Help-Biting and Drawing Blood

[Spacey'sMom]

Hello all,

I've posted about this before but, while we have come to a somewhat manageable state, the biting is getting out of hand. Please Help!

Our Cockatiel(Sirius) is a bit over a year old now and we have been managing his hormonal behavior the best we can. For context he has latched onto our 2 dogs as a prospective mate. Left to his own devices he will follow them around, talk to them, and has tried to land on them a couple times. In the beginning, he would guard places where he could be close to them. We have blocked off any areas he started to guard and rearranged a lot of things to help prevent this and use a feather cat toy to shoo him off of/away from things rather than our hands.. This seems to have helped with him guarding certain places or areas but now its arguably worse.

Luckily he seems to have stopped his aggression towards me altogether(female) but he is truly harsh on my husband. Any time the dogs try to interact with my husband he will go absolutely crazy. If my husband is standing or moving he will fly onto his shoulder and bite anything he can reach especially his ears and neck. If my husband offers a hand he will bite that too. To try and prevent him from even landing we hold up our hands flat, palm out to try and give him nowhere to bite but he still gets him sometimes and pretty badly. If the dogs come up to my husband when he's sitting at his desk he will fly down to him and bite him even if my husband is doing nothing and not interacting back. He's bleeding nearly every day at this point and there's been no signs of improvement in the months since this started.

What we've tried:

-Removing possible nesting areas/places he is guarding
-Shoo him away when he's latching on and trying to court the dogs
-Separating him from us and the dogs when he exhibits the courting behavior
-Separating him from us and the dogs when he is trying to bit my husband
-Moved his bedtime cage(different floor than the main daytime area)
-Strict Daytime/Nighttime cycles (approximately 8 hours of out of the cage time and the rest is dark or muted light time)

Its consistently been at a point where I have to physically guard my husband with the little feather toy to prevent Sirius from attacking him. Especially during feeding time when the animals follow us around waiting to be fed. Sirius goes nuts and never stops until we are sitting down and the dogs are out of sight or laying down quietly somewhere. We can't safely leave the dogs outside for long periods of time due to the makeshift fence and it wouldn't be fair to them anyway.

As long as everything is calm and quiet or the dogs are elsewhere he reverts back to his normal. ITs heart breaking because he loves my husband. I will take the dogs with me into our bedroom and leave the birds with my husband sometimes. Sirius will spend hours sitting with him, begging for pets, and loves to whistle with him. The minute a dogs comes into sight he will tear into my husband and continue to do so for several minutes even after they are out of sight again. Nothing we have tried has made any difference.

Even if this is normal Cockatiel puberty, is there anything we can do to discourage the biting? Even when he protests about something like sanding his nails he's never bitten down like this.

In general we're willing to weather this if we know there is an end in sight(I know there will be hormonal times like this throughout his life) but as it stands, I am 7 months pregnant with our first baby due the end of November. What if he starts behaving like this towards the baby? We can keep them separate while she's an infant and can't move much on her own but what about when she's a toddler? I'm afraid this will continue and our only option will be to leave him shut up for huge parts of the day which is unfair to him.

We eventually plan to move and have a designated bird room when they could safely be out but our house is small and we don't have anywhere safe to leave them unattended outside of their cages. Moving is still at least a couple years away. We have mosquito screens and curtains dividing our first floor and we shoo him to one side when he is acting up but that's about the best we can do right now.

P.S. Magnet Mosquito screens are great as a back up barrier by the doorways.

TLDR: How can we manage/teach our hormonal cockatiel to stop biting so hard he draws blood.

HELP

 

[Spacey'sMom]

I would separate the bird area and dogs area. Don't allow them out in the same room at the same time. I wouldn't "shoo" him as that can encourage aggression, I would try distracting with with his favorite toy or veggie snack. Sometimes talking, singing or whistling is enough of a distraction.
You could also try increasing his night time to 12 hours, I've heard that helps with mating behaviors and hormones.
When Otto ( budgie) was going through that phase, I found when he bit me, I set him down on the floor ( I have no other pets or ppl) so he was safe and sit with my back to him and not say anything. He learned very quickly he liked the attention and when he bit me he didn't get attention. Now when he starts to bite, I firmly say, "Kisses only." and if he bites I repeat above the ignoring him for a minute.

But I think keeping the dogs separate from your bird when he's out of his house you will see a big improvement.

Others will give better advice. This is just what works with my bird. Good luck!

Like I said we don't really have much of another option. We make the dogs lay down and sleep in there beds during bird hours but we can't safely leave them outside. The first floor is just a big donut with no doors to truly shut birds or dogs out/in. All we have are the curtains and if the dogs try to follow us, even if they poke their head in and we send them out immediately, that's enough to trigger that response.

I should also mention that for about 10 days last month I was house sitting for my in-laws and brought the dogs with me. Sirius would see them for maybe a minute all day so I could say good night to to the birds and would immediately start terrorizing my husband. He was fine all day long. It is only when he sees the dogs moving around and no other time.

As for shooing him away, I'm not sure what else to do. He doesn't bite me anymore but he won't let me pick him up either. He flies away regardless and if my husband were to do it he would tear into his hand and not let go(happened multiple times). We try to take away the attention by moving him to one side of the donut away from us when he exhibits those behaviors but we've been doing this for 2 months or so now.

Also we are not trying to interact with him when he does this. He will be on a perch playing and my husband will walk to the kitchen and he will fly to him to attack him. Its not like he's asking for attention at that point. We know what to look for and when he doesn't want attention but this isn't us pressuring him. He's going out of his way to bully my husband.

As it stands he barely eats and only occasionally plays with a toy. When this first started we tried doing step-up and target training but he wants nothing to do with anything else when he's in baby rage monster mode.

Currently they are caged from about 7-7:30PM until about 11:00 AM. Lights out is about 9PM-10AM.