New Sennie Owner

[Evie]

Hi, my first post here . I have shared my life with many birds over the years but have just acquired my first Sennie. He/she is 12 weeks old, HR and very beautiful. All going well so far (arrived on Tuesday) but any advice re teaching not to exploratory bite quite so hard would be appreciated, thank you. I have tried re-directing to a chewy toy, putting him down beside me when he does it, removing his beak and saying gently but he does still do it, I know it's very early days.

[cml]

Hi, my first post here . I have shared my life with many birds over the years but have just acquired my first Sennie. He/she is 12 weeks old, HR and very beautiful. All going well so far (arrived on Tuesday) but any advice re teaching not to exploratory bite quite so hard would be appreciated, thank you. I have tried re-directing to a chewy toy, putting him down beside me when he does it, removing his beak and saying gently but he does still do it, I know it's very early days.

From someone who's done what you do, telling no and putting him down wont work in the long run. It worked perfectly for me for 9 months, but then our dynamics changed and it became counter productive as I reinforced that my hands were bad.

We are working around it though and its going great. Take a look at my topic about it, Michael has posted a few very good links to articles to read there.

http://theparrotforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7844&p=53584#p53584

Basically, react as little as possible to bites, anything else will hurt your relationships in the long run.

Oh, and welcome to the forums =)!

[Michael]

All going well so far (arrived on Tuesday) but any advice re teaching not to exploratory bite quite so hard would be appreciated, thank you. I have tried re-directing to a chewy toy, putting him down beside me when he does it, removing his beak and saying gently but he does still do it, I know it's very early days.

If it is nothing more than exploratory nibble, I'd just leave it. Once he gets a try of things he won't be doing that. Aggression is a different story. But the exploring nibbles aren't really a problem. Just handle him a little differently to prevent some of the opportunities to make them.

[Rokisha]

Before I came to this forum I had read that the best way to deal with bites was to gently and slowly push your hand forward toward the bird which would take it by suprise as it wasn't the reaction it was looking for. Of course when I first got joe I followed that advice but still kept doing research until I came to this forum. Now I haven't seen anyone mention anything about that method here so I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do or not but beings as how they suggest you don't react I am assuming it's not really what you want to do. Now I may have just got lucky with joe since the gently pushing forward did cease her nippy behavior for the most part. Of course after reading the posts here I did change tactics and the no reaction seems to work just as well when she does indeed nip (Though it seems only toward my son) but it also helps to pay attention to any warning signs the bird may give as well before said biting. Of course exploratory nibbles, like others have already said, don't seem to be something to worry about.

[Evie]

Thank you so much for the replies and warm welcome. I will definitely try to ignore the nibbles although some of them are quite painful. I'm pretty sure there is no aggression behind these bites, he just doesn't know it's unacceptable yet, why would he? I'll check out the link too, thanks again

[JuJu]

I know their nips can be painful whereby exploratory or not... if u can tolerate it then try to ignore it. I always feel that reacting to it will only encourage them, but depends on why the bite came about.

Im lucky that my rescue wild sennie is not really a biter... phew.. the only 2 nips I got were painful but only because I was pushing him to do things he dislike... Now that we have a mutual understanding, theres been no more nips... its their way of saying, Im not comfortable with what you are doing... like a pinch only with hard sharp beak

Im still learning loads from everyone here always nice to meet a new sennie owner. How was yr past experience with your other parrots?

You still have them? Amazons pack a greater punch don't they? Your sennie gets along with them?

[Evie]

Hi Juju, thanks for the reply . I am trying not to react too much to the biting but it is just short of piercing skin so not always possible. Anyway, I never jerk my hand away or shriek, keeping any reaction calm and minimal. As far as the precedent to the behaviour, there doesn't appear to be any particular trigger. He's still at the settling in stage so I'm not pushing or expecting too much yet. He'll do it when he's playing on my lap or on my hand and my feeling is that it is baby exploring behaviour. There is certainly no sign of anxiety or fear (no attempt to fly away). I can usually read birds fairly well, although I know each species is slightly different in the way they communicate and this is my first Sennie. I don't have any other birds at the moment but have looked after many rescue birds in the past and the only biting problem I had was with a cockatiel. Looking back perhaps I could have modified her behaviours with the right training techniques but I never managed to handle her. She did have free flight time and was caged with a male. The only other biter was a stray monk/quaker parakeet that I took in, but he was strongly bonded to me and only bit my partner (sorry, shouldn't laugh). Thanks again for the welcome