods that he will eat in with the cooked oats. This will not stop Oswald from picking out the things that he likes but it will coat his favored foods with the taste of the oats and in time he will begin to eat the oats as well and then you add in another cooked whole grain or another vegetable to this mix while reducing the amount of the corn or other items. you could also do the same thing by running partly cooked vegetables through a food processor and mixing his favorite foods into that mixture and again in time he will begin to eat all of these foods.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: New Owner

Postby Pajarita » Fri Oct 07, 2016 10:17 am

BIG red flag here! Although most birds take a nap at noon, birds, in general, don't sleep that much during the day so if yours is sleeping all day long, he is sick - no two ways about it as there is NO other explanation for it unless the bird is kept away all day long which I doubt is the case. Please take it to an avian vet for a complete physical because this bird had obviously had a real bad diet all his short life and the stress of the rehoming must have brought out an infection.

He should never eat dried corn. Not ever (dry corn and peanuts are the number one source of aspergillus (a fungus that produces a fatal toxin called aflatoxin -I once rescued an ex-breeder that had been fed corn and peanuts and he died of it because once the damage to the liver is too extensive, you can't repair it). So, please, either change his food to one without corn in it or remove it by hand from the mix. Both my senegals came to me as adults and they both were switched to gloop without a problem (why don't you try it and see what happens?).

Leaving him to live cage-free is wonderful but a human room is no place for a bird because, even when we are super careful about bird-proofing it, there are always dangers so I hope that he is NEVER left unsupervised in it.

You might want to use his name instead of one you gave him - it will endear you to him. Parrots understand and use the concept of proper names all their lives so your changing his name is only for your benefit as, most likely, he will never really identify the new name with himself (they are not like dogs).
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: New Owner

Postby Forson » Fri Oct 14, 2016 4:56 am

Thanks Wolf and Pajarita, Oswald is doing great now, he is finally taking oranges and I intend introducing him to the other fruits again to see if he would respond, it is interesting to know, when on the floor or any part of the room and he is scared of something, he would depend on my preence to climb up to my shoulder or when on a perch, straight to my arm but when I willingly place my hand or fingers he won't even bother, no matter how long I hold its favourite treat. Sometimes I put the treat on my arm and he would come for it but will never step unto my finger, or arm when I present it. Whenever he takes it from my arm, he quickly runs back to the perch.

Please, what does it mean when he makes a low quack sound when I leave it alone. I realised he does that when he wants to get down from its perch, wants to fly to another place or when I leave it alone. what meaning must I derive from that.

One last thing, he is unpredictable, today he will be so comfortable eating while i stand so close to him, he sometimes even sleeps in my presence, though I am so close for comfort but tomorrow he is running away or won't even eat when I get close and if he does he would pick the food and run to the perch. Any advise again. Thank you.
Forson
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 3
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal Parrot
Flight: Yes

Re: New Owner

Postby Wolf » Fri Oct 14, 2016 7:53 am

I am not sure of Oswald's age or if he is clipped or not, but it does sound as if his wings have been clipped. I think that most of the behaviors that you bring up are all trust issues and in my opinion they are causing stress for your bird because they go against the birds natural behaviors. The only remedy for this is you consistently working to show Oswald that you can be trusted and time.

If Oswald is less than 2 yrs. of age then he is still either a baby or a young juvenile and the type of bonding that they develop ( quite easily) is a dependency bond. This is because they are born helpless and must depend on their parents to teach them everything they need to know to survive and you are now his parent. This means that although he is aware that he needs you and that he must depend on you, he does not trust you and this is the reason for the behaviors that you are describing to us.

If he is returning to his cage to eat his dinner and to go to sleep at night, then you could start his daily routine by offering him fresh raw produce about half an hour after sunrise, which you would share with him, then let him have his regular breakfast and wait at least an hour with him still in his cage. Then use the method of hand taming that I describe in this link viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15840 Then let him out of his cage.

The remainder of the day should be pretty much the same as you are presently doing, Just speak to him often using his name and offer him a few treats during the day without asking him to do anything for them. you can share any bird safe snacks that you might have during the day with him and let him come to you for these and the rest of any treats that you offer him just place where he can see and get to them easily. Do not give him any treats within two hours of his dinner time as you want him to be hungry enough to return to his cage for dinner.

The main keys to this are your offering him good things to eat that you never take back, your time spent talking with him, not asking him to do anything for your treats or attention by talking to him and being there with him and your consistency and patience during this time. You need to let him make up his mind as to when he will trust you, but you have to be there for him if he is to do this.

Let me know how it goes in a few days.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: New Owner

Postby Pajarita » Fri Oct 14, 2016 11:08 am

Yep, I agree with Wolf, he still doesn't trust you. ALL birds will willingly step up when on the floor -even wild caught and mean ones that don't like you :D Been grounded is the worst thing you can do to a bird because nature only gave them one way of avoiding predators -and that is flight! If you take away the ability to fly, you are creating terrible chronic anxiety in a prey bird and the ground (or floor) is the most dangerous place for them to be. They might not have lived in their natural habitat or even be exposed to predators in their entire lives but their brains are hard-wired to recognize it as a 'bad' place for them to be!
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes


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