Parrotlet a bit nippy and loud

[sophiajp123]

I have a 6 month old parrotlet, who is a bit nippy. I wanted to know if there are any techneques that work for you guys? I normally use the time-out trick. When he bites( or nips pretty hard) I put him in his smaller cage for three minutes, then he doesnt bite for a while after learning his leason. Im still being patience with that. Also, he is much louder than most people say. About every half-hour to a hour, he has a 1-3 minute top of his lungs chirping fit. I normally ignore him and walk out of the room. Then he calms down pretty quickly. Some times he is louder than others. When he stops, I wait a minute and walk back in. Is there anything else I can do to help decrease these issues? I have heard that you can choose a sound that you like and ALWAYS reward him for that and ignore the sounds i dont like. Thanks!

[friend2parrots]

Regarding the nipping:

Try placing the bird right below you, down on the floor for about 15 seconds, IMMEDIATELY after each and every nip. do not allow your facial expression to change while he nips you, and be silent during a nip. Make sure he's safe, but ignore him while he's down on the floor. Pick him up again as soon as 15 sec pass, do something else, change the situation. after 2 minutes be nice and lively and fun. then if he nips again, repeat above steps. do this as many times as necessary. it may take a while to see improvement, but most birds learn quite fast that its more fun to not be nippy.

i've heard time outs dont work because by the time your bird get into his smaller cage for his "time out", he has forgotten why youre putting him in there.

good luck!

[sophiajp123]

Thanks alot friend2parrots! I will let you know how it turns out. Lets hope it goes well!

[sophiajp123]

Oh, and he is also very nippy when I try to get him out of the cage. He is a bit afraid of my hand and tries to nip. I normally just leave the cage door open and he flys onto my shoulder. Any advise on that? Thanks!

[friend2parrots]

Oh, and he is also very nippy when I try to get him out of the cage. He is a bit afraid of my hand and tries to nip. I normally just leave the cage door open and he flys onto my shoulder. Any advise on that? Thanks!

for that, you might have success doing the following:

don't put your hand into his cage to get him out if he's afraid of your hand. let him fly to your shoulder, and once he's there, lure him to your hand with a piece of millet spray. do this first thing in the morning, as soon as he wakes up, so he's hungry. once he's on your hand, keep him from going back to your shoulder, and reward him with a bite of the millet spray each time he steps up onto your hand. never give him treats while on your shoulder.

eventually he will realize that he only gets yummy treats when he's on your hand, and never on your shoulder. once he's used to eating treats from your hand, you can ask him to come out of the cage on his own onto your hand, for a bite of millet.

he's also prob nipping your hand out of territorialism when you place it in the cage. in my experience it is best to let birds claim their cages as their own territory and not stick your hand in there. eventually what will happen is that the bird will come to like your hand so much (having received so many treats from your hands) that it will not mind your hands in there (it will start to share its territory with you). but until that advanced level of bonding, its best not to enter their personal space.

right now, while he's nippy, its best to let him come out of the cage on his own and be busy somewhere else, before you change his food and water, until he's more bonded with you.

eventually, once he's used to accepting treats from your hand, you can start clicker training and target training him. then you can give him commands to come out of the cage, or wait in a corner of the cage while you change food and water, or go back into the cage.

but the first step is to bypass the nipping and get him used to and excited about accepting treats from your hand.

hope that helps, let us know how it goes

[charlieandkiwi]

It definitely sounds like he's being a bit territorial and or scared about his cage. I recommend clicker training him while he's in his cage to target to a stick (should be easy as it sounds like he's ready to bite anything coming at the cage). This is a good starting tutorial. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=227

Also, are there certain situations that are triggering the biting? I would watch for those and watch for any signs that he is going to bite.

[charlieandkiwi]

Also, while I do think there is merit to putting the bird on the ground (and I have done that myself with success), I don't think will be as successful if you don't make sure to build a good relationship with your bird, use a LOT of positive reinforcement training with everything else, and make sure that your bird isn't already scared of you. If the bird is biting because it's scared or uncomfortable, putting it on the ground will make it even more scared of you. This worked with my bird because he is not scared of me at all and he was biting because he likes chasing and biting (he even plays with the toys in his cage, which don't respond to him at all like that).

Above all, try to avoid getting bit and reward all situations that tempt him to bite and he doesn't bit. For instance, if you know that he is territorial about your cage, and you know there's a certain distance he wont let your fingers come without going crazy, take your fingers close to that distance and praise him if he doesn't move. Every time you see the tiniest improvement in his disposition, praise him and/or give him something you know he wants.

It's really easy to see what birds do wrong , but being able to catch the tiny improvements they make in the right direction is a whole different ball game.

[friend2parrots]

i totally agree with charlieandkiwi on the points she has raised - she's caught a couple of really important things I had missed.

charlieandkiwi, i gotta hand it to you on this one, you're good at catching the little things and working with an existing situation to slowly bring it to an ideal place through approximations.

I'll be turning to you in the future for some pyrrhura advice!!!