How should I train my uncooperative conure

[Sebastian922]

Hi.

Last Christmas my mother bought me a green cheek conure. I named her Edwina. The first few days she was very fearful of me. But I gave her space and she eventually warmed up to me. I currently have a number of problems with her that I realize were mostly my fault. I have tried researching other problems that people have had with their conure's but no-one seems to be experiencing quite the same problems as me.

I will start by listing off what I think were my 3 biggest mistakes, and will then go into the results of said mistakes.

As I said when I first had her it was during the Christmas break. We didn't have as bad a relationship as we have now, as she actually liked to spend time with me and was interested in participating in things I did. I spent most of my time in my room on my laptop. She liked to climb up onto it and attempt to chew the rubber lining around the screen. I pushed her off of the screen to deter this behavior. I soon discovered that this was not only method that did not work, but she tried even harder to kill my computer. Even worse then that she eventually developed a keen sense as to when my hand was coming up to touch her and flew away every time I did so. The second mistake I made with her was that when she did not want to be put away I would chase her around my room and grab her. I soon discovered though that this is absolutely not an a good thing to do if I wanted her to like me (duh...). I also let her eat out of my plates and bowls. And I believe that this is most horrible of my mistakes, I never trained her, I did teach her to touch the end of a chopstick in exchange for a sunflower seed but that is as far as I got, I never even taught her to step up. I became so frustrated with her that I gave up...

Now for the current problems. She poops literally everywhere. She chews the window frames to bits. She still tries to remove the keys from any keyboard available to her. She is not exactly afraid of my hands but she is very weary of them. For example, sometimes I can coax her into perching on my finger, but when I raise my other hand to pet her she flies away unless my hand retreats. She is completely uncooperative when I try to put her away, and also when I try to train her. She doesn't want to spend anytime with me, she mostly perches on the window and chews its frame to pieces. She also thinks that she can eat whatever she wants out of our food bowls.

That is just about it. I im really desperate to tame her and train her and get her to like me again. I really really love her. I know I've really messed this up. I treated her like one would treat a hamster... please help me.

 

[EnglishMuffin]

I'm no expert with problem birds, but from what I'm reading I think your problem can basically be broken into two main issues: firstly that your bird is destructive and secondly that she is mistrusting.

The first and absolutely most imperative thing is going to be to teach her to step up because it's going to be super hard to work with her at all if she won't step up on command. There are many places on this forum and other places where you can find instructions on how to do this so I won't outline it here.

So problem 1: she is destructive. It's going to be hard to tackle this problem while she won't let you handle her because you need to be able to physically re-direct her when she's chewing on things like window frames etc. I should add that you really have to be careful what you let her chew on because she can easily ingest something (a flake of paint or splinter from the wooden frame) that can kill her.

Take a look at her cage and play area. Does she have plenty of room in her cage? Does she have plenty of toys to play with (aim for 4-5 in a large cage, rotated every 3 days or so. Probably will need 15-25 different toys to keep them rotated and interesting). She may be chewing out of boredom.

If she's properly stimulated, then you need to keep redirecting her from negative chewing and destructive behavior by providing her with bird friendly chewable toys and materials. When she's chewing something that she's not allowed to tell her 'no' firmly but don't make a big drama out of it, and either get her to step up and move her elsewhere, or gently take her beak and move it away. Then provide her with something safe to chew. It's really important to reward her when she's chewing something acceptable. You can tell her she's a good bird and offer her a treat (sunflower seed, nut..whatever her favorite is). It'll be generally helpful in her training to identify what her favorite treat is to use as an incentive.

Problem 2: she doesn't trust you. This is going to be hard to overcome because you've basically taught her this mindset by chasing her around, pushing her etc. She's now been trained to be afraid of your hands and this will be hard to reverse. Especially as she's going to keep doing all these negative behaviors (i won't say naughty because in fact she's not being badly behaved- she's never been shown what good behavior is) while you're trying to build this and it's going to be frustrating for you. Don't lose your patience because one moment of frustration that results in another round of chasing her around the room and grabbing at her is going to set you right back to square one!

Regards getting her to go into her cage- the key is to be prepared for a long battle and don't have her out if you're in a rush. Try luring her in with her favorite treat in her food bowl. Let her go in by herself. When she's locked in and you're about, make a habit of having treats with you and when you walk by her cage, either feed her a treat through the bars (if she'll permit it) or drop it into her food bowl (if she won't). She'll come to associate you approaching with getting a treat and you can use this to start coaxing her to spend more time with you. You've made the first step in touch training so you can continue to build on that.

You may also want to consider having her wings clipped. This is a super controversial topic and there are many valid arguments for and against. People who will argue with me will say that clipping wings basically 'forces' the bird to rely on you and that this can lead to worse long term trust issues. A valid point although I'm not sure I agree with it. I know many people on this forum do clip their birds' wings. I'd say in your case, since she's already so afraid and uncooperative, it might be helpful since she won't be flying away from you every 30 seconds while you're trying to train. It's entirely your decision, of course, but a suggestion to consider. Wings do grow back and it might help overcome this difficult period, so that when she becomes flighted again she'll be more trusting, understand her boundaries and be easier to work with.

 

[Julianna]

I woould approach the issues with the mindset that you are taming a wild bird, because that's how your bird behaves now: wild. She is reacting off of instints, and you have a lot of work ahead of you to hand tame her. It's going to take a lot of time and patience.

I agree with the two problems identified by EnglishMuffin; you have a destructive and distrustful bird. Once you have gained her trust, it will be much easier to stop the destruction, because you will be ablee to interact with and train your bird. EnglishMuffin recommened you start by teaching her how to step up, and this seems like a good first step to me as well. Once she can step up onto your hand and be carried from place to place, she will have regained her trust in you. Target training is another really good way to move birds which are not hand tamed. Look up "how to target train a parrot" and you'll get some good results showing how to do this. Basicaly, it's just teaching your bird to touch the end of a stick, which you said you already taugh her to do. This trick has been invaluable to me in training many other tricks, and you can use it to direct your bird into her cage without ever having to touch her. If this is easier to do than teaching her to step up, you might want to start with this. Training her to target and step up will help her to trust you, especially since you'll be giving her lots of treats as reinforcement during each training session. Once she trusts you enough to be moved around on your hand, you can start working on the chewing problem. She seems to like shredding things, so you'll probably want to get some shreddable toys or her if she doesn't already have some to relplace the things she's not allowed to chew on. If it's possible, I would try to cover or remove all chewable objects from the room where she'll be out, so that there isn't a tempatation for her to chew. This is simpy bird-proofing the room, and I think most every parrot owner does it. Of course, you can't hide everything, so for the things you can't cover or remove, just try to distract her from them and redirect her attenntion to something she's allowed to chew. The same goes for the food bowls. I would just take them out of the room for now, and maybe try reintroducing them when she is better trained in other respects.

No matter what do not give up. Any bird can be trained, no matter how bad the situation may seem, just so long as the trainer is willing to not give up. Do some research on positive reinforcement training, and I think you'll get some good results. Hope this helped, and good luck!