M&M Ninja
Strolling the yard
We brought home Cord (~3.5 months old) about a week ago so I wanted to post our progress as well as ask for some guidance on areas needing improvement.
I don’t know if there is a honeymoon period with young birds. If there is, ours ended a few days after coming home. We had regression, then recovery, and then back to full bird mode. Complete with finger nibbling, vocalizing, etc.
Things that are working:
I don’t know if there is a honeymoon period with young birds. If there is, ours ended a few days after coming home. We had regression, then recovery, and then back to full bird mode. Complete with finger nibbling, vocalizing, etc.
Things that are working:
- Cord eats pellets and fresh greens. She’ll at least touch any food I put in her cage.
- She has a bedtime and wake-time that works for her. It works for us too.
- She finally took a bath. We left a shallow bowl in her cage and went shopping. When we returned, we had one wet chicken on our hands.
- She’s already sort of potty trained. I think because she lived flighted prior to moving in with us, she established normal bird potty habits. As in, don’t poop where you walk, where you sleep, on your favorite perch, etc. When out with us, she will back up several feet to poop; or, she’ll back up to the edge and do a quick u-turn to poop off the edge. She is very poop savvy. If she could understand the meaning of a star chart (for pooping instead of for chores), I’d start one for her.
- Cord is developing a healthy fear/respect for the 4-legged members of the family. The trio of babies had landed on the breeder’s dog while we were there. Just landed on her back like it was the most natural thing in the world. Cord somehow knows that these dogs are not the same animal as the other dog, and she hasn’t tried it.
- She doesn’t really cry/scream to come out. At least not often. Mostly, she runs and climbs laps, making small sounds of urgency. We wait until she settles down to play by herself; then we either leave her to play or we take her out.
- We are working on handling for harness training and future grooming. She got ‘wings’ on day 2. I can pull them up and open them. And I can close her eyes with my fingers. (Both of those things are recommended on the aviator training video.)
- We can redirect her to playing with toys (versus a laptop or our fingertips) about 50% of the time. An improvement from 5% of the time.
- Cord is a good eater, but shows not treat preferences. Motivating her to do things on command (i.e. step up) with a food reward is so far not easy. Based on another thread here, I have tried: tropical nutriberries, sunflower seeds, peanuts, papaya bits, shreds of cheese, eggs. Should I keep offering her these same things, waiting for her to like them? Any other treat suggestions?
- The lack of favorite treat makes all communication challenging. To put her back in her cage, I have to grab her and put her in there on a perch. I much prefer motivating animals using positive reinforcement. This is more like force (although, it is gentle force). Is this normal for a young bird?
- When ‘training’ (where I position us in the bathroom and ask for step up and step down), she is all too willing to just fly away from me. She’s a great flyer and I can see why people clip their birds at first. Any tricks for working together with her flighted? Or does it go back to having a treat she'll sit still for?
- Harness work – Anybody else get a young bird and train them to wear a harness right away? I have the aviator and have watched the training video that comes with it. In the video, he says that while it is easy to just manhandle a young bird into wearing one, he/she should really be trained into it. That way, they don’t reach an age where they suddenly say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to wear that thing anymore!’ I agree with this but I feel like my ‘easy’ window is closing. With each day that she becomes more comfortable in our house, she becomes a little more wily. Without a treat incentive to help us communicate, I’m uncertain what tack to take. My objective is to get her harness trained so she can get outside (for all sorts of reasons – vitamin D, socialization, flying, joining the rest of the flock during outdoor activities, etc.).
- ‘Morning Calling’ – I’ve heard this said on the forum; that birds like to call in the morning and in the evening. Our TAG never did this, so I didn’t really know what it meant until we brought home Cord. Is this what she is doing when I uncover her? She just hollars – yell, yell, yell….pause……yell, yell, yell…..pause – for 5 minutes and then stops.
- Anybody have a bird that screams their head off when grinding coffee? Cuz I do. Any suggestions for ways to stop this? I’ve tried grinding for short little spurts at a time but she still ends up screaming. And without a favorite snack to entice her, I’m not sure what to do during the brief moments of quiet.