New Green Cheek Owner - Advice Please!

[srielsy]

So.. I have adopted two Green Cheeks. Where to begin?!

First things first I have owned 3 budgies for just under 2 years now. I have trained them to step up & they like hanging out on my shoulder. Friendly little ones..But owning budgies is as far as my bird knowledge goes.

All I know about these guys are that they have been together since birth.
& The lady I got them from told me someone used to hit the cage with a broom stick.

The cage they came in, along with all of their toys where filthy. They scream from morning until night, unless I am standing in-front of their cage. (I'm ok with doing this) But they need to learn to not scream, & I mean SCREAM as soon as I step out of their vision. The screaming doesnt bother me. I just dont think its normal screaming. The one shy one puts her head up against the bars while shes screaming and the other one (very defensive of her/him & loves to bite) is jumping up and down fast.

I am willing to take as much time as it takes to help these little guys feel safe & happy. Today I went out and got all knew ropes, toys & food. I have also feed them veggies and fruit at every meal. I sit on my couch with them and talk or sing.

Now, Im wondering if anyone has any tips for these two? I had saw on a different post that someone had said use a stick for ones that bite to step up on. I did try that today and man oh man, you would have thought I threw a cat in their cage. Terrified of it.

Anything...ANYTHING would help at this point! Thanks

 

[Flboy]

It takes a while for them to trust a stick for stepping up, but, I feel it is a must have solution for many reasons! Sounds like you have your hands full! Sorry! Try not to reinforce the screaming by giving in all the time

 

[wrench13]

Well you're gonna get a ton of advice, mostly good, all well meant. All will require you to go slow.

 

[Allee]

Hello and welcome! Thank you for adopting a pair of conures, it sounds like they were in desperate need of a new home and a kind caregiver.

It sounds like they are stressed from the move. If they aren't accustomed to human interaction and attention, it may take a few weeks before they process their new surroundings and gain enough confidence to feel safe.

Do you know how old they are? Two males, two females or a male and female can form a strong bond, but there is no guarantee that any two birds will. I think I would consider separate cages, most birds appreciate their own personal space. You could keep their cages side by side and let them play together outside the cages.

Having their cage hit with a broom probably left a lasting impression, I think I would forego the stick training. The fear biting may continue for a few weeks until you gain their trust.

We have a great group of conure parronts, I'm sure they will be able to give you advice from personal experience. Here is a link with some good tips.

http://www.parrotforums.com/general-parrot-information/49144-tips-bonding-building-trust.html

 

[Dinosrawr]

It takes a lot of slow trust building before birds will easily step up into a stick if they've been abused before. It's a natural response to be fearful of a large object coming towards you when you're a small prey animal.

What I recommend doing takes a lot of patience. First things first: discover their favourite treat, then target train. I'm on my phone and can't link any threads, but just do a quick search and you'll find some. Once you have your birds target trained, then you move onto making the perch you want them to step up onto as non-threatening as possible. This may mean holding it for minutes on end and working very slowly. If they're target trained, you essentially target them onto the perch as slowly as possible. It may start off slowly with one foot, or it may start off with two right away. Every time they touch that perch, reward, reward, reward. Eventually they'll feel safe enough to be on that perch and moved around by you.

In essence, you need to make a positive association with anything you want them to interact with, including yourself. Once they're comfortable with being moved from perch to perch, then you can start desensitizing them to your hands. I trained both of my birds to accept my hands moving over their heads. It helped remove the instinctual drive to run away and instead view my hand over them as something safe and rewarding to interact with.

There's a lot of great training threads out there already, some of which are stickied. I recommend reading those as well. I will also make note that birds that are bonded together can be a bit more difficult to train as they may become defensive of one another. So once again, just take it slow and reward every positive interaction.

 

[Printer bird]

Our green cheek would yell his head off when we were out of the room. We helped this by giving him a whistle to let him know we were around and tried to not engage the screaming. It took awhile to get him to whistle back and to stay calm (not sure if he ever really did but he certainly got better) and only respond with a whistle if we were out of site. He would whistle about every 5 or 10 seconds, though, most of the time (but still better than yelling his head off). If he was quiet we would reward him by coming back into the room. If he was still loud when we came in, we would ignore him until he was quiet. He definitely responded well to positive reinforcement training and using small bits of almond we had him target trained in a few minutes and he had a nice little repertoire of tricks.