HELP??? Extreme biting bird!

[PowerBBS]

A little over two years ago we bought a 6 month old Green Cheek conure from our local pet store. The pet store had actually told us that the conure was a once return as the previous owners said it was unmanageable.

Non-the-less we decided to adobt the little fellow. For almost 8 months the bird seemed to be extremely friendly and cuddly. Then progressively over the next following months up until even today the bird has gotten more and more aggressive.

Biting un prevolked or randomly. The bird learned at a young age that it could run it's beak onlong the horizontal bars of it's cage to sharpen it. So now it's beak is razor sharp on the edges and tip. Every bite encounter now results in bleeding and pealed skin.

It's gotten to the point that when we take him out (I cannot take him out on my finger/hands or any body part - I have to use a wooden perch now) we have to watch out behind our heads while he's on the couch with us, as he'll just attack our head/ears/face/arms out of no where. I have scars all over my hands and arms, as well as a few bite marks on my ears, neck, and even my face (cheeks).

We can be sitting there saying his name, or getting him to repeat "Baby" (just trying to interact with him) - as he does talk a little - and out of no where... CHOMP! If we ignore him... CHOMP! And he holds on everytime now - with his mouth biting, as if he's not going to let go without dislodging that piece of flesh from our bodies. We've gotten so skiddish about it that we have a mist bottle full of water that we spray on him when he starts his attack and that seems now to "stun" him into seasing his immediate attack. If we can show him the bottle before he attacks, it stays his attack as well, so he knows that when the bottle comes out, don't attack.

I know it may sound cruel, but we've tried many alternate methods - pushing our fingers towards him to get him to let go, trying to retrain him to just step up, offering praise and/or reward for stepping up and not biting, etc - to try and get him not to continue his biting, but nothing seemed to work. It's an aweful experience as you can put your finger in front of him and say "step up" and he'll step up alright, then put that darn razor sharp beak between his legs and take a finger chunk out on you. It's like he's stepping up just so that he can get a better bite on us. And we know there's no way we'll ever hurt the bird when he bites us, so a mist spray was our only non-voilent recourse.

We spend a lot of time with him, we try to hold and pet him (if he'll let us) as much as we can to get our lovey - his name is "CHUCKY" -back.

We're nearing hopeless regret of having to maybe give up this fella as nothing we do seems to help. I'm wondering if any of you have any "real" suggestions as to what we can do to somehow retrain our feathered friend that we are not a threat and that he shouldn't be enacting these random acts of voilance towards us. It happens nightly. It's literally to the point now that we "dread" getting him out at all. But non-the-less we do consistantly get him out.

Now, we do have three other birds, but this behavoir started when we only had him (he was our first) and it was this behavior that made us actually try and get another bird, as we wanted to try and get a loving bird - which was our initial hope with him.

Do you think it's possible that the bird suffers from sort of mental disorder, or something else? Do you think there are prescriptions that can be given to the bird to help with his aggression. If so, how would we give it to him, he's a dedicated biter.

Again any help. I don't want it to get the point where we just don't take him out at all. We'll give him up for adopter before that - but even then, he'll most likely be aggressive to any new "parents" and have the same or worse problem there.

HELP????

[PyscoFalcon]

Welcome to my world!

Merlin my White-eyed Conure is NOT tame and bites grinding your flesh. Get too close to her and she'll lunge. Hubby goes near her and she screams blue murder at him and divebombs him. She is getting better tho.

You should NEVER try to force the bird to do something - even if it's interacting. For one don't let him on the couch - if he goes there get his bit of "perch" and move him off with it. (he can attack perch all he want's, he's after a reaction)

I don't agree with the mister as it makes them scared of having showers. Start off by putting a treat in the food dish when you walk past the cage - don't look at the bird or talk.

Eventually he'll wait by the dish for his treat, then gradually take from you. If he snatches or goes to bite, don't give him the treat.

It all takes time.

[cbalvino]

Sorry to here,thats just like my Buster,so sweet at ist then WHAM a terror and when he was flighted he would fly AT my face,I wish I had an answer but we clipped his wings, and none of the other stuff worked for me either,right now he is bieng sweet again don't know why?I wouldn't rehome him but it breaks my heart you end up not wanting to have them out,the only thing I have done different is clipped wings,and put him on the stand,I pet him there and talk to him no more shoulder,or arm time,he seems to get it for now but who knows??

[jenseits]

For whatever reason he now thinks he can get away with biting, and he derives something from that (could be that he just likes the reaction he gets).

Now that he's learned to bite, I think it will be hard to get him to just stop without replacing that behavior with something else. I think you need to teach him something he can do instead (but doesn't give him the opportunity to bite). I'm a big fan of clicker training for birds. There's a Yahoo group (Bird-Click : Bird-Click) that has a ton of great advice, and lots of people who have experience training un-tame birds.

When I got my sun conure a couple of months ago, he was not the most friendly little guy. Clicker training has really turned our relationship around. The fact that he can do a couple of tricks now is hardly the point -- it's all about spending fun quality time together that gives us ways to interact that don't involve biting.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

[PowerBBS]

Thank you all for your feed back.

After reading some of your input, I think I need to give a bit more background on the green cheek as well.

All our birds are full flight - including this little raskel - so controlling where the bird goes is difficult. As he can basically fly anywhere. I think maybe to solve this issue I should think about clipping his wings. We'll have to drive to another town to have this done as our local vet, when we tried to have his wings clipped before, simply cut a straight line across the birds back of the wings. Besides looking like a hack job, It didn't even slow Chucky down. He's learned that even with clipped wings, just a bit more effort and he can still fly. I think maybe we just need to have it done right. We're affraid to trim them ourselves because... well look at our hands and arms now.... scars everywhere.

Also, getting him onto a perch is near impossible. The little guy stubbornly grabs hold of what ever he's holding onto and will just not step up onto a perch - unless it's to get out of his own cage. There's been a few nights we had to toss a small hand towel over him to grab him and put him into his cage.

Petting the bird. IF YOU CAN EVEN GET TO TOUCH HIM THE FIRST PLACE -That lasts maybe 10 to 20 seconds then he's out to bite the hand that's petting him and then again maybe in 1/2 an hour you can pet him again for another 5 to 10 seconds. He used to love it. We could dig into his neck feathers - he would close his eyes and enjoy the neck massage, but now, you're lucky to get a finger just on top of his head for a few seconds before an attack insues. It's very difficult to get him to do anything without getting bitten.

Yesterday I was just sitting there watching TV. The bird flew to the couch went down to the arm of the couch. Started to walk along side my arm and then lunged at the middle of my arm and CHOMP! Bleed instantly. I had to mist him to get him to stop, as when I did the natural human reflex of pulling my arm away, he held on and wouldn't let go, just bit down even harder. Now I know they say, don't pull away. But if I don't he'll literally chew thru the skin and start to eat the flesh.

As to a mister making him afraid of showers, this is one bird that will attack you should you not allow him to take a bath. We can be in the kitchen washing dishes and he'll come flying to the kitchen onto our shoulders. From that point we have little less than 1 minute to get the sink cleaned out and a fresh clean plate and place it into the bottom of the sink and start the water trickling to fill it. Wait too long, and he'll attack until you do it - head, face, ears, neck.. it's a bath or bust at this moment. What is really weird is that he will only take a cold bath. Even room temperature is to warm and he won't jump in... he'll just bite until you get it set to cold.

Once the plate is there, he'll run down your arm jump into the middle of the plate take his bath. He splashes around for almost 15 minutes, then he'll get to the edge of the plate to be picked up dripping wet head to toe. This is the only time he doesn't bite, as he expects you to let him jump on your finger and take him to the towel on the back of the couch to air dry himself. So bathing the bird - it's not an issue, on average the bird expects a bath once every TWO DAYS minimum. Spoiled bastard he is. This about the only thing we can do and if we do it fast enough to his liking, we won't get bit and can watch and enjoy him splashing in his bath.

I've read a lot about alternative attention training. I just don't know what to get him paying attention to. The clicker mentioned sounds like a good start and is a cheap effort on our part to buy.

We spend so much time with our birds (typically out of the cage at 6PM and not put back into their cage until 9:30PM on weekdays - as we work 8a-5p M-F and on the weekends they're out from Noon to about 4p and in the cage until about 6p and out until 9:30PM again) so we're baffled how this one bird has grown into such a monster while our other birds are such loving and caring sweeties. And have always been sweeties.

In fact thru a small bit of training we now have our Sun Conure trained to roll over and lay on her back and let us rub her tummy or play with her feet.

I'll try those two little suggestion and prey for a miracle I guess. It's just so heart breaking and even though he's apparently the spawn of satan himself. We love him so much!

[4HAND]

By any chance is Chucky bonded to Autumn?Could he be trying to scare you away from his percieved mate?
Tena

[PowerBBS]

Originally Posted by 4HAND

By any chance is Chucky bonded to Autumn?Could he be trying to scare you away from his percieved mate?
Tena

Great question. Yes he is, however he did exhibit this behavior back when he was our one only bird. And even if she's not in the room at all, he's still hyper agressive.

It was his aggressive activities that made us decide to try again so 4 months later we adopted Autumn. And Autumn is my bird. She loves me. I can't even get up from the couch without her flying to my shoulder. I have to run to her cage and put her on the playpen and dart out in a run if I want to take a "rest room" break. She gives kisses, rolls over on her back so I can rub her tummy. Tickles my ears by gently nibbling my lobes to get me to pay attention to her. Sleeps under my arms, comes when I call her. OMG if all birds were like her, we'd have a million!

So, I'm imagining that having Autumn is most likely why he's so much more agressive. It's just fostering his aggression. We do from time to time let them share cages (as he actually has his own cage and she hers) They almost never spend the night together, but if we're busy, rather than leave them both alone, and since they get along, we put them both in autumns cage (as her's is so much larger than his - his is 18"x18"x28" and her's is 3ftx3ftx6ft). We just haven't saved enough money to get him a larger cage yet.

I think now that I've saved up some cash for a playpen for our new Cockatoo, I should invest in a larger cage for Chucky. Man we're running out of house space fast! LOL.

What do you suggest about the bonding and what measures to take to get our friendly bird back?

[Beardiedawg]

I shouldn't laugh but it is amazing how these birds can terrorize us! He sounds similar to my Dusky conure, although mine is not as bad. Dusty will also bite without reason. We used to let him sit on our shoulders but then he would bite just for the heck of it. His tolerance for petting is 5-10 seconds and then he will try and bite. The only time he steps up nicely is when he lands on the floor and needs to be "rescued". Usually I use a wooden perch. I definitely recommend wing clipping. It definitely helps with the attitude problems.

I have a cudly Senegal, also, and have decided that they are just two completely different personalities. Dusty is happy just having me in the same room with him, talking to him. He doesn't seem to want the physical interaction. If you can get your bird to stop attacking (good luck! easier said than done!) maybe you will just have to settle with that.

[jenseits]

Wow, it sounds like he knows who's the boss in your house (and it ain't you!)

Good to hear that you still love him, even if he is the spawn of Satan himself. And it sounds like you're probably not doing anything terribly wrong if all your other birds are sweethearts (let's hope they don't learn anything from him).

I believe the clicker training will help (you don't even need to buy a clicker; you can just use a ballpoint pen to achieve the click sound), but he may always be bratty. I guess he has what we can generously call "a strong personality" but there are definitely things you should/can do to make your interactions friendlier and more predictable -- otherwise this is going to keep getting more and more intolerable.

Best of luck!

[saucie]

Is his cage at or below eye level? I often read that lowering the cage can solve dominance issues.