So how do I convice her to take things from my hand?

[Ash]

I want to try and start training my wee little maroon bellied conure. Ive found that her favourite treat is sunflower seeds. The thing is she isn't afraid of my hands but she doesn't want to take treats/food from my hands. Or wont even attempt to.

So where do I begin? thanks : )

 

[MikeyTN]

How long have you had her? Do you always just give it to her in her dish? You can give her a piece in her dish and start offering it with your hands through the cage bars daily. Only give it to her when she retrieves it from your hand. Or you use one of your other birds as models, monkey see monkey do, that pretty much sums it up...lol

 

[LoveMyParrots]

Try putting the treat in her food dish or placing it in her cage where she can see, and step back. When she eats the sunflower seed, give her anther one. Repeat this and get closer and closer to her cage. Then put your hand on her cage while she eats it. And when she is comfortable with you putting your hand on her cage, try to offer treats from your hand.

Do this when she is a hungry, maybe like before bed time, late afternoon or early in the morning. I've find that my parrots are usually not really hungry in the early afternoon, from about 12:00-3:00 pm.

This worked really well for me with my aviary cockatiels and budgies when I used to have them.

Hope she will be able to eat from your hand soon. Good luck.

 

[Ash]

Thank you both : )
I will try out these ideas

I have been trying the monkey see monkey do but she doesn't seem to be interested.

How long have you had her?
Not very long. About 1 month+. So I know she is still settling in. She does have a lot of trust in me. I saved her and I know(well was told by her last owner) she was abused (hit/punched/etc) for biting. Though she does let me hold/touch her. And everything else.

Do you always just give it to her in her dish?
Not all the time, sometimes we attach it to the side of her cage. This is usually her fruits and veges though.

 

[thermodynamic]

Time.

Lots of time.

I rescued Rosie from a very nasty situation, and to this day she is still afraid of hands.

It took 2.5 years to get her to eat millet from a distance. But here's how I helped put her at ease: The millet sprig is distant from my finger, so a safe buffer zone is created. See if yours likes millet. With each passing day, shorten the distance between hand and cage (by one cluster of millet, since one spring contains many clusters). If the bird remains hesitant, keep the same distance for another day - or two days. This will not happen over night.

Even when the bird gets close enough, be very still and let the bird explore. Do not move your hand, in any way shape or form.

This will take a long time to do, and each bird is different in terms of shyness and/or fear.

Trust-building will take a long time.

But it can be done.

A couple weeks ago, she finally took papaya from my fingers. Partly because she saw Scooter readily taking papaya from me and finally got the courage and trust of me to move that far. But she is still skittish and it will take more time before she fully accepts my hands as not being equated to all of the evil hands that hurt her in the past.

You have sunflower seeds, which work just as well as papaya and your bird already recognizes them as a treat - one needn't have a second bird for one parrot to, well, parrot from. It might require a little more time, but the bird will see those yummy seeds and eventually overcome its built-in fear. During this time, again, do not move your hand. Any little movement might scare it and damage (or wreck) the trust built up.

But I'd do the millet trick first - if you stood there with a couple of sunflower seeds, you'll be standing there for a very long time and probably die of dehydration before anything good happened... get it to like millet or another treat in stick form. Use that to build trust, slowly, via a distance that magically gets shorter over the course of a couple weeks.

If ever.

But she's come a long way, considering...

Every time she did something right, I would take a small step back and be dramatic with "GOOD BIRD!" as a response and looked/felt genuine jubilant. Like how I've done with my other fids. They dig drama, so I use it as positive reinforcement.

I know that, for most of the 3 years I've had her, she's done somersaults to make me laugh and feel better when I'm depressed, and at the store she would only do such tricks overnight when nobody was in the store.

But it really does take a lot of time, patience, and feeling bad for the bird.

And, in time, I also have to teach her not to spaz and fly up all the time when trying to perch on my finger. She's seen me do this with all my fids and I know she wants to, but that trauma induced by those creeps is still a barrier she must overcome. Having been abused as a child, I know how Rosie feels. It's not easy to overcome a barrier once made, and for some it is permanent. Again, it depends on the bird and the situation it came from.

 

[Ash]

Thanks for the advice

I can say we have made a break through! : D
While she was eating she saw me place some sunny seeds in her bowl. I held some in the palm of my hand and guess what! She slowly came over to my hand and ate a few seeds. Im going to keep trying to do this for the next few days/weeks to build some trust with her!

 

[MikeyTN]

Congrats! That's great news, just keep it up until she trust you a bit more.

 

[Ash]

Thank you!
I will keep it up.