New IRN need help!

[IndyGirl]

Hello Everybody!

I just got my very first IRN 3 days ago.. I have never had a bird before, i just admired the intelligence of the IRN and thought it would be a good first bird for me. Welllll needless to say... I NEED HELP!!!

First of all, I had to travel to California to get my bird because I could NOT find any breeders or any pet shops that carried these birds in my state! I asked the woman at the pet shop where I bought my cage and she said they don't carry them because they are hard to tame and once they pick their person, that’s it. They can't be tamed by anybody else. SO I decided to get a 2 month old IRN that had still needed to be handfed so at least it would get to know me. Well that didn't work out, and I ended up with a 4 month old Green IRN who I have appropriately named “Indy”.

So the day I brought Indy home, I put her in her new cage immediately since I felt she had a 16hr drive in a medium birdcage, she was probably more than a little bid stressed out. She let me take her out of the cage and only gave me soft bites when I put her in the big new cage…SO the next day I went to take her out and she screamed at me and bit me both soft & harder bites. So I ignored her, since that is what I have read to do, and got her out of the cage & put her on the play top. I have tired to get her to eat apples, carrots, peppers, etc…she doesn’t seem to want food at all! The only time I have EVER hear a peep from her is when she is screaming when I am trying to catch her. I keep trying but she runs away and bites. I know most females go through a “bluffing” stage right after they have been weaned. Does that sound like what’s happening here? I just feel like I am scaring her by trying to handle her since she is running away and clearly is scared of being handled.

What are there steps I should take to tame her? Am I doing the right things? And lastly, what types of food should I be rewarding her with since she doesn’t seem at all interested in what I have offered her? Any info would help, I have been trying to find the answers be reading everybody else’s posts but there’s a lot of info on here!! Thanks a lot!

Also, she’s all green but her longest tail feather is bright turquoise, which I have never seen in pictures of IRN’s. Are any color variations normal?

[Jim]

First, congratulations on your new bird.

The most important thing is patience. Three days isn't much time for the bird to get acclimated to her new surroundings and it's perfectly normal for her to be very wary of you right now. For the next few days, try some very low key things that don't involve you trying to catch her. Spend some time next to her cage just talking to her and offer her some treats through the bars. Birds can be maddening in their preferences for treats so finding a favorite (pumpkin's a big hit with my IRN's) is usually a trial and error process.

Two pretty good books that cover taming and training in a comprehensive manner are "My Parrot, My Friend" and "Parrot Training: A Guide To Taming and Gentling Your Avian Companion", both written by Bonnie Munro Doane.

And again...Patience. Patience. Patience.

Jim

[Amazonite]

First of all, most greens have the blue tail so its still a normal green.

Males and Females both go though the bluffing stage, at 4mths old you cant tell if the IRN is male or female.

Take time 3 days isnt long at all and you need to have time for your new friend, sit next to the cage and talk and hold food though the bars to start with.

[ryelle]

I think we left Spit alone for a week before we tried to get close to his cage and feed him new things, and i wouldnt have dreamed of trying to handle him, even if he was completely tame. They have to get used to their new cages, new perches, new toys, new people, new sounds, a completely different environment to what theyve been living in the past couple of months. Once he wasnt so skittish about loud noises or us moving past his cage, thats when we started to move closer and tried talking to him. the only time we placed our hands inside his cage was when we changed his food and water. if he flipped out we backed off for ten minutes and tried again. once he stopped flipping out and just stayed, terrified, at the back of his cage we tried to win him over by putting food in the bars of his cage. when he was used to that, we kept out hand on the food. took between two and four weeks for him to be completely sure of taking food from our hands outside the cage. this is with a 1yr old untame irn but if i had another one that was younger id probably do the same.

i do similar with my rats too because they are just terrified babys when you first get them