I bought my first ever bird yesterday and he is a Green Indian Ringneck Parrot. He is about 1 year old and very frightened of everyone. I have named him Mullaya - which is an aboriginal word for companion/friend.
I would appreciate any help I could get for learning how to tame him - I believe that he was not hand raised - I have looked on the internet etc for hints and tips but I would really like to be able to ask direct questions etc........can anyone help me?
Thank you so much for the reply - and your offer of help.
The first thing I want to do is have Mullaya not be scared of me when I go near him. The pet shop owner told me to just place my hand in his cage very often - but not try to touch him - and eventually he will learn to trust me, but when I do this he goes berserk and flaps around the cage and bends all of his tail feathers (they look really silly now!)
So I read something on here yesterday about leaving the cage door open when cleaning out the cage and putting some food on top of the cage so I did that in the Laundry (so I didn't have far to chase him if I needed to) and he had a great time sitting on the venetian blinds. He still didn't want me near him but he even wolf whistled once!! I can't believe he did that though.... I also think that his previous owner used to say 'pretty boy' to him because when I said it he calmed down and looked like he was listening to me.
Am I doing the right thing or do you have any tips for me? I just want to calm him down and let him know that he can trust me before I think about teaching him tricks etc... Thanks, Liana
Hi Liana
Mullaya will be fine you have to be patient IRN,S are totally different than puppies or other animals in the way they do what they want when it suits them when they want to entertain themselves they will do something that you have done many many times.
Repitation is the key and the major thing ive found is timeing do the same thing each day and time of day with food.
You are like i was excited and trying to get him to accept you he will but only on his terms when you get up of a morning do the same thing exactly the same thing every morning let him hear you make toast and then cut a small piece of with jam (our bird likes strawberry) go to the cage and say the same thing every morning to him but when appraoching the cage dont make any fast or abrupt moves IRN,s are extremely wary of fast movement be slow and deliberate as a breeder told me small steps are the best and lots and lots of repitition.
Find out what food he likes e.g pineapple any fruit and let him see you eat and once again same time every day. Then he thinks you him a part of the flock.As far as your hand in the cage goes start small feed him through the cage then open the cage door but only after many visits.To give you some idea of the personalities of these birds i hand rared ours and somtimes he will get on my hand and sometimes he wont , sometimes he will even try and take a nipi think its a male male thing whereas my wife has never been nipped he just runs away from her when she wantss him to do something he doesent want to.
Thanks for your advice. I found he likes to eat apple and corn. but he eats so much! I'm worried he might eat too much and be overweight or something bad might happen.
Things are slow but i've let him out of the cage on several occasions and my mother and i began wearing leather gloves and approaching Mullaya to see if he'd trust us enough to stand on our finger or not. He was a little hesitant, and a little stressed, but in the end, he willing stood on my finger and has done so three or four times after.
But i'm still concerned as he is very territorial and is nasty when i go near the cage, and he still panic's when i put my hand in the cage to feed him. (Oh and i tried feeding him toast with rasberry jam and all he did was pick it up and drop it with out even trying it. so far he's done that 3 times, -with different jam- so i gave up).
Also, i'm not quite sure what sex he is. The pet store said male, but they also said he was anywhere between 1 yr and 2 yrs old, but the ring on his neck is supposed to be a colour other than green if he's male right?
Either way i figure Mullaya can be a male's or female's name, but i'd still like to know . . .
Now that i've returned to school it's hard to do things at a specific time, but i'm trying my best.
Is there something i'm doing wrong? Or am i on the right track?
