Bryce
New member
I have a 16 y/o f CAG (Psittacus erithacus) that I adopted a few weeks ago. She is in good health but her previous owners did not remove her from her cage routinely, and she was cage bound. When I got her I put her into a new cage and she will come out of it if I have it open (indeed, lately she has become somewhat keen on coming out while I reload her foraging toys and fresh food in the morning, in spite of a mishap where she ended up trapped between the cage bottom bars and the waste tray and had to be rescued in a towel.)
So, it's safe to say she isn't cage bound anymore, but she also doesn't know any of the basic "husbandry" commands like "step up," so if she isn't going where she needs to go, I have to towel her and carry her there. She doesn't seem too bothered by it, but she's not exactly running up to the towel for snuggles either, so I've tried to avoid doing that unless absolutely necessary (as with the getting stuck incident above.)
I'd like to train my parrot to step up, for husbandry purposes (transporting her the second cage downstairs or the playstand/gym I'm building, cleaning her cage, taking her to a neutral area for further training) and to start her on being a bit better trained.
Unfortunately, in her cage at least, she is kinda bitey if I try to get her to step up. She will let me touch her head without biting, take treats, etc but if I try to get her to step up, she tries to bite me. I know she is actually biting because the first time she did it I thought "Oh, she is just testing out the perch" and let her keep at it, and she bloodied my finger. Maybe she just doesn't know her own beak strength. She doesn't seem able to effectively bite my arm, and it's more to her size preference than my finger anyway based on the branches she chooses to perch on in her cage, but she still appears to try sometimes, and never steps up no matter what delicious food I try to tempt her with.
So, is it okay to towel her to take her to a neutral location to try learning step-up there, or should I just keep trying to get her to learn in her cage? I haven't been trying very hard since I don't want to do anything that makes her conditioned to bite to defend her cage or something like that, nor associate her cage with stressful things.
Advice is appreciated.
So, it's safe to say she isn't cage bound anymore, but she also doesn't know any of the basic "husbandry" commands like "step up," so if she isn't going where she needs to go, I have to towel her and carry her there. She doesn't seem too bothered by it, but she's not exactly running up to the towel for snuggles either, so I've tried to avoid doing that unless absolutely necessary (as with the getting stuck incident above.)
I'd like to train my parrot to step up, for husbandry purposes (transporting her the second cage downstairs or the playstand/gym I'm building, cleaning her cage, taking her to a neutral area for further training) and to start her on being a bit better trained.
Unfortunately, in her cage at least, she is kinda bitey if I try to get her to step up. She will let me touch her head without biting, take treats, etc but if I try to get her to step up, she tries to bite me. I know she is actually biting because the first time she did it I thought "Oh, she is just testing out the perch" and let her keep at it, and she bloodied my finger. Maybe she just doesn't know her own beak strength. She doesn't seem able to effectively bite my arm, and it's more to her size preference than my finger anyway based on the branches she chooses to perch on in her cage, but she still appears to try sometimes, and never steps up no matter what delicious food I try to tempt her with.
So, is it okay to towel her to take her to a neutral location to try learning step-up there, or should I just keep trying to get her to learn in her cage? I haven't been trying very hard since I don't want to do anything that makes her conditioned to bite to defend her cage or something like that, nor associate her cage with stressful things.
Advice is appreciated.