Caique obsessed with hands, uses them as chewing toy

Hello all Caique owners,

I'm in need of advice on my female White bellied Caique Mojo. As the title implies, she is obsessed with hands, and when in play mode she will chew on them in an unpleasant way. It is not biting or agression, she literally starts chewing but with great force. In short, is there a way to unteach this? And how? I will give some background info and things I tried.

Some short background info:

I think me and my wife made the rookie mistake of beak wrestling with her. It just growed naturally. When we got her when she was 11 weeks she was calm and gradually started playing more, also with the hands. She enjoyed it so we wrestled a lot. So that is most likely how this behaviour started.

She is now 2 years and a few months old and puberty hasn't hit yet as far as I know. The main reason I would like this behaviour to stop is because the chewing gets really rough. Although my skin is still young and can handle it, most visitors don't want to handle her because she plays so rough.

Especially my parents, who are also the parrot sitters when we want to go away for a few days,can't handle it because there skin breaks. They are nearing 70 so there skin is old and not so flexible as ours. And when Mojo plays with them some skin might be torn.

Personally me and my wife I could live with Mojo being this way and playing rough if it wont change, We are 30 years old so our skin can handle it. It would be great to have people willing to take care and give attention to Mojo when we are away.


Things I tried:

The obvious, presenting her with lots of other toys, shredding toys, wood,stuffed animals. This helps for a short moment but she will always prefer to play with a hand when it is there. She has other favourite toys but the hands are irresistible for her. Also some stuffed animals which I use to wrestle with her instead of my hands will work for short periods of time. But to people not so familiar or quick to react to her behaviour this wont really work because she is so quick she will be on your hand before you notice.

Letting her chew on my hand and not react to it in the hope she will get bored with doing so(this is doable up to the point it really starts to hurt).
And then only play wrestle with her with something in between like a doll or other toy.(I have been doing this for 2 months but there is absolutely no change what so ever).

The problem here is, when she does get to my hand and you take the beak away when it starts to hurt,she will just interpret that as playing.. and get excited.

Maybe this approach has to be continued for a lot longer.

The one other thing I tried for a few days was rewarding when she plays with toys and chewed on them. But she started to link chewing and getting excited as good behaviour, enforcing this behaviour more instead off reducing. She started to get even more rough on the hands so I stopped that after a few days.

Is there anyone with experience or other approaches?

Just to be clear, we will not get rid of her because of this, we can live with it if necessary but it would be more enjoyable and easy for everyone if the behaviour changed. She also is a big cuddler with me, every evening she will tuck under my beard to get a scratch and some sleep. I she could she would stay there al night

Here are two short videos of described behaviour. Not the best examples but the best I could make right now.

[ame="https://youtu.be/_OsNiNTSFCI"]https://youtu.be/_OsNiNTSFCI[/ame]

[ame="https://youtu.be/-IQaH1PbWVw"]https://youtu.be/-IQaH1PbWVw[/ame]

Hello mojo_the_caique & welcome to PFs. So, gald you joined us.

Thanks for the question and videos.

She appears to be very excited in the videos, that could be part of the problem. Placing her on her tree was a great idea.

I've personally never allowed Levi to chew toys while holdng him in my hands. So, I would stop that immediately.

Everytime she bites, I would remove her from my hands and offer her a toy, like you did in the first video.

I'm sure you'll get some great advice here.

Good Luck!

Bite pressure training. The command is " Be Gentle!" As soon as she chews Too hard you say, "Be Gentle," and remove and hands or fingers until she is calm. Then you give your hands back to her for toys again, but again, if chewing too hard,"Be Gentle!" and again remove the toys otherwise known as hands.

You may need some persistence to overcythe learned play-style, but, really it shouldn't take too long for her to make the connection and adapt.

fiddlejen said:

Bite pressure training. The command is " Be Gentle!" As soon as she chews Too hard you say, "Be Gentle," and remove and hands or fingers until she is calm. Then you give your hands back to her for toys again, but again, if chewing too hard,"Be Gentle!" and again remove the toys otherwise known as hands.

You may need some persistence to overcythe learned play-style, but, really it shouldn't take too long for her to make the connection and adapt.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I will definitely look into bite pressure training, never heard of it before.

She is so exited when playing that she often doesn't listen to any trained commands in that moment so we need to work on that to. But I'm very patient and since this is what she thinks is normal behaviour it will probably take a long time anyway.

Tami2 said:

Hello mojo_the_caique & welcome to PFs. So, gald you joined us.

Thanks for the question and videos.

She appears to be very excited in the videos, that could be part of the problem. Placing her on her tree was a great idea.

I've personally never allowed Levi to chew toys while holdng him in my hands. So, I would stop that immediately.

Everytime she bites, I would remove her from my hands and offer her a toy, like you did in the first video.

I'm sure you'll get some great advice here.

Good Luck!

Click to expand...

Thank you,

Yes she is over excited when in play mode, which is most of the time she is out. We will have to find a way to channel her excitement. It helps to put her on the playstand, but most times it's also a challenge to make her do that. She is so excited that she won't listen to anything. But when she does listen and is allowed back after the cooldown, the cycle repeats. I will just have to repeat it every time, in combination with bite pressure training suggest by Fiddlejen

hello and welcome, i have now 3 little caique and each one is different. my new baby is very chewy on the hands and at the moment i am teaching it be gentle like the other person suggested. my other two are older and are less becky as i call it. i also think the black head are a bit more full on (mine is)then the green thigh caique as my other 2, they are a full on parrot. don't give up keep teaching and treating with a small nut when she behaves, she will soon get the idea.

You are using your hand as a foraging toy. Its to be expected.

I have no advice for you sorry..BUT I will say that Mojo is soooo dang cute!!:54:


Jim