New GCC owner questions :)

I just got my little cinnamon green cheek from a friend who couldn't care for her anymore. I've only had her for 5 days now. Her name is Lizzy she's about 9 months old. She's very interested in my attention and readily accepts treats through the bars, but still goes to bite me when I try to pet her. I've worked with birds before, but they've always been hand tamed already so I've never had to start from scratch so to speak. Since I've only had her for less than a week, I know i still have to gain her trust. But I was wondering when I could start trying to train her to step up? And what they best way to do that would be. Gonna try to attach some photos
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Congratulations or your baby.
I'm also working on taming one of my newer ones so i too am still learning about the taming part.
Good luck.

Thanks still haven't found a treat that she absolutely loves yet. But goldfish crackers are high on the list lol. She'll take them about 90% of the time.

Training can begin any time!

Find her favorite treat! Better yet, find the top 3-5 items she *LOVES* to eat! Then start feeding her these foods by hand, in small amounts. If it's sunflower seeds, split the seeds up into 2-4 pieces. If it's millet, only feed a tiny amount at a time. Get her used to taking food from your hand.

Next, place your hand flat on top of the cage. Start feeding her her favorite foods and slowly start luring her over to your hand. Keep this up. If she's hesitant to get close then move the treat hand closer to her. The main idea is to have the step up hand closer to you while your treat hand is over the step up hand and further away. As she gets comfortable, you can slowly bring your treat hand closer and closer to you, to the point it's above your step up hand, then behind the step up hand.

If she touches your step up hand with a foot, give her lots of treats and praise! If she puts one entire foot on your hand, keep rewarding her. If she puts both feet on, tons and tons and tons of praise and food!!!!!



Main thing is is to break the step up down into little steps and get her comfortable with the notion of being on your hand. When she's fine with that, you can then slowly move your hand so that she can get accustomed to the movement of that.






If she's on a seed diet, I would recommend putting her on a pelleted diet. Seeds will then be a highly valuable reward!

My GCCs love pine nuts. Maybe your baby will like those too? Lizzy is so cute! I feel your pain about her not letting you touch her without the bites. My Sundance is like that. He will step up, and even give kisses....but no touching his little feathered body! Oh, and God forbid you try to give him a scritch on the head. You'll get a nice hard bite!

Thanks for the advice! She's on a 50-50 seed to pellet diet. I'm slowly transitioning her to just pellets since I know that's more well balanced.

There are times when she goes to bite me before she goes for the treat. I don't want to reward her for biting, so I don't give her the treat and back off. But I know backing off is also what she wants and a kind of reward. So what do I do when she goes to bite me instead of taking the treat?

Back off.

If you allow a bird to bite you, you are then teaching the bird that it's ok to bite you, thus "allowing" the behavior to occur, even if you "ignore" the bite. The more a behavior becomes ingrained and repeated, the longer it may take to reverse it. Also, by ignoring the signals a bird is giving that it is about to bite, you are teaching the bird to bite "out of nowhere".

The only bite that can't be rewarded is the bite that never occurs.



Training birds is really about learning to communicate with them. Birds bite for a reason. You need to figure out what that reason is, then try to avoid putting the bird into a situation that will result in a bite. I know, easier said than done, but it's possible!



Can you try using a sprig of millet for a reward instead? That way, you can keep your fingers well out of reach while still offering a reward.

Update:

I started clicker training yesterday. Found out her favorite treat is yogies chopped up into small pieces. She doesn't much like them whole lol.

At the moment I'm just getting her to associate the click as a reward. But to my surprise when I offered a treat today, she stepped up on my finger! I gave her a treat and lots of praise. I decided that was a very good note to end training on and put her back in her cage. As I speak she is happily bathing her first bath since I've gotten her home!

Edit: typo

Sounds like she can figure out this training no prob!!!!

She's a smart bird she's had a big day already and is fighting sleep on her perch. She'll nod off then suddenly stand up straight and ruffle or preen her feathers like "nope nope I'm awake not sleepy" then slowly nod off again lol. She's far too cute