Please help me tame my lovebird couple?

[Mrsquidgereen]

My name is Jo, and my lovely lovebird couple's names are Pan (female) and Freddie (male)

Pan is a very curious and rather brave little thing, but also very cocky and prone to bite.

Freddie is more nervous, careful, and easy to scare. He has, however, never once tried to bite.

I got them both when they were 8 months old from the same pet store I got my budgies all those years ago. At this point they were already a couple. At first I had planned on just getting one, but I was told they would do better if they had a friend, so two it was. Both of them were at this point untamed and unused to human interaction.

They are now 2 years old, still not hand tamed, but I'd like to think I've made some progress;

• They chirp and/or call for me when they hear me coming home or when they hear but cannot see me (I make sure to reply every time). Likewise, they also tend to respond when I whistle to them... most of the time.
• When interacting as mentioned above, they often move as close to me as they can get while still in their cage. Sometimes perching on one of their... perches... sometimes straight out clinging to the wall of the cage, trying their hardest to get a glimpse of me if I'm in another room
• They know I'm the one who gives them food and water and has no problems eating right from the bowls as I refill them (seed mix, in case anyone is curious. I have tried several times with fruits and vegetables, but they have yet to show any interest in them). They won't eat out of my had though, nor out of anything they can see my hand holding.
• They seem to relax more easily in my presence than in that of any of my friends or family members, and doesn't usually mind me leaning against their cage or standing mere inches away from them.

As mentioned though, they are still not hand tame and won't go up on my hand/arm/any other body part I offer them. They don'y seem to like my hands much at all, actually, as they shy away or loose their "puffyness" when I raise them to their line of sight. They won't touch or eat from anything they see my hands holding either. I've come close to Pan (the female, if you will remember) several times and she seems genuinely curious, but easily disturbed by her nervous mate Freddie. If Freddie gets freaked out (which he gets often and easily) Pan tends to shy away as well, and then it'll be hours before I can get close to her again without her moving away. In comparison, trying to get close to Freddie with my hands fails almost instantly.

Some people say I should try to separate them and train them that way, but I have no second cage at hand, so that is not an option. Does anyone here know how I can train my couple without separating them?

 

[mangoandtzippy]

Hi

I have a lovebird couple also. The male I rescued (he was an untame aviary bird) and the female is hand reared -I got her as a baby. Neither of them likes hands! Both are tame to the point of hanging out on my body (head, arms, shoulder etc), but neither will let me pick them up. The hand reared female is far tamer and steps up. I have read of other owners saying their lovebirds do not like hands, so it is possible that your birds may never like hands. I accept mine don't and work around it.

A method I have found worked in taming the untame male (Mango) was a long millet spray and a clicker. Because the millet spray is long, when I held it, my hand was far away from him and he could not really see it/notice it. To begin with I just sat with the millet poking into his cage and waited. The key is to not feed any millet spray and to reserve it for this training. Eventually he could not resist and came over. He very nervously would take a quick bite, and as soon as he was biting, I clicked the clicker. That's the start of clicker training - you can eventually move on to target training. The time between me offering the millet and him taking some got shorter. I also made the millet spray shorter very gradually over time so that he was getting closer and closer to my hand when he was taking the millet and I was clicking to highlight that he was getting rewarded (with the millet) for coming nearer me and doing the behaviour I wanted.

Now I have even gotten him to take some sunflower seeds in their shell from my fingers! This has taken me well approximately 18 months to get to this point where he is not nervous of me, will come to me, hangs out on me and will 9 times out of 10 go back in his cage when I tell him to - though he always expects to be out for at least an hour so if I put him back before then, he will muck me around and refuse go in (eventually he gives in and goes in lol!).

I was able to use clicker training to get Mango to step up onto a wooden stick/perch. I have not kept this up - I might start again, but I think maybe for you this might be the best way of getting them up and out of the cage and back in again. If you can get them to the point where they respond to this step up and clicker, eventually they might come on your body if they are flying in a room in your house.