Dear Parrot Lover,

Every parrot goes through the nipping stages during their infanthood. These nips are similar to mouthing in puppies and are perfectly normal in baby parrots. But for a handful of parrots, this nipping stage doesn’t go away and instead progresses as the parrot gets older.

With time, those nips turn into painful bites and become your parrot’s way of defending himself to things and circumstances that he perceives to be threats.

This is when you should employ parrot training that teaches the ‘No Bite’ command. Regardless of whether your parrot has only bitten you once or bitten you a dozen times, you should never give up hope of having a perfectly well-trained parrot.

If you lose that hope you will begin to mistrust your parrot and start to avoid interacting with him. At the same time, your parrot will sense your mistrust and instead see it as fear and that therefore he has to dominate you by biting you. As a responsible parrot owner it is up to you nip this in the bud before your parrot’s biting gets out of control.

The easiest way to incorporate the ‘no-bite’ training command into your parrot’s daily routine is to understand your parrot’s body language more clearly. Keep a lookout for your parrot’s eye pupils narrowing and then flaring out; fluffing up their feathers is another telltale sign that your parrot is considering biting you.

If you miss these behavioral signs and your parrot does try to bite, you should quickly and firmly state ‘No Bite’ to your parrot. Do not raise your voice when you say this command, but rather keep your voice even but authoritative.

Now the first few times that you say the command to your parrot, he will probably not understand it right away. He will need to learn to associate those words with the action of biting. For example, if your parrot was sitting on your hand and you were trying to get your parrot to step onto your other hand so that you can place him in his cage or on his playtop or just so that the two of you can have some playtime together, and instead your parrot succeeds in biting your finger, instead of reacting out of the pain and trying to pull your finger out of your parrot’s beak, you should rather push back gently with your finger so that your parrot will ultimately lose his balance and will voluntarily let your finger out of his beak. All the while you should be calmly stating the words ‘No Bite’ to your parrot.

The ‘No Bite’ command is one of the most popular commands to teach any biting parrot and is one of the easiest as well.

Flipping the Bird

Turn Your Bird from a Nightmare to a Dream

Although we keep parrots and other birds as pets, it’s important to remember that they are still wild animals. Many of the “naughty” behaviors in birds are actually quite normal or instinctual for them. That means we have to learn how to change the situation and our interactions in order to keep these bad behaviors in check.

Take biting for example. Biting is one the most common bad behaviors seen in pet birds, but there are very natural reasons that biting happens. Many times a bird bites when he is fearful or distrustful of someone. This may include strangers he is unfamiliar with or in some cases, it might even include his
owner.

Biting may also happen when a bird becomes overstimulated, stressed out, frustrated, or even hormonal. Another big factor in biting can be territory, and a bird may bite someone who comes close to his perch, cage, or even a favorite person.

Click here to read more about biting in parrots

Bad Behaviors Gone Good

There are lots of other issues that bird owners often deal with besides just biting. Birds scream loudly, over-pluck feathers, and can create chaos. There are always reasons for a bird reacting this way in his environment, and with the right management and training, even the worse of behaviors can be righted.

Birds have to trust the human in their life. If you try to rule your bird with an iron fist and control him, you’re likely to lose him to the bad behaviors forever …and possibly create new problems. You need to work with your bird through patience and trust to win him over, and any mistreatment or attempts to control him will likely not be forgotten.

Click here to learn more about trust building with your bird

Sharing the Experience

There are plenty of people who have walked in the same bad bird behavior shoes, but one such person put the experience to paper. My Naughty Parrot is an e-book written to share the experience of a good bird gone bad and the way back to a healthy relationship. It’s the culmination of a lot of research and personal experience.

My Naughty Parrot is an investment in changing the relationship with your bird and can help relieve the stress and frustration you might feel.

Learn more about My Naughty Parrot and how it can help you

Regards,
Nathalie Roberts

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 4th, 2013 at 5:44 am and is filed under Behavior, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.