CAG screaming by walking out of the room

[Zirstonas]

Hello,

My CAG is 10 months old, and I have her for more then three month, since a while she's starting to scream more and more, she often only does it when someone leaves the room or walks outside, then she can scream for just like 2 hours without stopping. I'd like to teach her how to not do that, but nothing worker yet.. Because if I have visitors, or other people around, she'll start screaming all the time too, and then I've too put her in another room just because the screaming gets worser and louder every time.. It's a sweet parrot, but I'd love to find a way on how to teach her not to scream..

 

[MonicaMc]

That can be a tough one to deal with!


Here's a couple of links to read.
Living With Parrots Cage Free: Does Ignoring Really Work?
Use your words: Conditioning Sam to a new environment | Learning Parrots



Try to look at this as a training problem instead of bad behavior. What do you want your CAG to do instead of screaming? The answer can't be "nothing", it has to be something!


It can take time to train, but one thing you can try is to give her a foraging item or a new toy every time you walk out of the room. You need to *highly* encourage her to play with her toys and foraging items as much as possible! Essentially, you are teaching her to be independent and not have to rely on being around you all the time.

Another thing, reward, reward, reward desirable noises! If she talks, beeps, whistles or does *any* noise you would prefer to hear over screaming, always reward her for it! (My mitred conure Charlie and I have had "Hello" conversations, which are preferable to him screaming - and if I didn't reply with a "Hello" back, or said something else instead of "Hello", I'd get a scream! So back and forth it's Hello!)




If you are going to try going the ignore route, it's very easy to backfire on you. If you ignore her, you need to be dead silent (and out of sight) until she is quiet for a few seconds. If she can hear you (talking, running water, the creak of the floor boards, etc), it's not going to work. If she goes quiet for even a few seconds, go and reward her!

If you hear her playing with toys (i.e. noisy toys) while you are out of the room, go in and reward her!




Rather than trying to stop undesired behavior, you need to try and replace said undesired behavior with desired behavior. Teach her to do desired behaviors over undesired ones. That is likely to give you the best results, especially when you get a history of reinforcement for those desired behaviors.