IndianRingNeck.com

We have just acquired a 1 yr old female, blue Indian Ring Neck. Her name is Zowey.
Although we have had IRNs many, many years ago, I joined this group looking for some advise with Zowey.

Although she is not really shy with people, she is petrified of fingers. She has no problem with hands that have concealed fingers but she will bite (I mean bite!) fingers viciously. She has no problem with faces...arms, ears, etc. She has a hard time "stepping up" because she is so afraid of the fingers. She will (however) in a desperate situation climb on the fingers to get to your shoulder. If for example she ends up on the floor after a failed flight. Then she will hop eagerly on the finger to get to your shoulder. If you present her with the same helping finger once on the shoulder she will immediately bite.

We are trying slowly but persistent "tickle-tickle" motions with the finger at her beak. Is there any other good approaches to rid her of this nasty habit?
We don't know much else about Zowey....she seems to be in very good health.. She eats well, she is generally happy and of course noisy. We've not had her very long so we have not earned her trust yet.

But its important for us to rid her of this bad habit.
Thanks for any help and suggestions.

Vic

cadmanof50s

The Idea is to have your Bird come to trust you and that is achieved by having Daily trust and bond building sessions.
By using the following method you are showing your bird you want to be their friend and have no intention to do harm and food is a great motivator.

Do not stick your hand into their cage. This is an invasion of their territory, big no no After all how would you feel if someone just walked into your house or room un-invited. Also watch the eyes, if the eyes are pinned then I would not put my hand near the bird as the bird could be over excited or aggressive, either way you will most likely be bitten.

If your bird bites you, do not yell, scream, cry, jump around or put on a show. The bird will see it as a great show and will be encouraged and reinforced to continue biting. This becomes unwanted reinforced behavior or learned biting. The best thing to do is ignore it no matter how much it hurts. Leaving the room can work. Showing your displeasure on your face and saying no in a tone of voice that also conveys your Displeasure. but you don't need to yell.

Anyway, first you need to find out what your bird's favorite food is. I suggest that you put around five different foods on a plate.
These can be a couple of sun flower seeds, pumpkin seeds, corn kernels, pine seeds and a couple balls of millet. watching, see which one he eats first. This will be their favorite food. Now that you know, you use this food as a training treat and you use it only for training.

With the clicker and millet in the same hand and with your other hand, make it into a pistol.
Focus the bird attention onto the millet and then bring the pistol hand up very slowly to the feet of the bird.
Your finger must be parallel to the perch and level with the bird's feet. Don't touch the bird.
Don't remove your pistol hand from this position.
Now move the millet so it out of reach of the bird. The bird will have to step forward to get to the millet. Therefore stepping up onto finger.
At first don't expect the bird to step up onto and/or stay on your finger at first and there is a possibility you could get bitten then again you might not.
Do this for 10 to 15 minutes then wait 20 to 30 minutes and repeat this method again at least 7 to 8 times that day.
You will need to continue doing this daily to reinforce the behavior of stepping up.

TIP if the bird doesn't take the training treat within 15 to 20 seconds. don't click the clicker and remove the treat from the bird's sight for 5 to 10 seconds, then re-offer the bird the training treat.

Of course there is the possibility that you might not achieve the results for each stage session just continue that part of this method . I achieved results in three days with Bluey but I spent a lot of time with Bluey to achieve these results.

Remember not to force the bird. The idea is to train the bird to do what you want without force. Every interaction you have with your bird is a trust and bond building session and always finish any interaction on a positive.

Of course it's up to you how you train your bird but over the years I have used many methods some good, some bad. but found this method achieves excellent results in a short time. But like anything worth achieving, you need to apply time.
If you want to build trust and bond with your bird then you must use some type of reward system whether it's food or vocal praise.
alternative methods which don't use reward system take a very long time, lack in clear communications between you and your bird, giving results that will be mediocre at best.