Please elaborate on when to shun a bird

[edsbeaker]

Hi all,

I brought home my baby GCC, Kaiya, a couple of weeks ago. She is 10 weeks old and a wonderful and loving addition to our family.

This seems like a stupid question, but I really don't know the answer. At what times is it considered proper to shun a parrot for nipping? There are the obvious rare bites that I don't allow, but what about the times that she is not trying to technically bite from aggression but mouths me with too hard a pressure? Should I allow her to mouth me gently, but shun her when it is painful? Will she learn the difference? When she gently nibbles on my fingers or my ears I find it endearing, so I don't necessarily want to stop this behavior if I don't have to.

Then also how does one deal with the gentle grooming of skin tags and freckles that although nibbled at gently still hurt? I guess I am trying to figure out what behavior is acceptable and what is not, and can my conure learn the difference.

 

[psychocircus91]

Yes, this is called pressure training. When the nibble is painful, calmly say "No bite" or "Be gentle," or whatever you prefer. Put her down and walk away. It only has to be for a minute or two.

In terms of the freckles thing, I just try to redirect/distract because they are being gentle, just curious.

Initially, it will feel like you are doing this a lot, but remember they are very smart and will learn relatively quickly.

 

[BoomBoom]

Personally I would allow gentle nibbles. It goes towards Kaiya's bite-pressure training. Reward gentle bites with verbal and visual rewards of your choosing (i.e., "good girl" + happy face + head bob). If she goes overboard, I would first let her associate the action with a consistent verbal and visual command of your choosing (i.e., "don't bite" + stern face). Follow this through with shunning which is turning your back or in my case, leaving the room. The latter is relative to your household of course. If you have other pets / people or your space is not bird-proofed, best to leave her in the safety of her cage. I shun for 15 mins average. Once they understand that you don't like hard bites, they will learn fast and do it less and less. I rarely ever shun any more (knock on wood).

Most of all, and you probably already know this, try not to yell or show anger. Good luck and enjoy your time with Kaiya! Share pics when you can

 

[Jen5200]

This is definitely not a stupid question, and probably a really good time to ask it! She’s young, and she’s learning a lot - so in my opinion it’s a good time to start working on boundaries. Some of your approach will very much depend on Kaiya and how sensitive and receptive she is to feedback from you. I would probably start with the gentlest setting of boundaries and see how she picks it up. I would also be cautious about not scaring her as she’s pretty young yet and is in the process of bonding with you and others in the family. I’ll share what I’ve done with my conures and I’m sure others will have advice too

My suns are very sensitive to feedback, and I seldom need to “shun” them at all. When a nip is too hard from them, I gently hold their beak between my thumb and first finger, say ow, and gently push beak away from my skin. If they do it a second time, I do it again. The third time, I move them away from me and set them down. I can say that I let my suns nibble on my ears and skin and I don’t think they’ve ever bitten me while doing that.

My GCC is stubborn and loves to push boundaries (and he likes to nip). He was a serious biter when he came to me, and we’ve worked it down to a pretty minimal occurrence now. HE needs time outs . He also likes to try to remove my freckles. I am consistent in my shun method with him, as he always seems to be testing boundaries to see what he can get away with. With him, if he nips gently to tell me something (like no petting or I don’t want to do that) - I don’t shun. Anything else that hurts, I just calmly set him down on the back of a chair or a perch and turn my back on him for 30 seconds to a minute. It took him like two or three times to “get it”, and he does understand what hurts and what doesn’t.

 

[edsbeaker]

Thank you to all. This perfectly answered my concerns. Kaiya is a WONDERFUL darling, and I'm relieved that what I've been doing is pretty inline to the advice you've given me.

It's remarkable how smart she seems to be. When she has been applying too much pressure I have been softly and calmly saying the word "gentle" and she does seem to loosen her grip. With freckles and such, I keep her on me, but move her away from what she's targeted. When she bites hard, she is put on the floor with no attention form me for a couple of minutes. From the corner of my eye I can see her trying everything she can to try and get back to me. So cute!

So thank you for verifying that I'm reacting appropriately with her.