12 week baby Eky behaviour- please help

Hello would anyone know if it's normal for my baby eky Ollie to attack some little ball toys with bells inside them? I want to train him fetch and so fourth eventually but currently he bites them when I jungle them in front of him the closer they get to his beak for example? Should i stop using these toys little toys? He has come in his cage already and doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t bite me or anything at all he just gets very stimulated when i try and play with them in front of him and it keeps him quiet when i do this. Im not sure if i am encouraging him to be aggressive this way or he is being playful in his own way towards them and dosnt mind them. Does anyone’s elses baby eky have this type of behaviour?

I don't have my ekky yet so I'm not familier with them...but my conure plays by attacking things. Sometimes I'll hang my keys on his cage and we will go absolutely ape &$%# on it...sometimes for hours at a time,. But not when it is inside his cage strangley. But as soon as I pick him up he's as calm as ever(just out of breath)

From my experiance I would keep playing with him...unless he is obviously terrified or upsetted by it. Better getting his lil pent up bird aggressions out on a ball then your fingers

Thanks heaps for your advice I just saw your post now. I actually found out that it's normal by an eky owner as that is how they play. I was quite disappointed that no one replied before I seen this response so thank you from both Ollie and I

It is how they play, but I don't do trick training. They do it if they want to as I don't train them to do it. My birds just tend to learn on their own without me having to train them to do something. If they do it, fine, they don't, it don't bother me one bit. If you want answers you can always bump up your post, not everyone knows how to do trick training or even trick train their birds like me.

Don't use those balls for trick training, he is way to interested in them. Let me know if you have any further questions on trick training.

Hi! I recently joined this forum and had about 60 people look at one of my posts and nobody answered until a week or so. Don't be disappointed!
I don't know about a 12 wk. old but we have a 13 year old Ekkie. She goes crazy when she plays with toys, even my granddaughter's stuffed animals. Scarlett jumps on them, bites them and shakes her tail. We've also tried trick training with small balls and she looks at me like I'm nuts. I'm wondering if she's too set in her ways to do different things.
Hope you have success with your baby!

From the behavior you described, it sounds like Oliver's just enjoying the hell out of that toy. I don't think you need to worry about encouraging aggression. It's healthy for your bird to work off all of that excess energy. That's just how they play.

And Monique1997 is absolutely right. While it makes a good toy, it's definitely not a good training tool. You need a more plain, less interesting ball. No bells. No fanfare. Just something small enough for him to pick up.

My Oliver has many toys in his cage and seems to only be aggressive with the ball with the bells inside. I think it's a healthy way for your baby to get out his aggressiveness...

Hey guys thanks for all your replies. I'm new to the forum and owning my baby eky I just want to care for him the best I possibly can cheers

I hear you. Don't hesitate to ask as many questions as you'd like.

Well, I haven't answered any of your posts because I don't have an Eccie and know nothing about them. I do, however, trick train my birds so I can talk about that.

I have two Alexandrine parakeets called Barney and Madge. They are a bit over a year old (I got them in April last year). Both birds enjoyed playing with whiffle balls (the little openwork ones with bells inside), so I used those assuming they were well received. In our case, that was a good decision. I had never heard of touch training back then so I proceeded like this:

1. 'Play ball, Barney' - touch the ball to his bill - give a food reward.
2. Within five minutes, he'd worked out that touching the ball earned a reward, so he was earnestly pecking the ball all over the table and then turning to me for his reward. Great!
3. After a week or so of this, I began saying 'Fetch' instead and holding my hand under the ball if he picked it up in his bill. The idea was for me to catch the ball if he happened to drop it (which, of course, he eventually did). Then I rewarded him. It took one session of about fifteen minutes for Barney to catch on.
4. Next, I got ten large, colourful acrylic beads which were easy for Barney to pick up. I just said 'Fetch' and pointed to the beads and he obliged. This shows he can extrapolate his learning from one object to another. Yay Barn!

Parrots are very bright and it doesn't take much for them to learn provided you make it bleedingly obvious what you want of them. If your bird doesn't catch on as quickly as you'd hoped, stop and think hard about how you're teaching him and what your actions and commands appear like to him. Barney got a bit confused about the difference between 'play ball' and 'fetch', so rather than confuse him by starting again, I got a different-looking ball for each activity. No probs after that.

I have taught Madge in exactly the same way I taught Barney but she has been significantly delayed in the speed with which she picks things up. It's a personality thing: Madge is just not as interested (or as greedy) as Barney is. On the other hand, it is always Madge who figures out how to use the new foraging toy or how to dismantle the new chewy toy. She's an explorer and free spirit.

I have tried trick training with my rather older Galah, Dominic. While he's happy to try, he gets impatient very quickly and gives up after about five minutes. I know when he's sick of trick training when he takes a substantial chunk of my flesh in his bill, chomps down hard and twists through about 90º. Then I stop.

It is very important not to overtrain your bird. Watch for signs that he's lost interest, find an opportunity to ask something of him worthy of a reward (eg. 'Step up') and stop. Twenty minutes would be the absolute maximum training period for any bird. Always end training on a positive note like this and your bird will have happy memories of training and be willing for the next lesson.

If your Eccie is playing aggressively with his balls EEK, then I'd think they were the perfect tool to use for training. But that's just me. All you can do is try and see what your bird likes. I hope this has been helpful to you?

Betrisher said:

I have tried trick training with my rather older Galah, Dominic. While he's happy to try, he gets impatient very quickly and gives up after about five minutes. I know when he's sick of trick training when he takes a substantial chunk of my flesh in his bill, chomps down hard and twists through about 90º. Then I stop.

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Uhmmmm.... OUCH? Lol! Trish, you are HARDCORE!!!!!

I wish my Bixby were as food oriented as Barney. I basically have to wait until he's in the right "frame of mind" to train. Smh. (Such a diva!) But at least I prefer his method of letting me know training is over to Dom's! After about fifteen minutes or so, he goes from enthusiastically wagging his tail and looking all eager to grinding his beak (a sign of relaxed contentment) and staring at me. And with that sound, he has officially announced that training time is over!

If I ask anything more of him at that point, he'll just stare at me with the same expression of bemused curiosity I imagine I'd see if I suddenly donned a tutu and began pirouetting about his training stand. (And being a man of 6'3", that's A LOT of bemusement!)

I wouldn't take away the balls with bells because a playful eclectus is happy! I have seen so many older ones that don't play and the owner complains that they just sit there, that is how they got the reputation for being dumb or aloof which I don't agree with at all. To me it has a lot more to do with what they were exposed to and encouraged while they are young. I am OCD about keeping the bottom of the cage grates clean because I am always putting fun things to shred, tear apart or toss around the cage. They all LOVE the balls with bells. Trick train if that is important to you but allow them to just "crazy play" too, you will have a much happier parrot in the long run.