New with a few questions

[MattieGirl]

We are the new owners of a rehomed 4 year old B&G named Mattie. She has been with us for almost 3 weeks. She is a bit snippy but started stepping up on me within a week of being here.

Last week when I asked her to step up she got a death grip on my hand with one foot, didn't step up with the other then grabbed me with her beak and proceeded to regurgitate into my hand. Since then, every time I have asked her to step up she has tried this. She won't get on my hand/arm at all now. =( I have tried pushing back toward her to get her other foot on but she won't. How do I get her to step up without the regurgitation?

Also, when she was stepping up she nearly always tried making a bee line for my shoulder. How do I keep her off my shoulder. The only time she has bitten me was me trying to get her from walking up my arm by asking her to step up onto my other hand.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Jtbirds]

You can try to step her from behind and distract her with a hand in the front, so this will not allow the regulation to happen as quickly, then if she try's to regurg push on her back end up Alittle nd say step up you should be able to get her up if you understand what I am saying it is kinda hard to explain. By the way macaws are generally snippy that's why we love em.

A way to keep them off your shoulder is to bend your elbow at about 90 degrees and make it almost vertical to your shoulder, although they can still climb up they are less likely and you can then get a hand Infront of them and say no and be gentle but push down on the head to keep them off the shoulder is usually how it goes with me, now my macaws put thee heads in my hand so I can push them around and roughhouse because I made it a game so they wouldn't get to my shoulder as they were having fun on my hand. I can offer other suggestions if you would like but this should be a good start and I'm sure others will jump on to


Kind regards, justin

 

[psychocircus91]

Some also train their parrots to step up onto a perch when taking them out. I'd imagine it would be a little tougher with a large macaw, but they're not too heavy.