Help! Getting harder to get her to go in cage

[Sandibth]

I've had my baby for 3 weeks now. She is a pineapple GCC 6 months old. She has spent time out her her cage with me since day one and is always ready to come out and hang out with me and my husband. She knows how to "step up" without any problems and recognized her name within a few days. Sometimes she snuggles and lets me rub her neck and head but mostly just climbs all over me and plays on her play set. She gets nippy when she doesn't want to be petted or she's not getting her way lol. Here's my problem....She has a beautiful large cage with plenty of toys, perches and ladders. Its getting harder to get her to go back in her cage each time I get her out. She starts biting at my hands as soon as we head that direction and starts crawling up my arm to get away from the door. I want her to just step up on her perch and do not want it to be a traumatic experience for her! Any tips would be appreciated. She is my first bird so I'm new to this.

 

[Flboy]

You have to make the cage a positive experience! Special treats for going into the cage, for now you can have her sitting on a perch as you walk her to the cage to avoid the nips but remember cage time is fun time!

 

[noodles123]

If she bites you when you are putting her back in, do your very best to ignore it and follow through. Mine has occasionally done this (10 yr old Umbrella Cockatoo), and you have to completely ignore it and follow through on your original intention. You do not want to teach your bird that it can cause you to hesitate by biting when you decide to put it to bed. Dimming the lights may help, as could a treat in the cage, but ultimately, you need to calmly make the call and proceed. I do not usually force my bird to bed unless she has waited until the point of no return...Generally, if mine wakes up at 6, she goes to bed at 6 (without cue). I also let mine enter and exit the cage throughout the day without closing her in each time.

 

[Laurasea]

She's s smart one! Loves her mommy and daddy and no cage is ever as much fun as being with you! My GCC of seven years still pulls the noooooo going back to cage thing. Those white safflower seeds are like crack to the GCC though! Lol you can get most of em to do anything for them.....I just have to show Ta-dah one and she's like yes please... congratulations on your baby abd love to see a pic

 

[Flboy]

Also do a lot of short cage trips throughout the day! My JoJo was the same way, now he knows cage=goodies! Walnuts are his go to treat!

 

[Sandibth]

Thanks everyone for your quick response. I will try bribing her with treats! I've already been late for work twice because I get her out to have breakfast with me and can't get her to go back in her cage. She is definitely running the house at this point lol. I will try to figure out how to post pics of her. She is beautiful!!

 

[LaManuka]

Your confidence in handling this little dynamo is key, as is patience, positive reinforcement and maybe a soupçon of tough love. If you let these little guys get away with stuff like this they will grow up not understanding where the boundaries are, much like unruly toddlers! My boy stayed up relatively late but when it was bedtime there was no mucking about. He would peek out at me from under the covers making THE most pitiful “mummy let me out I wanna he with you!” noises! I would open pick him up & give him a quick kiss & cuddle & tell him I loved him but then put him back & cover the cage. Sometimes I’d have to do it once or twice more but he got the picture. Pretty soon he got into the routine, night time snuggle with mum, pre-bedtime poop, drink of water then bed. You need to establish the basics before they try testing your boundaries and then the onset of puberty, then you’ll have some well-learned established routines to fall back on. These little guys know how adorable they are and they will try to get away with anything if you let them! Hope this helps you!

 

[LordTriggs]

I agree with Fiboy, try to remove the association that the cage is where fun with you stops. Bring her over to the cage at times but keep the doors open and try to play and offer a couple treats to her in the cage so it gets associated as place where she gets to play with you too, on top of that doing so should help her in being less possessive over the cage in the future

 

[itzjbean]

Ember does this sometimes when he doesn't want to go back in. He won't actually nip me though, more like he'll beak me and make an annoyed sound and tries to avoid my hand when I reach for him. He'll do this if he's out of the cage less than 20 minutes so I try to let him out for at least that time in the morning and over lunch.

There's a perch on the inside of the cage door that is a good transition back into the cage that I put him on first, then I slowly close the cage door after a couple reward scritches and he's fine after that.

 

[EllenD]

I agree, the key with Green Cheeks is to not let them win! I know it's difficult to totally ignore it when she bites you, but you cannot hesitate or stop the motion of putting her inside of the cage once you start, because every time you do that she is learning more and more that if she bites you, she won't have to go in her cage.

So, always have her favorite treat inside of your pocket before you go to put her back inside her cage. Then when it's time to put her back in her cage, you need to tell her that it is time, by choosing a phrase that you will say every single time you start to put her back in the cage, so that she knows it's time; something like "Time to go home!" or "Time to go in your cage!", etc. So you just get her to step-up onto your finger, then say the phrase (and say it happily and excitedly, not in a firm or negative tone), and give her a treat or a piece of the treat right after you say the phrase. Right after you give her the treat or piece of the treat, start taking her over to her cage, and put her inside, totally ignoring any bites you might get...However, the idea is that she won't be able to bite you because she'll have the treat in her beak...So you get her to step-up onto your finger, say the phrase, give her the treat, then take her to her cage and put her right inside onto a perch. Then once she's off of your finger and inside the cage, you praise her excitedly and happily. Then you shut the cage door, and once she's finished the first piece of treat that you gave her, then give her the rest of the treat or another whole treat (depends on what it is, if it's something like a raw sunflower seed or a pine nut then just give her one after she steps-up onto your finger and you say "Time to go in your cage!", then another one after she's sitting inside the cage and you've said "Good Girl!"). Then shut the cage door, and I'd hand her another treat through the cage bars, again praising her. And if you follow this every time you take her to her cage, she'll get it down within a short amount of time...And again, the idea here is that she won't be able to bite/nip you as you're actually putting her inside of the cage, because if she does she'll have to drop the treat...If she does drop the treat and bites you when you're putting her inside of the cage, then you don't want to scold her for doing it, because this will give her mixed signals about going into her cage. Instead, you just completely ignore the bite, as if it never happened, just shut the cage door and then again give her another treat and praise her, because she's inside the cage. She should get the idea within a very short amount of time this way...

***Also, I highly advise you to NOT USE A PERCH/DOWEL to put her inside of her cage. This isn't a good idea for a number of different reasons, but to make it simple, you want her to step-up onto your finger without any issues, which she apparently already does, so you don't want to introduce a perch/dowel for that purpose...This is sometimes unavoidable with larger parrots, such as Cockatoos, Macaws, Greys, etc. who can bite a finger right off, but with a hand-tame Green Cheek Conure who is just being stubborn and nippy, their bite/nips are not anything that can't be taken and ignored.

 

[MonicaMc]

I'm with Flboy and LordTriggs here...

I do not recommend ignoring bites... in fact, I don't recommend getting bitten in the first place! However, that requires learning how to avoid getting bitten while still getting the desired behavior that you want!

 

[Caitnah]

Your post is ANSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to my GCC Pineapple. He is now 9 months old and, again, does the same exact things as yours; playing, running up the arm, nippy with head scratches, etc...
The head scratches is most likely due to his adult feathers beginning to come in. My Guy's are stil coming in as his head feathers are getting darker. But he really doesn't like me touching his head as the sheaths obviously bother him. Lots of baths.

As far as the cage, he also bites hard since he doesn't want to go in. But when it's near bed time, he goes in pretty easily as he knows it's bedtime.
A food distraction helps.