How to maintain positive attitudes between birds?

Akrami

New member
Aug 12, 2018
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Hello,
I am new to this forum but am seeking some assistance regarding my 3 parrots. Just recently i got a new bird from a friend who is moving away, his name is Henry and he is an Indian ring neck. He talks with words such as good boy, or hello Henry. We have all 3 birds out of their cages in the house for about 4-5 hours a day, or pretty much whenever were home.

Currently we have a female cockateil, she is really friendly towards all family members and friends, she flies around the house to you and sees what your doing. Our tiel maintains a nuetral relationship with our male Alexandrine called Raven, he is roughly a year old. Raven usually flies around the house, sometimes he flies into my room to see what im doing, other times he just chews stuff lol. He is a relatively quiet bird, he doesnt like being touched, however he steps up onto our hands and is calm around us. On the odd occasion he will attempt to bite.

We have had Henry for about 3 days and all birds seem to be getting along, however he prefers to follow our Alex around wherever he goes, for example when i take our Alex off his cage and take him for a walk Henry will fly and land right near Raven on my arm. After this our Alex kinda freaks out.
I guess they are quite friendly considering they have only just met, the only thing i have noticed is when food comes between them.

For example, i cut up 2 carrots and put it onto a tray and placed it near them, plenty to go around yet Henry chooses to follow and attempt to steal Ravens piece of carrot from him. Henry usually sits on top of Ravens cage, it is a much bigger cage and Raven is almost twice the size of Henry, not recently i noticed henry bowing his head then standing up tall and saying "Hello Henry" to Raven. This really puzzled me because he doesnt usually talk when im around, but then again he is a relatively new bird to the househould and i imagine he is still adjusting to his current new surroundings.

Would anyone have any advice or tips? I will get some photos up within the next few hours.

Kind Regards,
John
 

ChristaNL

Banned
Banned
May 23, 2018
3,559
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NL= the Netherlands, Europe
Parrots
Sunny a female B&G macaw;
Japie (m) & Appie (f), both are congo african grey;
All are rescues- had to leave their previous homes for 'reasons', are still in contact with them :)
somewhat clueless too:

so this is what I did ...

I had the same situation in that my smallest grey would walk/ climb in and demand & steal the food the macaw held in her beak.
I saw it as a sort of asserting her rights (she was here before the macaw came into the house aka their territory) because it was not 'just playing'.
And also: a big bird with a fooditem clamped in its beak cannot do much damage (bite back), and they know it!

I tried this:
("forcing" flock behaviour on them -every bird does rougly the same activity at the same time- by making them want to eat together without fighting or annoying each other. LOL they already had groupshowers also orchestrated by me ;) )
They have been eating one one each knee with a bowl of something extra extra nice in the middle between them for a few weeks (and Japie on my arm to complete the trio) so they all could eat, but not reach each other easily, and that kind of stopped it...
(it also got them to eat more of the foodstuffs they normally wouldn't touch, a lttle friendly! competition goes a long way ;) )

After a few months the macaw started to get more assertive (feeling better physically and more at home), so right now I am trying to get them to be within an armslenght of each other without one trying to grab the other with a beak.
Not sure if they want to play-wrestle or just maim/kill ( Sunny is making *some* progress in the whole pressurebiting, but not so much I trust her to not crunch down on the grey).

Now we have rolereversal: the macaw will sometimes make an halfbaked attempt to steal a cedarnut from Appie-the-grey but back off the moment she sees her own treat coming up...
so this story has no end yet.

-
Japie is more direct, he will just come flying and knock them of their perches (if they don't get out of the way fast enough)... "subtle he is not, but effective it is".
 
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