Rampallion
New member
- Apr 30, 2013
- 2
- 0
Hi everyone
My name is Saoirse and just over a week ago I bought home my first green cheeked conure. I did as much reading as I could as I am a first time bird owner and I want to be prepared but I have a few questions.
A little background on him...
Wiggles is 2 years old approximately. He was sourced by a petshop for a lady who had him for a few weeks, but who then went into hospital. The pet shop took him back to look after him but after a few months the lady (who loved him very dearly) stopped calling to check up on him. It is assumed that she died in hospital. He was very much loved in the pet shop, spent all his time out of his cage and was generally fussed by everyone who came in. However he then learned to fly so had to be shut away in his cage while the shop was open, and at this point the shop decided to rehome him. I'm not sure how long he spent like this. His cage is pretty huge (suitable for an African grey apparently) and he has loads of toys so he wasn't bored but as the lady in the shop explained to me, he didn't have half as much human interaction as he did before and began to get scared of hands in his cage.
Since getting him home, we have discovered that this extends to outside the cage too. If hands approach him, he just runs off. He was ok when he was in his travel cage and happily stepped up to fingers but since he's been home and his normal cage has been set up he's just become increasingly scared of hands and fingers. He accepts scritches through the bars of his cage and will take treats from our fingers when it pleases him but short of grabbing him, which I don't want to do, he'll have nothing to do with us (unless we have food).
He isn't vicious or anything. He'll have a nibble of a finger sometimes through the bars of the cage but he knows 'no!' and stops. Does anybody have any suggestions for getting him used to our hands quicker and generally showing him that we're his friends? I would love to get to a point where he flies down from his cage to see us. He's given us so much happiness already but I know very little about trust training with birds, especially ones that have had 3 different homes in such a short space of time! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Saoirse
Edit: Forgot to say, he's gotten to a point where he'll come and sit outside the cage on a perch while we're eating whereas for the first couple of days he wouldn't leave his cage. He does loads of stuff which seems like he's trying to get our attention and sulks in his tent if we ignore him. He sometimes looks like he wants to fly over to us when we're eating but never quite plucks up the courage to!
My name is Saoirse and just over a week ago I bought home my first green cheeked conure. I did as much reading as I could as I am a first time bird owner and I want to be prepared but I have a few questions.
A little background on him...
Wiggles is 2 years old approximately. He was sourced by a petshop for a lady who had him for a few weeks, but who then went into hospital. The pet shop took him back to look after him but after a few months the lady (who loved him very dearly) stopped calling to check up on him. It is assumed that she died in hospital. He was very much loved in the pet shop, spent all his time out of his cage and was generally fussed by everyone who came in. However he then learned to fly so had to be shut away in his cage while the shop was open, and at this point the shop decided to rehome him. I'm not sure how long he spent like this. His cage is pretty huge (suitable for an African grey apparently) and he has loads of toys so he wasn't bored but as the lady in the shop explained to me, he didn't have half as much human interaction as he did before and began to get scared of hands in his cage.
Since getting him home, we have discovered that this extends to outside the cage too. If hands approach him, he just runs off. He was ok when he was in his travel cage and happily stepped up to fingers but since he's been home and his normal cage has been set up he's just become increasingly scared of hands and fingers. He accepts scritches through the bars of his cage and will take treats from our fingers when it pleases him but short of grabbing him, which I don't want to do, he'll have nothing to do with us (unless we have food).
He isn't vicious or anything. He'll have a nibble of a finger sometimes through the bars of the cage but he knows 'no!' and stops. Does anybody have any suggestions for getting him used to our hands quicker and generally showing him that we're his friends? I would love to get to a point where he flies down from his cage to see us. He's given us so much happiness already but I know very little about trust training with birds, especially ones that have had 3 different homes in such a short space of time! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Saoirse
Edit: Forgot to say, he's gotten to a point where he'll come and sit outside the cage on a perch while we're eating whereas for the first couple of days he wouldn't leave his cage. He does loads of stuff which seems like he's trying to get our attention and sulks in his tent if we ignore him. He sometimes looks like he wants to fly over to us when we're eating but never quite plucks up the courage to!
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