Dr jeckell/Mr Hyde GCC

My sweet little Sassy stands at the door and clicks and coos for me to open the cage door, steps up sweetly, gives me a kiss and as soon as I sit down with her starts a tirade of chasing my hand to bite me. This is not an isolated event!! She will duck her head and run toward my hands like she is angry!?
She’s not afraid of me at all and takes treats gently from my hand. If I put her back in cage every time she trys to bite me she won’t have any significant time out of her cage. Help!!

how old is she? sounds like hormones

My oddball story... see if this helps at all. Maybe a tidbit or two will apply?

I have reduced biting to almost zero over the decades... not because I've changed the bird, but I have changed me. And a lot of that has involved giving up on a lot of my desires/expectations. After years of battle, I "compromised". I don't do stuff that gets me bitten. I NEVER do stuff that makes him mad... I don't touch others when he's out. I don't offer scritches unless he solicits them. I rarely try to get him to step up onto my hand first. Hand-held perch first, then hand. In some ways, I swallow my disappointment at having such a little monster for a pet, but he is what he is. I ALWAYS wear my hair down when he's on my shoulder, so all he can bite is hair.
Really, I don't involve hands much... he doesn't like them. He seems to think the real ME is my head, perched on a weird moveable tree with questionable appendages.
He's my little one-generation-outta-Patagonia rooster, and I tolerate a lot, but he's a wild treasure.
You'll get lots of good advice here. GCCs are, from all I hear, a much more selectively bred, domesticated species, and therefore more amenable to training. Lots of GCC people here. I'm sure they'll be along to offer support and advice.

I'm glad you're here, reaching out.

She’s 6 months old. I say she but I’ve actually never had her sexed.

Sounds like she's having her terrible twos stage. My Paris (also a GCC) did that at like 4 months but I would just tell her "no" firmly and then put her down where ever I was and turn my back for 30 seconds or longer depending on how bad the incident was. It took about a month but it worked eventually she decided she didn't like that and never bites me anymore. Hope this helps.

Normal-
Likely hormonal (even if not sexual...think about kids/toddlers etc)
Don't give up.
My U2 pretty much attacked me today because she was mad I had to leave her with my parents for 3 days....Hours later, happy as a clam, cuddly etc---you should see my arm lol! And my bird is an adult (10) WHO RARELY...and I mean RARELY bites me...like once every 6 months...Today, she was a terror.

I have a rehomed GCC. When he was new to my flock he did alot of that stuff. I thought he was angry because he was happy as an only bird with an attentive parront in his old home. After a year he settled down but still gets into the attack mode when my husband is around. He is great with me tho. Sometimes birds take awhile to get settled and comfortable. Don't forget they are prey animals and take awhile to trust completely. Watch the body language and observe what you are doing when the attitude changes. For example, I could be interacting with this bird and we are just having a great time. If the phone rings, he immediately gets his feathers fluffed, hunkers down to the attack position, and ready to bite. I need to put him down before answering the phone. He associates the ringing phone with my attention being diverted to something besides him.

Yep, at 6 months old he/she is starting to go through puberty, and his/her behavior is very typical hormonal-behavior for a Green Cheek; Bowie used to do exactly the same thing, he would lean over and get his body almost horizontal, and come charging towards me, one of the other birds, etc. and then "chomp!"...

This is going to continue until your bird is at least around a year old, the first puberty is the worst hormonal period for any bird, but it's extremely important that you nip this in the butt right now, so that she knows that biting is not allowed, hormonal or not.

****Green Cheeks are "velcro birds", meaning they love attention and interaction, and they absolutely hate it when it's taken away or they are ignored. So in my experience, the "Shunning" Method works very, very well with Green Cheeks, as well as very quickly. It's easy, as long as you and everyone else that interacts with her follows the plan every single time she bites you/them. Whenever she bites you or anyone else, you immediately need to say the same phrase firmly to her, not yelling, but firmly, something like "No Bites!!!", and then you immediately put her right down on the floor, and then turn your back to her. And then you have to completely ignore her for 5 minutes. Don't make eye-contact, don't look her direction, keep your back to her or just walk out of the room, totally ignore her calls or screaming to you, say nothing and pretend she doesn't exist for a full 5 minutes. Then once the 5 minutes is up, go back and pretend like it never happened. However, if when you come back to her she just bites you again right away, then once again you immediately say "No Bites!", put her right down on the floor, and turn your back to her and ignore her again for 5 minutes. Then again start over...They usually catch on to the idea very quickly, as they hate being on the floor, lower than anything else in the room, and they hate being totally ignored. This will eliminate the biting pretty directly.

As far as the hormonal periods/episodes go, there are a few things you can do to try to ease them. Make sure that she's getting a full 10-12 hours of dark, quiet, restful sleep every single night. And putting her on a "Natural Light Schedule" will help tremendously.

****With Green Cheeks especially, you must make sure that she doesn't have anything in her cage or have access to anything outside of her cage that is a small, dark space that she can get inside of or under, as this will put her into a horrible hormonal RAGE immediately; Green Cheeks are very prone to this, so this means eliminating any tents, huts, hammocks, etc. inside of her cage, nothing made of fabric/fleece or anything that is fuzzy that she can sit on/get inside/get underneath, and nothing outside of her cage like getting into boxes, under furniture, etc.

If you haven't already started, I would highly recommend you start teaching Sassy some new behaviors. It can be something as simple as turn around, "high four", "big wings"/"big eagle", target, etc.

Throw in some foraging and exercises (via flight) to keep her mentally stimulated and it may help to keep the lesser undesired behaviors at bay. In essence, teach her the behaviors you want her to do and keep her busy!

condobirds said:

I have a rehomed GCC. When he was new to my flock he did alot of that stuff. I thought he was angry because he was happy as an only bird with an attentive parront in his old home. After a year he settled down but still gets into the attack mode when my husband is around. He is great with me tho. Sometimes birds take awhile to get settled and comfortable. Don't forget they are prey animals and take awhile to trust completely. Watch the body language and observe what you are doing when the attitude changes. For example, I could be interacting with this bird and we are just having a great time. If the phone rings, he immediately gets his feathers fluffed, hunkers down to the attack position, and ready to bite. I need to put him down before answering the phone. He associates the ringing phone with my attention being diverted to something besides him.

Click to expand...

A few months ago I rehomed a GCC as well. Multiple conures are ENJOYING hormonal behavior right now.

Yep, it's that time for conures. Sir Lancelot is biting and fighting, Daytona is regurgitating on the cages trying to feed everyone and Miss Bird is trying to hide. All are nesting behaviors.

Your GCC may be proving that the two of you are mates and the intruder should be punished. My previous GCC looked to me for assurance and had a "SPARRING" partner.

It sounds like you're in a spot that most likely is just instinct. There questions about unpredictable conure behavior right now for these reasons.

Sandibth said:

My sweet little Sassy stands at the door and clicks and coos for me to open the cage door, steps up sweetly, gives me a kiss and as soon as I sit down with her starts a tirade of chasing my hand to bite me. This is not an isolated event!! She will duck her head and run toward my hands like she is angry!?
She’s not afraid of me at all and takes treats gently from my hand. If I put her back in cage every time she trys to bite me she won’t have any significant time out of her cage. Help!!

Click to expand...

You certainly don't want Sassy to be afraid of you, but you do need her to respect you. EllenD's advice about putting her on the floor and walking away is GOLD and worked for my GCC when he was being awfully hormonal and was positively incandescent with rage. You may have to "rinse and repeat" but Sassy will get the message. It won't be a once-and-for-all fix, the behaviour will resurface from time to time so you need to make sure the consequences for unwanted behaviour are consistent, otherwise you will end up with a spoilt unruly toddler with wings!

Thank you all for your advise. I did a lot of research before I got her but she is my first bird and every day is a learning experience with her so all of your help is appreciated!! Here's an update.....Theres no predicting her behavior. One time out of the cage she is so sweet, climbs up on my chest and rolls around and plays, rubs her head on my thumb so I will scratch her head and neck and nudges my fingers when she wants to do something different and makes sweet little clicking, clucking noises. The next time out she is a crazy bird trying to bite anything she can. Putting her on the ground has helped better than anything else so far. We have learned to always wear socks/slippers because the first thing she does is look for a foot to attack. When she is in these moods she attacks her toys and is particularly vicious about the plastic sack that holds her treats. I have to sneak them out of the sack because if she sees the sack she goes crazy! Not afraid of it....more like she loves it and doesn't want me touching it! I've been reading all I can find on this forum about hormonal behavior in GCC and I do think thats part of it as well as just seeing how much she can get away with. Example...When I won't let her drink anymore of my iced tea and so she screeches at me and tries to bite! I feel like she likes me because she watches every move I make, calls to me frequently, gets excited when I walk in the room and if a noise scares her runs immediately to me for comfort. Sorry I'm rambling lol. I guess if there's a question in this its how long does the hormonal part of it last? (Also I call her a girl but she hasn't been sexed so I don't know if theres a difference in male vs female behaviors.)

I have had two GCC, never really noticed hormonal behavior, both ate DNA girls. But GCC do go through nippy stages. Yours may need more activities to occupy the mind, if she has turned biting into a game.. there are a lot of simple tricks you can teach, and lots of forage ideas out there, they can get really frustrated and bored. I keep my girl flighted, and have her fly to me, or different locations, pick up objects, untie knots, .

Her parrot playground on wheels came in Friday so I went shopping for new toys to attach and got it fixed up for her. She was leery of it the first few days but played on it for a long time today so we'll see. Hopefully that will help. Her wings are clipped. We have chihuahuas. They are never out at the same time she is but our floor plan is very open so when they are up it would still be possible for her to fly in their area. Do you have some foraging tips/ideas you could share? She likes lids so I've been hiding a nutriberry under a lid for her to find.