It is officially a week since he last slept in his cage

My GCC has never really been a fan of his cage and much rather prefers being outside. I used to stay up for ages and wait for him to go into his cage to eat in which i would close it so that he could go to sleep - But i thought i'd take a different approach and not force him to sleep in his cage, as such he has been sleeping outside in my room - i'm not worried about his safety seeing as once he's in his sleeping spot he doesn't move until the morning. But i think a week of sleeping outside his cage might be enough now... especially with all the cleaning I've had to do - Having a bird outside 24/7 in your room, with the doors and windows closed isn't as much fun as you'd think it is. I can't hold him and he's only just put his foot on my finger so i can't exactly transport him to his cage when its bed time. Food doesn't work, he'd rather not eat. What should i do? I can't exactly just leave him out of his cage forever - there needs to be some in cage / out of cage dynamic.

In regards to the layout of the cage its perfectly fine, he's got 3 different perches, toys, food, water, treats and when he was inside of his cage he seemed perfectly content.

Would be great to know if anyone else has experienced this or any tips someone might be able to offer

Thanks

It's not advised to let your parrots sleep outside of the cage or be out all night - for one in the event of an emergency you'll want to be able to get your bird out as soon as possible, and in a situation where he is out in the room and you cannot handle him, he may likely not make it out alive. Two, you've seen why they are kept inside the cage or on a play stand is to keep their messes contained. Three, in the middle of the night they would wake up and start chewing on stuff, be where they shouldn't, and make more messes.

Would he sit on a play stand?

When I need to get my not-very-tame female tiel back in the cage, I have to towel her. Protects you from getting bit and gentle enough that the towel does not injure them and they are safely placed back in their cage.

Why not try working with your bird inside his cage to tame him?

itzjbean said:

It's not advised to let your parrots sleep outside of the cage or be out all night - for one in the event of an emergency you'll want to be able to get your bird out as soon as possible, and in a situation where he is out in the room and you cannot handle him, he may likely not make it out alive. Two, you've seen why they are kept inside the cage or on a play stand is to keep their messes contained. Three, in the middle of the night they would wake up and start chewing on stuff, be where they shouldn't, and make more messes.

Would he sit on a play stand?

When I need to get my not-very-tame female tiel back in the cage, I have to towel her. Protects you from getting bit and gentle enough that the towel does not injure them and they are safely placed back in their cage.

Why not try working with your bird inside his cage to tame him?

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Yeah, i don't want him to sleep outside but unfortunately i dont have much of a choice. I actually kept him in his cage for a month whilst i was taming him, furthest we reached was him taking food from my hand, eventually i had to let him out and this the predicament I'm in at the moment.

He has a play stand which he likes to use.

And I've been thinking about catching him but won't this stress him out, especially if i have to chase him around the room in order to grab him? Don't want to deter our progress

You do have a choice, you are the human and he is the small parrot. You have control over everything.

Yes, you will have to towel him and put him back in the cage. This is what do for my not tame female who is not hand tame and doesn't like hands. It stresses her out for a moment but then she is gently places into her cage with a towel and she is fine. Otherwise he will never go back in willingly, that's just what you have to do. It will stress him out for a moment.... and if you want to let him out again, consider a wing clip to keep him from flying away from you. There are differing opinions about this but the main thing is that you keep him safer this way so he can't get to an area where you can't reach him and keep him from harm.

There's no choice in it for me... if I let my birds stay out of their cage all the time they would be eaten by the cats... their safety is more important than stressing them out for a few moments to get them back into their cage.

I totally agree with Itzjbean, and I'm totally aware of the "Catch-22" this is presenting you...You absolutely cannot just keep him locked-up inside of his cage for a month at a time, that's not fair to him and it's also not healthy for him, but at the same time he's not a tame bird, and this makes "catching" him very difficult...But as Itzjbean said, you DO ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE, as you are the person and he is the bird...This really is a safety-issue above all else, but it's also an issue of making his life healthy, happy, and fair. And keeping him inside of his cage 24/7 is not an option either.

***And I'm going to say this just because IT HAS TO BE SAID: There is never 100% certainty that your bird will not at some point out of nowhere during the night fly to your bed while you're asleep and fall asleep on you, on the covers, crawl under the covers, etc., and then you'll roll-over onto him during your sleep and kill him....And it doesn't matter that he's not tame, that he doesn't often come near you at all, or that he has never done it before; none of these mean that he won't do it some night. This happens all the time, every day, and is completely out of nowhere...The statement that "I'm not worried about his safety seeing as once he's on his sleeping spot he doesn't move until morning" is a very "famous last-words" kind of statement that has been said by hundreds if not thousands of pet bird owners who have killed their pet birds during the night by rolling-over on them...It just happens. Period. And then as Itzjbean said above, God forbid there is an emergency in your home, like a fire, where you have to collect him quickly and get out of the house, you can't be chasing him around trying to catch him...

I don't know what type of hand-taming/training you did for that month where he never left his cage, but as you found out, hand-taming exercises don't typically go well when the bird is inside of their cage and you are putting your hands inside the cage at the same time. There are a number or theories as to why this is, but overall it typically doesn't work well...or at all. So the fact that you already have a play-stand that he likes is excellent, because that's probably going to be the best place to work with him, away from his cage and out in the open...It's also a place where he can sit to hang-out with you, no matter where you are in your house (assuming it's a portable playstand)...As far as sleeping on the playstand though, it's presenting the same issues, it's not safe for him and you'll not be able to catch him...So he needs to be sleeping inside of a cage, whether that is his "main-cage" that you say he won't go back to at night, but that he seems to like very much once he's inside of it, OR it's a much smaller "sleeping-cage" that you locate in your bedroom, and that contains nothing at all inside of it except for a perch and a water-dish, and maybe a swing if he likes to sit on/sleep on swings, and that's it, and that you start to associate with bedtime for him. No toys, no food dish, nothing else at all so that they know it's just to sleep in (although if he likes millet-sprays or some other type of specific treat you can hang that/put that inside of the sleeping-cage for him, which usually will make their sleeping-cage a place that they associate with good things and can help to get them to willingly go into it whenever you give them the verbal-cue to do so, something like "It's bedtime! Time to go to your sleepy-cage and get your treat!", and that hopefully they learn is their cue/command to go inside their sleeping-cage to get their bedtime-treat)...This works great for a lot of people, so it's something that is definitely worth trying for sure...And again, for a Green Cheek Conure, a sleeping-cage can be very small and simple, like the typical smaller cage that is meant for Budgies to be housed-in, and that you can either find on your local Craigslist for very cheap, or you can buy new in most pet-stores for $20-$30...So definitely worth a try at least...

***The other thing that you might want to think about, and this won't be a popular suggestion but it's one that works wonders for people in your specific situation, is having his wings-clipped temporarily, with a very conservative clip of ONLY the outermost 5-6 Primary Flight-Feathers on BOTH wings, that will give you about 2-months or so until his wings grow back-in again fully and he can fly again, for you to take full advantage of and work with him one-on-one, every single day of that 2-months or so, so that by the time his wings grow back-in and he can fly again he is regularly stepping-up for you, you no longer have to chase him at all, and also so that he learns to come out of his main-cage on his own whenever you open-up the door, take a step back, and ask him to come out, and then step-up for you once he's outside of his cage, as well as learning to go back inside of his main-cage whenever you ask him to and you take him to it on your finger. And if you do decide to do the sleeping-cage thing, then he should also learn to go inside of it when asked to do so at bedtime to get his bedtime treat, by allowing you to take him to it on your finger....

I don't AT ALL suggest nor condone keeping your bird's wings clipped forever, and not even for longer than the one initial, temporary clipping. And that's not at all what I'm suggesting, as all 4 of my larger birds and all 8 of my Budgies are fully-flighted and have been since they were young babies. However, that being said, when it comes to birds who were not hand-raised/hand-fed or that for whatever reason are afraid of hands, won't step-up after long attempts at training/taming have failed, and who's refusal to step-up for their owners results in them flying away and their owners constantly chasing them and doing other things to gain-control of them that only stresses the bird and the owner, and that only serves to reverse any trust-building that the owner has accomplished, I don't feel that there is anything at all wrong with doing one initial, conservative wing-clipping that gives the owner about 2 or so months where the bird cannot constantly fly-away from them and cause nothing but stress and take away trust. Wing-clipping is completely painless, does no harm to the bird at all, and is completely temporary. And as long as it's not used as a permanent type of "easy training-method" for the lazy bird-owner who doesn't want to put in the daily work during the 2 or so months they can't fly, then there is nothing at all wrong with doing it once...It can actually turn-out to be the difference between a bird and their owner bonding-closely and becoming family who love each other and are always together, and a bird being re-homed/sold over and over and over again...

The idea here is that once your bird's wings are clipped, he won't be able to fly away from you any longer, that's obvious, but in-addition your bird will have to learn to depend on you to get around, which is obviously going to mean that he will have to step-up for you on a regular basis. And for your part, you should be allowing him to come out of his cage whenever you are at home and allow him to be with you, be on you, etc., and what happens is that over the 2-months he cannot fly, he will learn that he can trust you a little more every time he steps-up for you and you take him back to his cage, you take him to his sleeping-cage for his treat, you take him to playstand, you allow him to sit on your shoulder for long periods of time to just hang-out with you, etc. So by the time his wings grow back-in and he can fly again, he'll no-longer be flying away from you, but rather be flying to you whenever you ask him to do so, and just because he wants to...

People will be against doing this, and that's absolutely their opinion, but it's ultimately the decision of each bird's owner, and whenever things get to the point where a bird is no longer being allowed to be outside of their cage because their owners don't want to spend hours chasing them to get back inside, and the quality of life for the bird is going downhill, and any relationship or bond between the owner and their bird is vanishing quickly, my feeling is doing a temporary wing-clipping for 2 months is a much better option than the owner becoming so frustrated with their bird that they re-home them...It doesn't hurt the bird, and only lasts for 2 months, and it typically works extremely well...So why not...

Our DYH Amazon is 100% free roaming including fully-flighted. But, this occurred over years of his providing clear indications of responsibility. Over those years, we have set in place a primary cage and four feeding/play perches, one of which he uses as a sleeping perch.

- I do not recommend this living style for the vast majority of homes with Parrots as it requires a very unique Parrot.
- I find that our Parrot has very specific places that he spends the vast majority of time. Setting newspaper in those areas greatly simplify clean-up.
- Most importantly, all basic handling skills and interactions need to be fully in place. Hoping that a Parrot will adapt to this life style prior to those skills and interactions being in place is not likely.
- In addition, it requires a fully Parrot Proof home!

I have a 2-stage suggestion for you. First is in regard to feeding. (Don't worry, this relates directly to your question.) Do not free-feed, but rather set 2 or 3 defined meal times. And only give Yoshi food inside of his cage. The point here is for him to associate his cage with food and contentment. Done correctly, the cage becomes a positive place to be rather than a negative.

The reason for setting the defined mealtimes (one of the reasons, anyway) is to give you some measure of control over when Yoshi goes in to his cage. If he is only fed at certain times of day, he will go willingly into his cage at the mealtimes. So at night, when you provide his last meal of the day, all you need do is close the door behind him... thus eliminating any need for the chase and capture. But again, this only works with defined mealtimes. A bird who is free fed (food available all day) will go in at his leisure, leaving you in the same predicament where you're sitting there waiting for him to go into the cage rather than setting the course yourself. Know what I mean?

That said, you can of course give little training treats throughout the day. And you'll find that he'll be more motivated during training sessions if they are set between meal times. ***Please note, scheduled feeding should NOT be confused with the withholding of food for training. I loathe the practice of keeping a bird hungry until they "perform" for you. It's cruel and unnecessary, IMO. The difference here is that they are given their fill of food at each designated meal, enough so that they are getting their next meal around the time that they are getting really hungry again. No deprivation.

Okay, the second part of the suggestion is to do target training using his favorite treat. (Once you find the food that he goes absolutely ape over, make sure not to include it with his dinner. It should merely be a treat food given during training.) The defined mealtimes will help here as well, if you time these training sessions for halfway between one meal and the next when he'll be in the mood for a snack. Here is a link to my favorite video on target training: [ame="https://youtu.be/HaOicTtwIZo"]Beginners guide to target training parrots - YouTube[/ame]

I am pretty new with my conure (5 months) but I will tell you that having a sleeping cage has worked great. It is small but enough room to flap wings inside. It has no food but a couple of perches and a water source. There is one rope toy. When it is the close of the day, she is anxious to get into that sleep cage. I do cover it and then move it a separate room.

Initially I did have problems getting her back in the main cage. It was only through bribery of treats to get her back in. But now I leave the main cage door open unless I am leaving the house. She knows that her food is in the cage and I make sure she sees me put it in there at set times. Her favorite toys are also in the main cage. She now goes back into the cage on her own. She is now actually pretty fast getting back in when I show her the food and put it in the cage.