Castor and Pollux

Hi

We have two male parent reared maroon bellied conures, we believe they are around 6 months old. We have had them for a month. We are slowly learning their likes and dislikes, and they are now coming towards us rather than away from us when we are near the cage.

We spend a lot of time talking to them and they do seem to pay attention to us now.

Our problem is they seem to be very unsure about hands, which is not exactly helping with their training. We have a separate perch that we can get them to step up onto, though even that needs encouragement, but if we put our hands particularly close, especially in the cage, it seems to upset them.

We knew that having two would slow down the process (we have previously had two cockatiels that took a fair bit of training), but just do not know how to get around the fear of hands.

That said, I have got into the habit of standing with a finger poked just through the bars with peanut butter on the tip, and Pollux wants to come to investigate, he keeps coming forward and backing off.

We have had them out of the cage, though they took a fair bit of persuasion to go back in. It is a good sized cage, they have room to fly, we keep swapping around the toys and the perches.

Can't help but think that if we could get them to accept our hands things would go a lot more smoothly.

I know we could force the issue, but I would rather win them over with kindness.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thank you.

Welcome! Forced ‘trust’ never works! You are making progress!

Welcome to Parrot Forums!

As stated above by my good friend, forcing trust never works.

Consider not changing things around until they are very conformable with each of you and their surroundings! You're changing their new world connects hands to constant change, so why trust them. Consider working from: Only Good Things Happens When Humans and their Hands are Around.

Drop the time expectations to zero.

Welcome and be welcomed. Be prepared for the long haul, as you have 2 mountains to climb, maybe 3. They were parent reared, they have each other, and right now they have no reason to trust hands. But, you have time on your side. I would recommend you 2 put your heads together and decide on a course of training, and try to be absolutely consistent between the 2 of you in your approach, so you do not confuse the little darlings. Taking turns and sitting quietly by the cage, reading to them. offering their favorite treat in the palm of your hand, just inside the open cage door. One question- if you let them out, how do you get them back in?

I think your best bet is to use targeting. You can get the birds closer to and eventually on hands problem free if you use the targeting technique to get them there.

You might also consider charging your hands - this means showing hands right next to the bird at a distance that doesn’t elicit a fear reaction and give them a treat immediately, then hide the hand. Show the hand, treat, hide.

Charging can be used to alleviate fear quickly (15 times per sesssion, three times per day, for 2-3 days). Doesn’t mean they will step up right away but it will help remove any fear impeding the progress.

Charging and targeting together are very powerful tools that can help alleviate a number of problems, this included.

Thank you all for your help. We are consistent with them and we are not in a rush to get them trained.

When we had them out the cage we did give them a few hours out, they were flying around a fair bit so ended up fairly tired, it was getting dark when we got them back in, they were quite happy to get onto the separate perch we have been using with them.

The problem we are having is getting a treat to them. We want to start on a reward basis, but we want to use something different than perches (we use natural wood perches), they are tending to reject anything we try to use, we have tried leaving things in the cage for a while and they will not go near them. We need some sort of vehicle as they will not take the treats from the hand (obviously!). Can I ask please what other people do for this, might be something blindingly obvious but not that I can see. The annoying thing is their favourite treat is millet, I have even got some loose millet, tried sticking it onto a long spoon handle with honey and they went nowhere near it. Will have to try putting the spoon in the cage when I am going to be in for the day, see if we can persuade them to interact with it.

The annoying thing is I recently introduced them to a large dish for their bath and they were quite happy to use that, both at the same time lol.

We will keep plodding on, we do see little bits of progress, as you say they have no real reason to trust hands at the moment. that we hope will change.

I don't suppose you are a Heinlein fan ?

With those names it's the first thing I think of.

texsize.

Sorry - Heinlein means nothing.

If it helps we are actually UK based, just most of the forums like this seem to be American so thought I would go with the flow.

The names came about as we both enjoy reading about Greek and Roman mythology and we were looking for "different" names.

Castor and Pollux are the names of twin boys in the story “The Rolling Stones ” written by Robert Heinoein.

I am something of a Sci-fi junky and that was the first thing I thought of when I read the names.

In mythology, their mom was Leda, I think, who was accosted by Zeus in the disguise of a swan (go figure). Now I have to go Google that. A wiser woman would Google first and THEN opine!

Anwayyyyy, welcome! I like your open-mindedness and patience. I'm glad you're here.

That's the one GaleriaGila, and thank you for the welcome.


texsize - I also happen to be a bit of a sci-fi junky but really had not heard of Heinlein, apart from distantly through the odd mention. I suspect he may have raided mythology for that particular book as Castor and Pollux are twins.

Welcome to the forums, thanks for joining! Hope you will feel at home, we have several members from the UK!

Love the names of Castor and Pollux. They are also celestial objects, twin stars in the constellation "Gemini." Pollux: The brighter Twin star | Brightest Stars | EarthSky

Might enjoy this thread, one of our best to help establish closer trust and bonding: http://www.parrotforums.com/general-parrot-information/49144-tips-bonding-building-trust.html

Thank you for that link Scott, it is one of the clearest I have seen. I have a clicker, always thought you needed to start using it in combination with rewards, but that looks like very good advice. It will be tried on Monday, we are busy with the grandkids at the weekend, I had planned on putting Monday aside for spending time with Castor and Pollux anyway.

Pollux is definitely the braver of the two so if I end up having to concentrate on one of them it will be him, Castor tends to follow the lead.

Fortunately we can get really close to the cage now without them moving, we find if we talk to them all the time we approach they are happier. Perhaps if we use the clicker then we can get the grandson close to them if he uses it, otherwise they will not let him close even if he talks to them.

We have had to put our hands in the cage to clean parts of it that can not be done otherwise, but we put them in under a piece of fabric now, they see the fabric but not the hand, they seem to accept that. I really would rather have the cage as solely their area, but needs must and all that. Most of the time it can be cleaned by simply removing the grate to clean it etc, I am just glad we got one that has the grate and the pull out drawers etc. It is really heavy, if we had to life it every time I would have to wait for my husband!

This thread with video focuses specifically on Clicker training! http://www.parrotforums.com/training/60435-clicker-target-training.html

Thought I would update in case anyone is wondering about Castor and Pollux

We now have them out on a regular basis, they go back in the cage when they are told to, just throw a tantrum or two first. They are getting closer to actually stepping up on us, they landed on my laptop right in front of me last time they were out

I think we are winning them over, they are cheeky devils though. I have a few chess sets on display, and now have to cover them. They found out that it annoyed me when they picked up the pieces so Pollux decided to sit on my soapstone chess board and throw the pieces over the side lol. My fault, not his I now cover that area of our display cabinet and they are trying to figure out how to remove that cover!

Wonderful to hear updates, the only thing better would be pictures!!!!

Welcome to the community!

As already mentioned, there are several issues that you're working against, and no matter what you do, "Forcing" them will not work. That being said, you need to break this down into steps, because if you don't do this in the correct order you're just spinning your wheels.

Before you can "train" them to do much of anything, you must "tame" them. And in order to "tame" them, you must first earn their trust. If you don't earn their trust, this isn't going to go anywhere.

At 8 months old they are going to hit puberty very soon (usually around 1-year give or take) and this is going to start a whole other slew of issues. I don't know if they are siblings or not, but I'm assuming that regardless they've been together for a long time, possibly their entire lives if they are siblings, and they are obviously closely bonded if they live in the same cage together (at least you can tell that Red-Bellied Parrots are male or female by looking at them, lol, or that would be much worse). I've hand-tamed many, many Parent-Raised parrots, and honestly in my own opinion, them being Parent-Raised is not nearly as big an issue in hand-taming them and bonding with them as the fact that they are already closely-bonded to each other is. That's a very tough, uphill battle to fight. The problem is that even with a Parent-Raised bird, if they are alone and are not bonded with another bird, they are "flock" animals and they have an innate need/drive to bond with someone. So even if they have been Parent-Raised and are not socialized or used to people, their need to be in a "flock" and bond with someone seems to open them up to hand-taming and bonding with a person or people, so it's much easier to tame them and bond closely with them....However, when you've got two Parent-Raised parrots that are already bonded closely to one another, then that innate need/drive to bond with someone has already been fulfilled, and given the choice between bonding with a person or bonding with another bird, especially a bird of their same species, and especially a bird of the same species that they've lived with for a long time already, they are obviously going to choose the bird instead of the person. So that's what you're greatest battle is going to be.

One way to deal with this issue is to separate each of them into their own cage with their own toys and their own "territory", but still locate their cages in the same room and allow them to have time out of their cages together, in addition to each bird working individually with you....Most people don't want to go this route because they don't want to separate them, which is understandable...So the other option that is probably going to bring a lot more success with you bonding with each of them/taming each of them is to work with each of them separately, alone with only you in a room with a shut door, away from not only the other bird but also away from their cage (which is already "their territory" or their "safe space", and which they are always going to be concentrating on if it's in the same room as they are while you're working with them, just as they will focus on the other bird if they are in the same room). If you're trying to work with them while they are both inside their cage, they will likely become less stressed around you as they get used to you being around, but it's highly unlikely that they are ever going to trust you enough to allow touching/stepping-up, or become hand-tame. As long as they are together and inside of "their territory" you're not going have their full attention, nor are they going to be particularly interested in working with you anyway. So the best advice I can give you is to first work on getting each of them out of the cage on their own, even if it's on a perch instead of your hand (because again they aren't going to trust your hands if they don't trust you), and once you can get eat of them out of the cage, you need to take each of them to a different room without the other bird and without the cage, and THEN you can work on things like Target-Training, trust-building and bonding techniques. The need to be able to concentrate on YOU and not the other bird...

That is a very good point EllenD. We may well have to consider separating them.

I will work on getting better pics, I have one or two of them playing chess lol.

We have however come across a different "problem". They are ringed and I was trying to find out when they were hatched, the people we got them off were sidestepping the question so I went to the people they got them from. I had been suspicious of the ring numbers before as the logic would be that the last two numbers would be the year, but the people we got them from said there was no reason to think that.

Anyway, we were promised 16-20 week old birds and it turns out that one of them was hatched in 2015 and one 2016. So they are long past puberty, and we then decided just to take things slowly.

As for what we have done about it, we have complained to the suppliers (who say they thought they were getting in young birds) and they have complained to their suppliers, but there is not way on this earth that we would "return" them, we have become rather attached, so there is not a lot else we can do.

We tried for ages to find a breeder close enough that we could go and see the birds etc, but we are in the south and they are in the north, really did not want to have birds in an unsuitable mode of transport for that length of time.

Sorry, not great pictures, but great birds

They are currently watching me from the curtain pole lol