5 month old cranky Eccy

Hi everyone!

This is Mazekine (Mazie for short) and we bought her off her breeder a few weeks ago.

She was caged with her sister and they were plucking each other and he was quite eager to separate them...

She steps up, perches on your shoulder, says hello etc but will BITE when fingers are near her, if I try to hand feed her she opens her beak wide and usually draws blood when she gets me.
I am being quite calm and slow, I talk to her and all the rest but she still shows aggression.
Paces her cage constantly, refuses to eat 90% of the time.
When her door is open for her to roam, she flies directly to the budgie cage on the other side of the house, and will do anything to eat seed from their cage (also shows intense interest in eating the budgies)
She has a beautiful big cage with natural branches, hammock, swing and toys. 4 different feed bowls in different areas to keep her foraging.

She gets all the good stuff to eat, but rarely eats it.
Asparagus, snow peas, beans, baby spinach, bok choy, carrot, sweet potato, beetroot, broccoli, cauliflower, Apple, banana, red grapes, watermelon, rockmelon...... sometimes cooked egg.


Help

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She is an ekkie - limit seed to being treats primarily. Ekkies' diets should be chop, as Kristy is doing. They're not like cockatiels. The chop recipe looks like a good mix, you might just have to make sure her veggies are 80% and fruits are 20% or less.

BUT! She's still a baby. Ekkies are kinda known to be late to wean (and are incredibly picky babies), some go for as long as 9 months, which makes me suspicious as to whether or not she actually is weaned or if she still needs formula. You might also have to check if she was properly weaned (abundance weaned) or force-weaned, which can cause behavioural/health problems. If she's not eating and losing weight, I'd recommend to bring her to a vet asap and to consider start offering formula again if she wasn't abundance weaned.

Not sure if you're familiar with weighing birds, so I'll just leave a note here: weigh her at the same time every day (the most common is after the morning poop and before breakfast because birds can poop 5-10g at a time and eat 10-40g at a time). That'll get you a baseline to see if she's consistently dropping weight. Some birds don't like stepping onto scales, so just put a little perch there and tare the scale.


On another note:

I see you do have a hammock - if it's an enclosed thing (like a tent or something else that looks like a burrow), do remove that. Although she is young now, she is also a female ekkie and they tend to get hormonal and territorial when triggered by potential nesting places.


Also, welcome! Glad to have more ekkies on board. We've a lot of knowledgable ekkie owners on the forum, who understand the ups and downs that come with these particular birds. From diet to toe-tapping/wing-flipping to plucking, the members here have got experiences to share, and hopefully we'll all learn together

I’ll sign on to a mixture of above. Seeds as a rule need to be reduced in an Ekkie diet because they need to be on a low fat diets (seeds and nuts do have their place, however!!!!), but as a tool to get their beaks digging into healthier food? Absolutely, do it!! It will literally get her beak down into the vegetables and help her recognize the veggies as food. Once she eats the food of her own volition, you can absolutely reduce seeds to being a topper. I’ll occasionally thrown amaranth seeds or hulled sunflower seeds on to the top of the my boys chop. It’s called a top dressing.

What you’ll find is a lot of birds don’t actually recognized chopped food as *FOOD*. Sometimes you have to start them on whole food (a whole papaya, for example) and over time start breaking it down into smaller pieces.

Vary up how they are served. My boy will NOT eat anything cubed. Never.

Julienne them? Digs right in.

Also vary up the serving method. She might accept some things cooked, others raw. Think of a soft carrot vs a raw hard carrot - it’s easy to forget these birds don’t actually eat root veggies in the wild so those can be a challenge for some to accept. So playing with preparation can really make the difference.

For the aggression, it’s important to remember 2 things: 1) generically baby birds will explore with their beaks, and don’t nevessarily know their own strength, and 2) ekkies especially can get beaky at this age. They aren’t quite this bad but your girl can possibly be an outlier, or your reaction has exacerbated. Either way the answer is the same: You’re job is to not make it worse, and it should eventually go away. A quick “NO!” Without histrionics (howling, yelling, hooting, hollering, dancing) is the start. Histrionics is a reward, “oh, I do this and the human goes NUTS! Let me do it again!” which ensures repeated biting behavior. a quick 2 minute timeout anywhere but her cage is a fair supplement (isolated place, bathroom countertop for example). In the wild, ill behaved flock members get ostracized for a short time. No more than a couple minutes.

Cage is bad use of punishment. Why? Because cage is HOME. “I bite this person and I get to go to my safe space?? YES PLEASE!!”

Lastly, and most importantly: be sure your reading your birds body language. Many bites happen when the human backs a bird into a proverbial corner. You say she bites when fingers are near...I’ll bet you’ve somehow inadvertantly taught her that gingers are bad. Forced her step up when she was making clear with her body language that she doesn’t want to. READ THE BODY LANGUAGE. If you ask to step up and she leans away, that’s a clear “leave me alone”...respect it.

Learning to better read her body language will go a long way to improving your situation.

I love your choice of name ( I am a fan of the series as well).


You've gotten all the great advice you need from long (and short) term ekkie owners already, so I have nothing to add exept: Welcome!!


Don't forget to really cook the beans through, most of them are not great eaten raw.
(the kidneybeans and those types- but you've probably already read up on those)

Wow, you guys are so super helpful!

Her hammock is a natural twine cargo rope style square which I have tied to 4 points in the cage so it lays flat.
The breeder made comment about their balance being wonky at this age, so I wanted to give her space where she could relax and not think about holding onto a perch.

I will attempt steamed veggies and raw and try to work out her "menu"
I have some sunflower seeds I'll use for treats and work on just handing her seeds with my hands for a week and see how she takes to it!

Thank you for your comments

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Just thought I'd update you with her cage setup.
She spends at least half the day out and free roaming.
We tried the formula today and she LOVED it!

Thank you all again

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I have no advice as im certainly no bird expert, but I just wanted to say she’s gorgeous and her cage set up looks fabulous! Hope everything works out better for you both soon

Agreed Hannah. It looks stunning!