IndianRingNeck.com

10 Steps to a Better Relationship with Your Bird

By Liz Wilson, CVT

1. Ensure your companion bird is healthy by doing annual check ups and routine diagnostics with your experienced avian veterinarian. Since birds hide the obvious signs of illness, allowing basic annual testing is critical to the early detection of medical problems.

2. Ensure your companion bird is consuming a good diet. This is critical to the proper functioning of its immune system and increases its potential for a healthy life, as well as eliminating nutrition based problem behaviors, such as some cases of feather destruction.

3. Ensure your companion bird lives in a sufficiently large cage, allowing it lots of room for exuberant wing flapping exercise and energetic play; allow it daily out of cage time on play stations other than just the cage to minimize territorial behaviors. Encouraging healthy exercise can decrease problem behaviors like excessive screaming, since a tired parrot is a quiet parrot.

4. Establish controls with your parrot by lovingly teaching it to respond to the simple commands of Up and Down, and setting clear and consistent limits on its behavior. By teaching manners and setting boundaries, parrots can become better companions.

5. Give your parrot quality interaction daily, no matter how busy your life gets . . . even if for just 10 – 15 minutes of one on one time. Psittacines are biologically wild animals, and won’t retain their “tameness” without daily contact with people.

6. Make you companion bird a member of the family, since it is a flock animal and extremely social. Single birds should not be housed in rooms by themselves.

7. Socialize your parrot to family and trusted friends, thereby teaching it to adapt to the society in which it lives. It should be comfortable interacting with and being handled by other people. Don’t allow it to become over bonded to one person.

8. Assure your companion bird gets adequate rest with 10 – 12 hours of dark, uninterrupted sleep time nightly. Sleep deprivation often leads to problem behaviors like biting, excessive screaming and feather destruction.

9. Establish trust with your companion bird by teaching it that it is safe with you. Consistency is critical to establishing trust, as your parrot learns what to expect from you and what you expect from it.

10. Accept your parrot for what it is not what you want it to be. No matter how well trained it is, a healthy parrot may still be noisy, messy and destructive . . . because it’s a parrot!

Donna I like this. I'm going to make it a sticky.

Just ran into this post and I like it a lot. Thanks for posting!!!

excellent points many thanks to a totally newbie

thanks for your post....and I am sorry for your loss......

give him time at ten days in your home hes still settling in reads some of the posts on taming

Thanks man, great information, I am really impress with each and every line information. But I this relation ship means if you have to provide enough time behind your birds so I think they will be satisfied for that but if you have to provide only 15 to 20 minute with you bird so I think its bad because they also want to play with as.

These simple guidelines can help increase the chances that the baby parrot you bring home with you is healthy. It also helps ensure that the two of you start off on the right foot in a relationship that hopefully will last a lifetime. KEEP POSTING!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and sharing those "10 steps to a better relationship with your bird" to us. Those are all well thought of. I will certainly take your advice to consideration. I am currently taking care of love birds. I love my pets so much.

hi guys i have just joined.I have a 10 year old{at least} male indian ringneck,who is still scared.Is it possible for me to get him tame and not so frightned.Any help will be much appreciated thanks shazza

Hi Shazza

I think that no matter how old the bird is, you can make some progress. Give him a bit of time... if he has just moved to a new environment, that will be very unsettling. Make sure he is in a place where he can observe you a lot without him being your main focus (eg. in your study or in a living area). Find out what his favourite treats are and try hand feeding them to him through the bars in his cage. Talk to him a lot. Try eating in front of him, if he looks curious, give him some of your meal through the bars (providing what you are eating is safe for him to eat).

I hope you enjoy your new companion!

ellie.

hi thanks for that info, i did mean to say he has been with me for the 10 years, yet someone bought him for me,and they were told he was a baby,he was actually mature with the ring allready around his neck. i didnt have the heart to tell the family member who bought him for me{they actually thought they were getting me something i allways wanted}.He lives in a very large cage in my dining room with a cockatiel and a budgie{ in seperate cages}. he is very shy and nervous still? what is their favourite food, or are they all different. mine seems to really like oranges and apples over other things? do you think with time and perserverance he might become tame{ish}. also do you have any idea how long they live.thanks a lot shazza

shazza wrote:what is their favourite food, or are they all different. mine seems to really like oranges and apples over other things

Each bird will have their own fav food... but I believe apples and pears are a common favourite. One of mine loves banana.

To identify their favourites, put things in their food bowl or on a kabob and see which things they choose to eat first.

With mine, they like things mixed up a bit. What is a favourite today may not be their favourite next week.

shazza wrote:do you think with time and perserverance he might become tame{ish}.

I think that with time, patience and perserverance... and going at a slow pace... your bird will become more tame. I believe in positive reinforcement training... where you never push the bird further than he is comfortable... although there are other training methods you can use too.

I'm thinking that some of the info toward the end of this thread may help you:
http://www.indianringneck.com/forum/vie ... =2&t=11338

shazza wrote:also do you have any idea how long they live

I read intially they live until 20 years of age... although I've read on this forum that it's between 25 and 30 years.

Ellie.

ahh thanks very much for all your help, its good to speak to someone who knows. i will try the things you told me, thanks again shazza

very nice topic , i dun what to say about this great topic u had written

thanks for your post. I posted awhile ago and no one answered me. I feel like you did however and I thank you for that. Makes total sense to me. Sometimes I actually forget my little muffin is afterall...a parrot.

What is the best diet, brand food for a brand new recently weaned to seed baby?

Day 5 and my 3 month old still will not come out of his cage. He will take treats from my hand, but is nippy, I try not to respond, it's hard when you've never been bitten by a bird, his cage is not in a central location, due to a/c vents and lack of windows in central areas. How long should I allow him to isolate himself in his cage before I try something else? Every day when I get home from work, I set a chair next to his cage for 2 hours open cage doors and talk to him. Have perches outside of doors, and tried setting treats at the door, am I just trying to go too fast? He won't even come to the bottom of his cage.

http://www.indianringneck.com/forum/vie ... =2&t=13059 move your topic bluebird:)