IndianRingNeck.com

My husband came home today with a "baby" IRN. The kids have so far named it "Clover" since he's all green!!
My concerns are:
He hasn't had his wings clipped yet so I'm not sure how or when to do that!!
He seems to be okay with me but not my husband. I got bitten a couple times but he drew blood 3x on my hubby's hands.
Is it true that they bond to one person?? My kids are going crazy for this new pet so I'm hoping that at 7 and 9 they'll have a "friend" in Clover too!!
How do I know if he's upset??

I want to raise him right and have a cool pet so any advice given is greatly appreciated!!

Welcome Lori

How old is clover? I would give him some time to settle in for a few days before everyone in the family tries to handle him. He may feel overwhelmed right now. If you socialize clover while he is young, he will be a great family pet. He may have a favorite, but he will be able to, with a treat or two, go to other people without biting. Now...I can't stress the importance of my next statement enough. Please do not clip clovers wings. Most of us here have our birds flighted. There has been a lot of research done on the benefits of flighted pets vs. clipped ones. Your bird will grow up more confident. He will have little or no problems with bluffing or biting. Here is thread on wing clipping

http://www.indianringneck.com/forum/vie ... =2&t=17513

There are other threads as well if you do a search. There are also other members that will chime in here. Claire...where is that article on wing clipping...I couldn't find it.

As you spend more time with your bird you will begin to learn his body language. You have to take things really slow with ringnecks and have a lot of patience. Maybe start with searching the forum for threads on taming and training. Good luck with clover

Welcome and congrats on your beautiful new baby.

When we got our little ringneck he came fully flighted with instructions from the breeder not to clip him until his flight and landings had improved. After a week of research we decided never to clip him and my boyfriend and I are now strong advocates of flighted indoor birds! I was pretty against the idea of clipping his wings anyway, we only considered it because it is the "normal" thing to do.
The some of the benefits of a flighted bird to a person are:
Bird does is own thing
Bird isn't on the floor where you can step on it, mostly.
Bird will fly away when you fail to read it's body language if it's not cornered, rather than bite you.
Bird can get out of the way of children if they get over whelming for it.
Bird is more confident and healthy.
For the bird, this article is my current favourite: http://www.avianweb.com/wingclipping.html

Personally, I find having a flighted bird coming down and landing on me when ever be thinks I'm worthy of attention the greatest compliment. We also have races around the house (he always wins). The kids might enjoy that too.

On saying this, if your household can't adapt to closing doors and windows reliably, with children that could be an issue, a flighted bird may not fit in well.

It is important to let the bird learn to fly well before it is clipped, if you feel you want to clip. I think the article Melissa was referring to is http://theparrotuniversity.com/flight.php

Good bird inc, aka babara hiedenreich, has some great videos on understanding body language as well as training.

And for general parrot wellbeing and family sanity, search foraging on this forum. There is a very good post by ellieeclectrons on the subject with links to the Bible of foraging.

I hope that is useful to you.

Regards,
Claire

I just noticed your other thread and have another reason to add to the flighted birds argument:
Cat and dog. Both will naturally eat any bird they can catch. Flighted birds hang around the perches you put up high. Less chance of disaster.

I thought about having a dog and cat in terms of clipping his wings. I'm more than okay with him flying around so I'll take your advice on this issue. Since we don't often open windows it should not be an issue. I'm hoping to have him well trained and I think the dog won't bother him. I'm sure the cat won't look at him twice!!
As for his age, I just don't know. The breeder we got him from just said he was a baby, but we got his phone number and I'm going to have my husband call him and find out for sure. Right now he's a quiet thing unless he's distressed and then just screams. I'm the only one who seems to be able to calm him down. So I'll spend most of the one-on-one time with him until I can stop the biting habit, then maybe I'll try the kids!!
I'll be searching out training techniques on here today. I'm am so happy that I found this site now!!!! Thanks for all the replies!!

I have three dogs that are quite alright with my birds lol. They've been landed on and walked all over and they barely flinch most of the time.

I can't help you pinpoint his age, but I can at least help you to tell if he's a baby or not. Look at his eyes. Are they solid black? A ringneck 5 months and younger will have solid black eyes. After 5 months around the outer edge of the black the eye will start lightening and will eventually turn to a white ring around the black like the bird at the top of the page. The eye will then be able to dilate.

If he is a baby, the biting is more of a testing at this point. It's great that you're going to leave him flighted because that will help tremendously with that. I'm attaching a thread for you to read about what another of our members went through bringing home a new IRN. It has a lot of good advice in it.

http://www.indianringneck.com/forum/vie ... =2&t=17479

Melissa

Yah! Good choice on the flying. I hope you enjoyed those articles.

About the biting, if you get bitten think about what you did just before the bite occured and see if you can break down what you did. Clover will have a reason, even if it seems obscure to you. Luckily, with younger birds it is generally a reasonably straight forward reason like (please excuse the following anthropomorphisms) "you are invading my space" or "I don't want you to pat me" kind of thing.
Thinking about this will probably help you start noticing the little warning signs that come before a bite too.
Most ringnecks seem to be little stomachs on wings, so you can generally convince them to change their views and overcome their fears with bribery aka positive reinforcement.
There's quite a lot of give and take in training a parrot, and it will train you right back

Hi Lori,

If you haven't figured out the bird's favourite foods, try apple, nuts, and the larger seeds. My bird's #1 right now is all natural peanut butter. Knowing what your bird likes best will be of the utmost importance.

-MissK