Baby lorikeet..should we keep him or find a new home?

[Aussie Ben]

The primary food in a Lories diet is nectar, pretty much wet diet in, wet diet out :11:

Ahhh... Yes. I forgot that they eat nectar!!!!
Silly me!

I read that the fact that their poop goes 'splat' more than 'plop' has actually deterred many people from becoming lorikeet owners. It's a good thing they are so colourful and playful to make up for it

 

[Steenbokpixie]

Yeah, we've certainly chosen the messiest bird to find on the road! He's been getting the hang of projectile pooping and aiming it out of his cage >.>. Will definitely need to put together a DIY solution of some sort, so far we've just been putting paper towels against the side where he poops, at the bottom, and it's been doing the job so far but he's been picking at them and I have a feeling he'll start shredding them soon.

It's amazing watching him learn and mimic you! When he first got here he was so sick and scared that he seemed like he wasn't all there. Not looking at us or anything, just sitting there in the corner of the cage. Now he looks us in the eye when we speak to him and chirps back when we tell him something! I got him some bottle brush flower on the way home from work yesterday and he didn't seem to know what to do with it, so I started mock-eating it to show him. He cocked his head at me for a while and then started picking at the bottle brush. He still hasn't developed a taste for it yet though . He also started throwing fits when he sees us eating apples in the same room as him, but we're doing our best to ignore these.

I've been keeping a diary of fruits we've introduced to him and the ones that are next. So far he's had:

Apple, pear, kiwi, tomato, banana, mandarin

Next on the list: seedless grapes, cherries, sweet potato, pumpkin

Hopefully getting a proper cage for him today as he's still in the one that my mom's let me borrow.

 

[Steenbokpixie]

Hi guys

I know I know I'm posting here with yet ANOTHER question. I'm not sure if I should have posted this in the "Behavior" section, but I feel like I'd be spamming if I kept making a new thread for every question! Please let me know if I need to make a separate thread for this.

We had a bit of an incident last night.

The baby lorikeet won't get off of us after cuddling. He loves to snuggle into our shirts and nuzzle up against us, last night he spent about an hour against my neck (pic below), just sleeping. But then I needed to get up and he refused to get off! He wouldn't step up on my hand, and when I tried to pick him up he'd dig his claws into my jacket and start screaming, and then he actually bit me! Not hard enough to draw blood or mark, but it was a bite! My boyfriend said "Let me" as he can usually force him to step up by putting his fingers against his chest, but that did not work. The next thing I know the boyfriend is trying to pick him up, the lorikeet starts to scream again, bites the boyfriend. The bf gets mad and as I'm telling him to stop he basically forces the lorikeet to let go by pulling up and roughly puts him back in the cage. He didn't hurt him, but the lorikeet was NOT happy and I ended up getting angry at the bf for not stopping when I told him to. I don't want the lorikeet to associate the cage or either of us with anything bad!

I'm not angry at the lorikeet (I think it was our fault for not handling the situation properly), but I am still angry at my boyfriend. I've been reading all about how you're not meant to do anything to make associate yourself or the cage with anything bad and about how you're not supposed to punish parrots, the boyfriend hasn't been trying to educate himself on parrot training at all and thinks it's the same as training a dog, and just assumes that he knows what's best.

Anyway, I really want to make sure this doesn't happen again. First - what can I do to solve the problem of the lorikeet refusing to get off of us and getting angry when we try to get him off?

Second - are there any educational materials I can show my boyfriend and read myself as well (maybe videos or an article that communicates this clearly) to show how you are or are not meant to act when the lorikeet is behaving badly? I don't think we handled it right at all, but I could be wrong - am I? Was it acceptable for my boyfriend to handle the situation the way he did? Should we have tried to lure him off of us into the cage with a favorite treat or something or would this be akin to bribery and not effective in the long run?

Oh, here's that pic of the cuddle action:

 

[Quantumcat]

Hi again,
When Scarlett won't step up I just pick her up by scooping her whole body up with my two hands and getting my ring fingers under her claws, index and middles around her chest, thumbs around her wings, and lifting. She has no choice but to hold onto my fingers with her feet. I don't know if this is a bad thing to do but she doesn't mind it. If she is on my shoulders and refusing to be taken off (dancing from side to side to avoid my hands) I just take my top off, then pick her up as above. No nonsense from this bird!!! I think if he refuses to step up, just pick him up. Otherwise maybe he'll learn that if he doesn't want to do what's being asked of him he doesn't have to. But being firm and sure is important, if you grab at him and he flaps around and screeches and it's a scary situation that's probably not so good. By the way, you are lucky to have such a cuddly bird! Scarlett will put up with a bit of light touching on her back but is quick to growl if you try and give her anything more.

 

[Jessica M]

That is a hard decision to make he could be someones pet or wild and if he is wild and you keep him then you might have to put up with a lot of biting.