Here's a couple of threads I made in regards to diet.
Bird Safe Fresh Foods & Toxic Food Lists & More | Avian Avenue Parrot Forum
Converting Parrots to a Healthier Diet - Tips | Avian Avenue Parrot Forum
Please put yourself in his situation. Imagine you are in a cage with no way to escape it, then a tiger (or dinosaur - anything you are afraid of and is larger than you!) puts their paw/hand into the cage and grabs you out. You are terrified and frightened, so you try to escape, but have no where to go. Once you are out of your home where you thought you were safe from danger, the tiger then forces you to stay near him, regardless of how often you try to escape, and going as far as to accidentally hurting yourself, because for all you know, it could be a life or death situation!
Now, think about it this way.... imagine you are in your safe home and being tended to by a tiger. The tiger makes no move to physically interact with you and keeps a safe distance where you don't feel threatened. Sometimes the tiger will come by your cage and offer you your favorite food, but again, makes no move to physically interact with you. You watch and observe. Is the tiger trying to eat you or become friends with you?
Yes, birds can "go wild" if not interacted with, but that doesn't mean you *HAVE* to interact with a bird in order to tame them. Sometimes leaving them be while making small movements is enough!
As an "experiment", I had 5 adult, flighted budgies. None of them were tame and only one was kind of comfortable with me. I started by feeding them food first thing in the morning from my hands within the cage. If they didn't come over, that was ok! Of course, if one budgie did it, another had to, as well! First budgie who did it isn't getting eaten, so *maybe* it's ok.... After they ate all the food, I would refresh their food dishes. Did this for two weeks, and on the third week, I had my hand outside of the cage rather than inside. They had to come to the cage door to eat. Repeated that for two weeks, so on the 5th week, I stood 4' away from the cage and did the same thing. They flew to my hand to eat from inside the cage! To get them back in their cages, I just refreshed the food dishes, as always! And they'd go scrambling back in!
This then led to me (unintentionally) feeding 5 cockatiels of various 'tame-ness' by hand and was extremely surprised when the most skiddish cockatiel decided to fly to my hand from the floor and search for food. When I was out, he even waited patiently on my hand for me to go and get some more food! Another time he flew to my shoulder! A bird that was so scared that he'd take off flying any time I came remotely close to him was now flying to me of his own choice! And even now, that I no longer feed the birds by hand like I did so they are not 'used' to still eating from my hands, the most skittish tiel is the first to fly over and start eating when I *do* offer food from my hands!
Jayde, my red throated conure, is another bird that I gave her some space. She was a terrified little conure who so badly wanted attention, but at the same time was afraid of it. If you walked away from her, she'd attempt to follow you, but not leave her cage! If you moved towards her, she'd run away in terror. The only type of physical interaction she would accept was head scritches, and even then, she wasn't completely comfortable with them. I let her be and didn't handle her if I didn't need to. I interacted with her in a hands off manner unless she was accepting of scritches. I moved her cage around the house so she could be "with" me without having to be on me. I placed perches on the outside of the cage so she could have a lower perch to sit on instead of the top of the cage. In a *very* short manner of time (shorter than I had expected - couple of weeks, if that?), she decided to take the first step. I was sitting on the floor next to her cage and she ventured down to come see me from the cage top. She would get skittish and scamper back up the cage, but curiosity kept having her coming back down. She eventually got far enough down that she could reach my shoulder, and with a lot of trepidation, she climbed on! She was *so* happy to finally have that physically connection with a human that she was purring and making all sorts of noises! And I didn't have to force her there! And since then, we've worked on her stepping up from her cage to my shoulder, then to my upper arm, then lower arm, and finally hands! Hands that she was terrified of! Now, she's flighted and if I attempt to leave her somewhere, she'll fly from where-ever she's at and directly to my shoulder! No leaving her behind!
Please toss out the word "discipline" from your vocabulary and look into positive reinforcement training, clicker training, applied behavior analysis, force free animal training and Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence. No more flooding or learned helplessness, and all positive experiences!
Wouldn't have it any other way!
