My Alex has started to bite, why??

[sean080181]

Morning all, well this morning my Alex decided it was time to start biting me. We did our tricks/treats as usual then he wouldnt "step up" but kept lunging at me biting progressively harder! In the end I offered him my hand with sleeve pulled down and he hopped on. Any reasons why he is doing this now?? He is normally very placid and gentle.

[JoaoPt]

have same problem/situation... , its a phase that is going on....

and the bites are very hard...

[sean080181]

Well mine has now developed into refusing to step up onto my bare hand, does all his other tricks but won't do this just bites hard?? So confused

[dholari]

mine is around 6 months old and keeps biting but not too hard (thankfully) , he has increased the frequency of late with pinning the eyes to show he is angry - i read in our forums (thanks to the good souls around) that a clenched fist will not give a chance to bite - it really helped and if he is in the mood to step up he will come onto the hand .. another tip is to first talk to the bird for a minute or two and then get him to step ..
that also works most of the time
third tip is to see the moods = fluffed up feathers , pinned yes - big no no - he is not in the moods

hope that helps

[ellieelectrons]

For things your bird really doesn't like doing, I like to reserve a special uber (high value) reward. Mine don't like "going to bed"... so I reserve Janey's fav treat for going back to her cage. It's either a bit of banana or a flake of a muesli bar. If she's still into these treats, she will always go voluntarily back to her cage whereas if I offered her one of her more regular treats such as a sunflower seed she'd be less likely to do it.

Ellie.

[sean080181]

Thank you for your help, will sure give it a go!!!

[ellieelectrons]

Hi Sean

I should also add that for me, the uber rewards stuff goes hand in hand with foraging... since her treats are now harder for her to get when she is in her cage, she is more likely to want to take food from me... back in the days before foraging she would sometimes bite me for trying to give her food when she didn't want it. If you haven't seen the foraging information before, here are links to it:
http://www.indianringneck.com/forum/vie ... 01&p=69400
http://www.indianringneck.com/forum/vie ... =4&t=13466
http://www.parrotenrichment.com/ - this site has some free ebooks to download

I've also learned that with Janey, I can usually get her to do anything she knows how to do if I have the right food reward unless she's over-excited (eg. my hubby is in the room or she's found a cool place to try to nest) or she's scared (eg. the fix-it man is outside, they're at the vet). If she's over-excited or scared, I usually need to wait until she settles down and try again.

I also used to wave treats in her face for ages thinking she didn't understand what I was offering or what I wanted her to do... but I now know, she knows exactly what I'm asking... and if she doesn't jump at it, then the reward I'm offering just isn't the right thing for her at the moment.

... and one final thing for you to consider... the way I do it works for me... but it's not the ideal way to work with birds. The best way to do it is to have the treats hidden so they never know what they are going to get. This has never worked for me... my birds usually wait to see what's on offer before they'll do something they don't want to do. It's probably because I haven't trained them correctly from the beginning... it's probably not the best way of training. Barbara Heidenreich also does the jackpot or uber reward but she offers it as a surprise every so often when she's training her birds... so it's like they never know when that cool thing they've longed for will be on offer... this is way better than what I do if you can manage it.

Ellie.