Does your bird do this?

[kannon]

I have just acquired a Sulfur Crested Cockatoo.Lovely bird but needs a lot of training to acquire proper manners.Previous owner,a young girl,must have let the bird do whatever it wanted.My big problem is that when the bird goes on my shoulder or hand,it reaches down and begins to pluck the hairs off my neck or hand.It hurts!
Hopefully this will pass with training.

[Wolf]

Put a towel or scarf around your neck and distract the bird. I don' know of anything with your hand except to distract the bird, maybe a small stuffed toy to place between the beak and your body.

[kannon]

High collars and long sleeves.I am just curious if this is a common characteristic of some parrots.Lovely bird with sulfur crest and sulfur body with white wings.Had her to Vets for blood test,low calcium.Vet says the bird needs to get Sun light.I give calcium supplements in the water. Bought an avian harness today and plan to take her on my dog walks.

[Wolf]

I provide cuttlebone for calcium and if they don't use it I scrape some into their food. I am not so sure about taking the bird on dog walks.

[shiraartain]

I have a quaker who does something similar. Something that Parjarita suggested, which is wokring for me so far, is to keep something for the bird to chew on you at all times. When the bird starts up with its habit, give it the chew toy instead so that it gets distracted and leaves you alone.

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum. The bird is trying to preen you, it's a way of showing affection and to dissipate stress but, apparently, nobody taught it to do it gently so, for now and until he learns, re-direct the action by giving him something he can chew (as Shira suggested) or prevent him from getting to you (like Wolf did).

But you say the bird has a sulfur body? LSC have white bodies... are you sure it's not a lutino cockatiel you have? Because I can't think of another bird with a yellow body and crest...

Now, this 'low' calcium result was from an ionized calcium test or a regular chem panel? Because the only valid result is from an ionized test, not the regular. I don't know what type of calcium supplement you are adding to the water but it needs to have vit D3 in it (or it doesn't work) and you cannot give it to the bird more than 5 days in a row and then rest for 2 because, if you do it every single day, some birds lose the ability to move calcium in and out of their bones ending up with a metabolic malfunction. And you can't just give it the avian calcium with Vit D3 forever
or the bird will end up with liver problems so you will need to find a way to provide a balanced diet without it (I feed food naturally high in calcium, have cuttlebone laying around in the birdroom and give them 1.5 or 2 times the daily recommended dosage of a good multivitamin/mineral powder I mix with their gloop once a week).

I would also not recommend you take the bird out for walks with your dog... way too risky and stressful for the bird.

[kannon]

Thank you for replies.I thought the dog walk a good idea but will now avoid.My CAG can't fly, yet ,so I take her out into the yard while I drink my coffee.I will take the Cockatoo in the harness.I think it is a proper Cockatoo.She looks just like the birds on You Tube but has more of a yellow frosting over her body.The Vets considered the bird a Cockatoo.
The blood test was just a standard test to establish a base line for future reference.I use something called Calcionate Syrup.Recommended for infants,children and pregnant or lactating women.Vets suggested sun light to correct a small deficiency.
There is so much to learn for the proper care of birds.Thank you all for this resource.

[Wolf]

Don't trust in the inability to fly by taking your Grey outside without a harness or a cage as it isn't safe. I almost lost my CAG by doing the same thing.

[Pajarita]

Ay, no, no, no, eliminate the calcionate syrup immediately! It has sorbitol and saccharin and no vit D3 and it's way too high in calcium! It's not good for birds, only for mammals but I would not use it on my dogs or cats, either! Please use avian liquid calcium like Calciboost. Is your vet an avian vet or just a regular vet that treats exotics on the side? Because I don't know of any avian vet that would prescribe calcionate syrup for a bird or use a regular chem panel to determine that the bird has low calcium for the simple reason that blood calcium in birds goes up and down depending on the season, the gender and even the time of day so it can't really be used as an accurate indication of anything.

Usually, the white cockatoos that have a yellow suffusion all over their bodies are Citrons but their crest is more orangey than sulfur yellow. Lesser sulfurs are all white with just yellow plumes in their crest and the merest tinge (very, very faint) of yellow on their cheeks - they also have yellow undercoverts on their wings and tail but, when the bird is just perching, they look all white with no yellow anywhere but on their crest.

I second Wolf's recommendation, please, please, please, do not take any bird outside without a cage or a harness!

[kannon]

The Vet did not prescribe the calcium syrup, just sun light.My error,I went to Amazon looking for a calcium supplement.I will order the proper calcium, as recommended.
I guess my bird is some sort of mutation.She has the yellow crest,yellow checks and a yellow frosting undercarriage all the way to the tip of the tail.She likes her scratch and prefers the back, under the wings, so I know the frosting covers the whole body.The wings are white but a bit of yellow shows through where the wings cross and the very tip of the bottom tail.Black eyes with a bluish surround.She seems to have the attitude of the Cockatoos, I have seen on You Tube and is good fun for me.