Bad behaviour

Hi since i am quite new to owning a cockatoo i am wondering the best way if at all possible to stop him biting us all the time.He is tame and will come to us but then he starts to bite us and it does hurt.I know they like to bite stuff all the time but is this wrong for him to always bite,how can i go about correcting this behaviour.He bites quite hard when we try to put him back in his cage at night.Hopefully he can be trained.

Just like with children, you have to set boundaries & acceptable behavior limits.....since he's young, he's testing his...challenging to see what he can get away with.....somebody must have forgotten to mention that most birds don't come all well behaved & polite.....

I would read up on & begin clicker training him...there are a number of books on the subject, but there is a lot of free information on the internet, along with some good videos on youtube.....

Good luck.....

Clicker train a bird that is attacking and biting? Maybe for training positive behaviors like tricks and so on, this Has never worked once for me.... I would suggest to start time outs when he bites, this can be as simple as a t stand in another room away from you or a time out cage. We he bites say no bite, put him directly in the time out for 10-15 minutes. Go and get him a time out cannot be used as a form of escapism, but only as a apprioate discipline measure. Then repeat this as the bites happen. The only other ing that attributes to this is if he is biting due to something in his environment. If this is the case then you must desensitize him to this or remove or work around this "trigger".

The biting sounds to be in excess so it must be smothered out right now or it can become a big issues, cockatoos must, must be given guidelines and rules or they get out of hand and escalate quickly.

Honestly, I wish all bird owners knew this but seriously trick train your bird!! I cannot fully describe how quickly it works! If you haven't all ready, begin target training! Or lets pedal backwards, if you haven't done so, clicker train! At the beginning when I first got my cockatoo Bandit. He would bite HARD! He would clamp down on your skin and stay like that until he was satisfied with the blood pouring out. So, I taught Bandit the 'spin' trick, after he mastered that he stopped biting. Trick training kept him focused and distracted (If that makes sense) Now Bandit is the most loving, ridiculous, cuddly like guy ever! I do have a website and youtube channel and whenever people email me. "How do I stop my bird from biting?!?!" My response is repetitive. "Trick train." and I tell you, I have received emails back exclaiming the trick training actually worked.

All the best, a cockatoo requires a massive amount of experience, their bite is harder then most bird because they have a joint in their beak or something that allows them to deliver more pressure.

AngelicaandBandit said:

Honestly, I wish all bird owners knew this but seriously trick train your bird!! I cannot fully describe how quickly it works! If you haven't all ready, begin target training! Or lets pedal backwards, if you haven't done so, clicker train! At the beginning when I first got my cockatoo Bandit. He would bite HARD! He would clamp down on your skin and stay like that until he was satisfied with the blood pouring out. So, I taught Bandit the 'spin' trick, after he mastered that he stopped biting. Trick training kept him focused and distracted (If that makes sense) Now Bandit is the most loving, ridiculous, cuddly like guy ever! I do have a website and youtube channel and whenever people email me. "How do I stop my bird from biting?!?!" My response is repetitive. "Trick train." and I tell you, I have received emails back exclaiming the trick training actually worked.

All the best, a cockatoo requires a massive amount of experience, their bite is harder then most bird because they have a joint in their beak or something that allows them to deliver more pressure.

Click to expand...

Glad I'm not the only broken record here saying trick training!

If a bird is biting, then the bird is trying to tell you something. It is up to you to stop and rethink the situation. What is causing the bird to bite? *WHY* is the bird biting? And is there anything you can do differently in the future to not get bitten?

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Oh, and distracting the bird with foot toys, beads, leather strips/pieces, bottle caps, pill bottles/water bottles filled with noisy things, etc before the bird starts biting is also a great idea!

So I have some recent experience with this particular topic. We have a Galah that we got this past Dec. the first month was good then she decided to lunge, chase and bite me every chance she got. Looking back I think what I did was push her past her comfort level too soon. The only way she knew how to get me to back off was to bite. The way I handled that behavior turned the nervous bite into the lunging, chasing and attacking. It got to the point where she was biting me 3 out of 4 times (and when she didn't bite it was because I was bribing her with spaghetti).

In the beginning when it was a nervous bite I would try to reprimand her and put her in time out. That made it worse. Since her biting was getting worse I was trying different things, ignoring it, shake her off my arm etc. This only made her not trust me more. This is when the lunging and chasing started. I thought it was unrepairable, so I was going to re home her. On top of this she loved my boyfriend who flat out ignored her.

So this is what I did. We limited the amount that my boyfriend handled her. For a couple days I would only interact with her by talking to her while she was in her cage. Then I had her door open and she put her foot up to step up. I let her step up but I didn't move my arm, she would step up on my arm but only stay there for a second or two then she would step off. She would do this over and over again. Eventually she just sat on my arm and I was able to carry her around.

I have let everything be on her terms. If she doesn't put her foot up then I don't pick her up. I have been handling her in very short sessions, ending each session on a good note. I have been keeping the sessions short (slowly over time extending them) in order to try to prevent a situation where she feels she needs to bite. In the beginning, the sessions where only a few seconds to minutes, now its been a couple weeks and we are at about an 1/2-1 hour intervals.

I highly recommend the clicker training and the use of distraction techniques to redirect the behavior. Reprimanding the behavior (or even acknowledging it in any way shape or form) is only going to make your relationship worse. The bites need to be prevented in the first place. Try the clicker training and a completely hands off approach until you start building a relationship again. Forget all the previous behavior and start with a clean slate. Let us know how it goes, I know how frustrated you guys are, I was just there. Give it time to, Toos can take as long as a year to two to settle in.

Respect is earned, when respect is given!

Yes and respect can be given in many ways.