First GCC + Feeling Hopeless :(

[andreoshka]

Hello! I adopted Loretta, my first GCC, the other day. The old owner said she thinks she's between 4 and 6 months old. She came from a house with a lot of kids and a lot of chaos, so I don't know if that has something to do with the problems I'm having. Namely, the fact that my hands, arms, and neck look like hamburger meat from her biting.

Loretta bites the stuffing out of me if I get my fingers anywhere near her. It seems like most biting training I see out there is step up related, but I can't even get her to do that without biting. She has no problem climbing up my arm and hanging out on my shoulder, but once there she likes to bite my neck as well.

I've read forum post after forum post and watched endless YouTube videos. I've tried to avoid aggressive techniques. I have tried covering her up with a towel and putting her in her cage when she bites, putting her on the ground, and blowing wind in her face, among other things. She just won't stop biting any inch of skin she comes in contact with, fingers or otherwise!

I know it's only a couple days in, but I feel like a failure. I'm determined to work hard to train her, but with so much conflicting information out there (and no results yet), I feel like I'm never going to know what will work. Should I just leave her alone for a while and stick with hand feeding through the bars? Should I try more aggressive techniques like "earthquaking"? Should I clip her wings? Do I just have a mean bird? Any insight you have would be great. Thank you!

 

[Kendar]

Treats, step up, patience. It took Loki almost an entire year to fully trust me, and at least 6 months to step up without biting. Patience is a must!

Sent from my LG-H831 using Tapatalk

 

[Scott]

Welcome to the forums, thanks for joining. Hopefully we can collectively help you bond with your GCC with minimal injury!

A caveat; I am not familiar with GCCs. From your description it may be best to back-off a bit and allow at least a week of low-stress time for her to acclimate and feel safe in a new home. Did you have plenty of time to interact before purchasing? Just wondering if you are seeing a marked change of behavior once home.

During the training hiatus, give treats through the bars and see if she'll willingly exit the cage. Try reading a story, the newspaper, etc and watch the reaction.

Perhaps you've already read these threads?

http://www.parrotforums.com/general-parrot-information/49144-tips-bonding-building-trust.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/general-parrot-information/3100-bond-forming.html
http://www.parrotforums.com/macaws/56384-big-beak-o-phobes-guide-understanding-macaw-beaks.html (while macaw-themed, much of it applies to any bird!)

 

[andreoshka]

Thank you for your help, everyone! I really do just need to be patient, I think. It's not my best trait! I definitely could work on bonding more. Thank you!

 

[Flboy]

Absolutely, for now back off, your baby has learned some bad habits that need to be redirected! Do not challenge her with negative discipline, this really is counterproductive with a green cheek!
Read and reread this thread .
http://www.parrotforums.com/training/57935-brainstorming-biting-parrots.html

Also, remember you basically have a miniature Macaw, so most anything said about them also applies to your baby!

 

[DerTier]

patience. Patience patience and hard work. These guys are their own person and they let you know it. The poor thing also sounds terrified.

We are a zillion times bigger than they are, and coming from a setup with chaos and kids, hands are likely the LAST THING she wants to see and experience right now.

Clicker training helps build confidence and also helps build trust.

Routines are great for birds, definitely get a set schedule for the way you interact with the bird.

With birds it seems you have to progress more slowly because trust is much harder to earn from a bird.

 

[greytness]

It takes awhile for a bird to become used to a new owner and new surroundings. As others have said, you must be patient. Read her cues and proceed slowly. Sit next to her cage and talk softly to her. I even sing to my fids, which seems to help. Doesn't matter what you sound like; they love hearing the melodies.
Let her come to you on her own terms. Have her favorite treats ready. Mine get a sunflower seed kernel as a special treat.

 

[Skittys_Daddy]

Whenever I have gotten a new bird that is untamed/untrained, I always take at LEAST a few days or as much as a week or two to allow the new bird to acclimate to the surroundings. Once I feel that has happened, I start to work on finger taming.

One thing you could try is ensuring there isn't a lot of chaos or excessive noise. Sudden noises, excess noise will startle parrots and when they are startled- they fight back.

It's WAAAY to soon to see any real signs of progress. On the positive side, if she is less than 6mos old, then retraining her is going to be a LOT easier than if she were 6yrs old.

I was fortunate with Skittles. He was adored by the pet store clerks and they constantly interacted with him. Even teaching him to make 'kissy noises' and potty-training him. He took right to me and his new surroundings. But I think his brainwashing me into buying him had something to do with it too. Seriously though, I've never lucked out like that before. I've had birds where it took months (and in a few cases over a year) to retrain.

Luckily, the behavioral problems I had with Skittles were caused by me- knowing what I was doing wrong made resolving it easier. I was always letting him have his way and whatever he wanted. Never set limits or anything. Basically, he was becoming a spoiled brat. Once I stopped that and created firm limits and boundaries, things greatly improved.

I cannot stress enough how important patience is. If you are stressed out when you are trying to train her, she WILL pick up on it and go into a defensive mode (animals have amazing instinct). You need to be calm and relaxed first in order to get her to be calm and relaxed.

Consistency is also INCREDIBLY important. Once you set up a routine or a particular line of training- stick with it and be disciplined in your implementation of it. Any diversion from it will confuse your bird and the training will backfire.

Good luck and glad you found us!

 

[keakea]

Definitely, in my opinion, you should clip her wings.(Clipping makes them more docile, just wrap her in a towel...she will not be happy!!) Then leave her alone for a few days but talk to her from across the room and when you feed her. After a few days start sitting by her and talk softly to her but don't try to touch her or pick her up. Gradually try and offer her a raw sunflower seed without the shell and see if she will take it from you without biting. Continue talking but not touching and gradually the bird will want you. At that point you will be able to use treats to get the bird to go on your finger without biting. This is the method that worked for me with my Green Cheek because he was very nippy at first. Of course, all birds are different but I would try and see if this works. When I adopted one of my Goffins she was acting wild and crabby. I wrapped her in a towel and clipped her and it was the turning point in our relationship right off the bat. She became much more receptive and docile allowing me to get closer to her.

 

[T00tsyd]

Hi I am in almost the same position. I am being bitten so I look like a war victim. I can only guess that his early life was not ideal. So I have reduced out time and talk to him all the time. Then when he is out I look like I live in the Arctic. I wear a wooly hat to cover my ears, a scarf to cover all my neck and gloves so he can't chew my fingers.

We have been together now for about 4 weeks so he's now about 17 weeks old and he goes from sweetie to a devil. Bless him it's been all change from cage to food so I understand that he needs time. At least now he will snuggle and play and ends up nipping fabric rather than me. I use a spare perch for step up practice and he will fly to me happily but at least I can stay calm when he attacks and get him back in the cage without a scene.

I also notice that he is worse when tired so I am trying to keep a tight reign on his routine, just like a baby. I'm a rookie with bird care and he's my first bird so forgive me if I am mistaken. I am just recounting what works for me so far. I'm sure patience and baby steps is the answer. I introduced him to his travel cage today so I can get him to the vet's soon for a general check up. He freaked! I just hope I can train him to it before he really needs one.

 

[BoomBoom]

I don't recommend wing clipping, especially as a mood modifier. Flightless birds are actually more frustrated which can lead to more mood issues and aggression. They also lose their outlet for exercise which is very important for captive birds. Boomer, my sun conure, had a bad biting phase when he was 3 to 4 years old. I tried many incorrect methods that I learned from the internet. I'll share below so you know what did NOT work for me:

1) Rock my hand or shoulder that he's perched on so he loses balance. As you know, they call this earthquake. This did nothing but teach him to distrust my hand or bite my neck for dear life.
2) Make an angry face, say no and lightly tap his beak. This just made him angrier.
3) Spray bottle. Embarrassed that I even tried this, granted I only did very sparingly. This was bad. Even though it doesn't hurt the bird, it's disrespectful and combative. He ended up hating the spray bottle.
4) Locking up in the cage briefly. He just kept screaming and being angry. It was frustrating for both of us. This did not work at all.


The best advice I received and what worked for me 100% was the separation tactic: When a bite occurred, I calmly said 'No biting.' I'd take him back to any available perch in the living room (usually this is his window-side or cage-side perch). I'd walk out of the room whilst telling him to 'Stay.' I'd close the door behind me and spend time in the bedroom. This allowed me to calm down (very important) and taught him that in a way he'd understand - that aggressive biting means I'm going away. To a bonded bird, this has a lot of impact. Depending on the severity of the bite, I may stay 30 mins to up to 2 hours (I don't mind this since my pc is in the bedroom). I come back, and allow him to fly back to me. He is a lot nicer at this point, and I've calmed down from the bite. I repeated this as often as I had to until he got it. It took 4 weeks to see results. The frequency lessened exponentially over the following months.

Now in the case of your bird, there is a missing key element, that is the bond. You will have to build this first in order to move forward. Forming bonds take the longest but also the most rewarding. Various trick training can accelerate it. The only training I did with Boomer was flight recall training. The bond came naturally overtime as I fed him, played with him, took care of him etc. Aggressive biting was the most frustrating and unnerving challenge for me as a parront. Patience was vital. Understand that it may still happen on occasion and that's perfectly okay. Our parrots are still wild at heart so unpredictability is an ever-present element in our relationship with them.

Shout out to Kalidasa from the forums for helping me understand the effectiveness of this simple technique. Many others on this forum helped me too. I'll be forever grateful. I'm sharing with you so that hopefully it helps your situation too (and anyone else who finds this post in the future). I wish you be best of luck. You can do it!

 

[snowflake311]

The younger the nippier Some out grow it but it takes time and training. I try and type with with a conure nipping at my fingers. Its all love and play with my little brat who is a year old.

I can not stop the nips so am teaching what is pressure training. teach him what is too hard it helps but his nips are still annoying. you need a bit of pain tolerance when owning a bird. If the nips don't bother you the pointy nails will. When parrot nails get that needle point it is worst than a bite my hands are all marked up from pointy nails.

When the bird gets to know you and you teach it what you like and do not like they get better. Mine will try and preen my neck but it turns into a pinch mine also LOVEs to grab my ear. He is getting more gentle with training. I make a sounds like I am hurt and he stops just like if he makes his scared ow sound I stop what I am doing. He only makes that sound if i hit a pin feather.

 

[gracebowen]

I also dont recommend clipping. It took my GCC months to get used to me. I noticed i could touch him at night so every night id give him a brief scritch. One day he came to me and started nibbling my arm with his head down. I figured out he wanted touched and after that he wanted scritches every day.

He escaped a few weeks ago and im still looking for him.

 

[Josiegirl]

Have you made any progress? It can be very defeating. Don't give up.

 

[Jottlebot]

Please don't clip! It just makes my heart drop. I know it's very common in some places, but I just don't believe removing an animals ability to be mobile is better for them psychologically or physically. If a bird is more docile it might just be "learnt helplessness" rather than obedience or calmness. Kind of like keeping a bird in the dark because it's quieter, it doesn't mean it's happy and relaxed. This is just my opinion though, I am well aware of that and people passionately defend the decision to clip and that wasn't even what you asked about!...

It is so disheartening when you're getting bitten. I had a wonderful relationship with my Alex and then he started to bite and I wept!!!

The good news though is she's communicating with you. She's not happy about something and she's able to make that clear! As long as the behaviour doesn't start to be reinforced you can trust that it's honest. I would also guess that time is the key factor here. You're also getting close enough to get bitten rather than her just throwing herself to the floor and going berserk when you get close. You can start to build a bond from where you are.

I look forward to hearing how you get on!

 

[Jottlebot]

Please don't clip! It just makes my heart drop. I know it's very common in some places, but I just don't believe removing an animals ability to be mobile is better for them psychologically or physically. If a bird is more docile it might just be "learnt helplessness" rather than obedience or calmness. Kind of like keeping a bird in the dark because it's quieter, it doesn't mean it's happy and relaxed. This is just my opinion though, I am well aware of that and people passionately defend the decision to clip and that wasn't even what you asked about!...

It is so disheartening when you're getting bitten. I had a wonderful relationship with my Alex for about 3 weeks and then he started to bite and I wept!!!

The good news though is she's communicating with you. She's not happy about something and she's able to make that clear! As long as the behaviour doesn't start to be reinforced you can trust that it's honest. I would also guess that time is the key factor here. You're also getting close enough to get bitten rather than her just throwing herself to the floor and going berserk when you get close. You can start to build a bond from where you are.

I look forward to hearing how you get on!

 

[AnimaliaPrime]

My baby GCC (5.5 months old now) also came from a house of chaos. She was 3 months old when I got her and the breeder's house was VERY small and she had a teenager, a 6 year old, 2 large adult breeding dogs, puppies, at least 4 cockatoos and large macaws and a few breeding pairs of Quakers, plus a dozen or more baby sun and green cheek conures (she buys the eggs and hatches and raises them). It was LOUD and the time I visited, all the babies were flying all over.
My baby, Piper, was the last one of her clutch to come home and she got a lot of attention from the 6year old--sometimes unsupervised from what I understand. She was a little hand shy when I got her, but not really biting hard. I left her in/on her cage for a couple days--got her out on my hand and a little by my desk, near her cage. The way I "gentled" her was singing to her. I sang Disney songs, broadway show tunes, etc. And I also made a "playlist" for her and played her music several times per day, whenever I wasn't in the room. Whenever she's going to be alone in the bird room for more than a half hour, I play her music. She LOVES it. Right away when I got her, when I was singing to her, she would want to come closer--which made teaching "step up" a total breeze. If she gets startled and lands on the floor across the room, I'll start singing and she'll usually run right towards me so I can pick her up. Music may really soothe the savage beast! It's worth a try.

 

[Skittys_Daddy]

I don't recommend clipping either. I don't buy into the theory that a clipped bird is more easy to tame or train. I think a lot of people find its easier for them to control their bird, but that doesn't make taming any easier. If anything, I think it'd be harder. If the bird can't fly, they can't escape danger and are much more likely to be nippy.

There are far more effective and healthy ways to tame and train.

 

[GaleriaGila]

andreoshka...
You're already our hero for giving this little bird a real chance in life. You sound like a wonderful soul. You too, TOOtsyd.

I have reduced biting to almost zero over the decades... not because I've changed the bird, but I have changed me. And a lot of that has involved giving up on a lot of my desires/expectations. After years of battle, I surrendered. I don't do stuff that gets me bitten. I don't scratch his head much, ever... tail is okay. I NEVER do stuff that makes him mad... I don't touch others when he's out; I rarely try to get him to step up onto my hand first. Hand-held perch first, then hand. In some ways, I swallow my disappointment at having such a little monster for a pet, but he is what he is. I ALWAYS wear my hair down when he's on my shoulder, so all he can bite is hair. Really, I don't involve hands much... he doesn't like them. He seems to think the real ME is my head, perched on a weird moveable tree with questionable appendages. Since he's fully flighted, the ONLY way I get him into the cage is to toss a chile pepper in and he flaps in after it.
My advice... listen to and try all the good advice you'll get here. Don't surrender until you know you've done your best. Then just accept and love whatever/whoever your bird turns out to be.
My darling is kind of a worse-case scenario, but we have it all worked out between the two of us.
Hang in there, and... I'm glad you're joining us!