I have zero bird expertise but plenty of partner expertise................... just wanting to extend my kudos to your loving mate for hanging in there.
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Ok, so as I said I was a bit occupied and spoke even more definitively than it actually is.
The answer is: if your approach includes in any way āwho disciplines the birdā, youāre approach is off. If your bird needs discipline, smack yourself in the face cause your doing it wrong and need a wake up call.
Positive reinforcement includes AVOIDING situations where bites occur to begin with. Bird bites when you walk up and ask for a step up? STOP DOING THAT, FOOL. Teach the bird to step up onto a stick, and use that until bird can step up nicely. Or Mark - our current/former parrot rehabilitator in residence (rarely posts anymore) would put on layers of clothing on his arms so that when asking aggressive birds to step up to flood them with positive experience in stepping up. Two different methods.
Set the bird up for success, not failure. Scale back the interactions to situations where biting doesnāt occur, limit the interactions, and scale up from there.
Most importantly: one MUST remember these are hormones. This isnāt an aggressive bird youāre trying to train aggression out of. All references to rehabilitation of aggressive parrots is irrelevant. Except maybe to prevent it from getting worse.
This is a hormonal bird that requires more adaptation than training. The aggression is hormone driven, you arenāt going to stop it with training while puberty is in full swing. The object during this time is not to make things worse. Once puberty has passed, any residual aggression can be trained away through more conventional training means.
I have zero bird expertise but plenty of partner expertise................... just wanting to extend my kudos to your loving mate for hanging in there.
Tbh, Cairo still responds when my partner trains him on most other things. He still recalls just fine, still plays with toys together just fine. It's really just sometimes there's a bit of a mood swing that turns Cairo into attack mode or both of them get into a situation (stepping up) where Cairo gets upset.