Very Confused

[tayloraj23]

Ok, My husaband and I are arguing about something, and I thought I would get ya'lls opinion. Does carrying your bird on your shoulder stimulate them sexually. A vet told this to us, and now he wont carry either one of our birds on his shoulder, so they now want nothing to do with him. I dont think its true, cause they dont act like they are being stimulated, but maybe Im wrong. We share the resposibilities of caring for both birds, but Faith our conure was more attached to him, and now she bites him everytime he tries to pick her up. I would really appreciate some advice. Thanks.

[Bird crazy]

Only thing I can comment on is the shoulder. Only thing I ever read was it was a dominance thing for birds to be as high as you are.
Whoever is tallest or highest is dominant. So maybe the conure is mad to have lost it's place in the heirarchy and is trying to reestablish it's place.

Hope it gets better.

Sue and Nila

[Mikaela]

Its a dominance thing, not sexual. This is why we teach:

If a bird doesnt come and go easily from your shoulder, it isnt near trained well enough to be there. A bird that flees to your shoulder ESPECIALLY needs to be taught NO shoulder. The bird is ruling you.

We dont take this seriously enough. Its all fun and games til someone loses an eye.

Baby is trained through and through, from the inside out and I still dont allow him there because it just simply instills an attitude of dominance over me and I wont have it.

[Dani03]

Most of the time it is a dominance thing...perching higest means the safest. Now there have been studies that prove that bird flocks do NOT have a 'leader' but are simply pairs of birds that 'hang out' with each other so then the whole 'dominance' thing be not right

We don't know everything that goes through our fids minds...but I know that I refused to have Prinny on my shoulder until I completely trusted her...I didn't want to loose an ear or chunk of nose...

Dani

[tayloraj23]

Ok, thanks for the info. We dont have a problem with that, both of our birds come to the hand when we tell them too, while they are on our shoulder. I just couldnt figure out how it could stimulate them sexually while on the shoulder. So if they are good about comming when told, then I should have nothing to worry about right?

[Mikaela]

Absolutely... if you like your bird on your shoulder and he steps up and down when asked Let that Baby have all the shoulder time he wants.

Personally, I cant stand a damn bird on my shoulder. Aggravates the hell out of me.