10 month old Conure Sudden Agression

[faithapaul1]

My 10 month old conure, Manny, recently started attacking a few people - people who he knows and has been gentle with.

He’s been nippy with me and other people but it’s just nippy baby stuff which hurts, yeah, but he never showed aggressive body behavior when doing it.

Yesterday he attacked my friends face, biting her lip extremely hard, and he bit my mom super hard yesterday and drew blood on her face today. It baffles me because he was perfectly fine with me and several other people yesterday, but he just seems to repeatedly go after these two people in particular who he’s known and been fine with prior to this. My mom looks a lot like me and my friend is also a girl who is blonde.

I just don’t understand it. He poofs up his neck feathers and marches with clear determination to their faces to bite. My mom is watching him this weekend so she was near his cage, but my friend wasn’t, yet he repeatedly tried to attack her face.

The only thing that’s changed is the weather, which has gotten much colder this past week and he finally started eating mashed veggies a few days ago so I’ve been giving him that along with his pellets. Also, this week I began covering his cage at nine o’clock and uncovering it at 9 to make sure he gets a decent amount of rest.

His droppings are good, he is lively, has a voracious appetite, has gotten much more talky within the last few weeks or so, is at the tail end of going through a molt and his feathers are beautiful. He cuddled and played with me for most of the day this week, so he had a lot of time out.

Prior to this he only showed such aggression towards dogs who were too curious, the occasion toy with a bell on it, and music (yes, it’s weird he gets super grumpy even towards me when music is turned on).

Any ideas what’s going on? We don’t know for sure that he is a boy, hoping to get him DNA tested soon. Hormones maybe and if so how should I go about this?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Sylvester]

I would imagine it is due to hormones. Birds can be such stinkers when hormones flare up.

 

[Lady Jane]

My two are having a major molt like never before and Murphy is miserable with so many pin feathers. I spritz him every day. Its snowing blue feathers. Is your bird molting? That too can make them grumpy.

 

[Sylvester]

My two are having a major molt like never before and Murphy is miserable with so many pin feathers. I spritz him every day. Its snowing blue feathers. Is your bird molting? That too can make them grumpy.

Never thought of that. Bandit had a full head of pins going on the other day but he let me gently twist them off.

 

[LSA]

I would imagine it is due to hormones. Birds can be such stinkers when hormones flare up.

Yep... That's probably it!
This is his first time, too. It sounds like basic territorial behavior. Sir Lancelot thinks he's the biggest, baddest bird around and he doesn't care how big you are. He'll bite and fight eveirybirdie if he must to prove it, too!

Oh yeah, he bathes 4- 5 times and "shares the love"! Everything in the room gets wet and if you don't like it, he'll just bite you.

 

[Sylvester]

Yep... That's probably it!
This is his first time, too. It sounds like basic territorial behavior. Sir Lancelot thinks he's the biggest, baddest bird around and he doesn't care how big you are. He'll bite and fight everybirdie if he must to prove it, too!

Watch out for those little dudes.

 

[Lady Jane]

That is the typical GCC personality. They are big Eagles in a little green body.

 

[alshgs]

Hormones and molts can be such pains in the butts for our feathered babies!

 

[Monica]

Having to break your post down and focus on some key parts - minus molting, since this has already been mentioned.

He’s been nippy with me and other people but it’s just nippy baby stuff which hurts, yeah, but he never showed aggressive body behavior when doing it.

Are you sure this has been "just nippy baby stuff" and not him trying to communicate with you? And when this communication was ignored, your baby went to the next step and started biting?

I would say that that is a common mistake that many people make. It would be like you telling you other half or children that dinner is ready. You hear no response, see no one, so you say it louder. Again, no response and no one comes to the dinner table... so you might yell it out. You are starting to get frustrated and no one is listening to you so you might really scream it and you might even go and get up in their face to let them know.

Well, birds are constantly trying to communicate with us and when we ignore them, even if unintentionally, their behavior could become worse.

Yesterday he attacked my friends face, biting her lip extremely hard, and he bit my mom super hard yesterday and drew blood on her face today. It baffles me because he was perfectly fine with me and several other people yesterday, but he just seems to repeatedly go after these two people in particular who he’s known and been fine with prior to this. My mom looks a lot like me and my friend is also a girl who is blonde.

It's possible that they somehow changed or they did something differently, or he's bonding too closely to you... sometimes the reasons why aren't obvious. The main thing it requires though is training.

He poofs up his neck feathers and marches with clear determination to their faces to bite.

What behavior do you want him to do instead? Could he... play fetch? Turn around? Wave? Go through a tunnel? What behavior could you teach him that may be inconsistent with him biting others and then rewarding that behavior?

Also, this week I began covering his cage at nine o’clock and uncovering it at 9 to make sure he gets a decent amount of rest.

It's honestly not necessary for birds to get 12 hours of sleep all the time, although having said that, some birds are just cranky! And do require extra sleep.


Something else to look at... what is his diet? Is he on a healthy, varied diet? Or a poor diet?

 

[LSA]

I like your example!

 

[faithapaul1]

@Monica Thank you for your response! To answer your first point about the biting in response to lack of communication, I did question that myself, but the reason I called it “baby biting” is due to the fact that bites aren’t deliberate. It usually happened when we were playing and he bit too hard, I think he hadn’t learn to gauge how much pressure to use when nibbling fingers yet and it wasn’t so much a sign of aggression. I will pay close attention to this from now on though, as it certainly could be the issue, but I must say that his body language (I.e. puffing, bobbing, open beak, angry noises) never displayed any signs that he felt threatened or pissed off when he “baby bit”, it genuinely looked like a goofy bird who didn’t know fingers feel pain yet ( I try very hard not to react when he does bite because others have told me that can reinforce the behavior. I usually try to distract.)

As to the amount of sleep he gets, I’ve decided that putting him on a schedule couldn’t hurt. As a person with ADD, I benefit greatly from order and a schedule, so I figured a boisterous young parrot may also benefit from it! Mainly my goal is to put him to bed at the same time every night. His mornings vary more.

Also, Manny is on Zupreem natural pellets and he adores them. He has access to pellets and water throughout the day and is constantly munching. He’s been eating them for about a month now, prior to which the breeder we got him from gave us a mix of mainly nut and dried fruit which the vet promptly said wasn’t ideal, so we changed his diet to pellets and two-three almonds daily (depending on how much of the almonds he actually eats rather than crushes up or drops!). I’ve been trying to get him to eat veggies since I got him but it was only this week that I got him to them! The trick? Monkey see, monkey do! After all this time the only thing I needed to do was pretend to eat the veggies and sure enough he went for them and now adores them! So, in the morning he gets his cookable birdie food which consists of pease, corns, carrots, some type of bean, dried mango, cinnamon sticks, chili pepper pods and several other things but he mainly like the peas, corns, and carrots. Ideally I’d like to switch him to Harrison’s pellets rather than Zupreem.

Unfortunately Manny did spend a lot of time in his cage two weeks ago, as my grandmother passed away and I had to go to Georgia. To make up for it I tried to give him extra attention this week, so maybe he has gotten too dependent on me . . . That being said, for as long as I’ve had manny I’ve made sure to let other people interact with him daily because I’d like to avoid such aggression if possible. And he never had a problem with anyone until two days ago!

Ugh! It’s so complicated! If it keeps up I’ll take Manny to his vet and I may also ask my Ornithology professor for some advice!

 

[Monica]

I kind of figured that might be the case between "baby" biting vs actual biting!

Still, if at all possible, avoid the bites. If it's actual "baby biting", then encourage them to chew on something else! Don't teach them *NOT* to bite, just teach them what to bite/chew on that's appropriate! (re: toys and foraging activities!)

When they do bite, you don't want to "react" but you also don't want to "ignore". Ignoring the bite is really bad advice, and it's common! If it was a german shepherd, a pitbull, a mastiff, heck, even a tiger, and that animal is biting you, you wouldn't just stand there and allow them to tear into your flesh until they stop biting! And yet, that's the advice given when it comes to birds....

The best thing you can do is to avoid getting bitten in the first place... which is easier said than done for most pet owners! (I'm no exception here! I'm not on par with the best of trainers! But I try!) If you do get bit, get the bird off of you! Gently of course, but remove yourself from the situation and try to think about what happened. What led up to that bite, what happened during and what happened after? How can we avoid the bite in the future?

I don't necessarily agree with schedules because if something out of the norm occurs, then your bird could become upset. A schedule, to a degree, can be beneficial, but you also want to keep things changed up, too!

I would suggest a sugar-free pellet if you can get one... Zupreem is not sugar-free... fantastic that he's eating a more varied diet! Great job! Do be careful on the type of bean though! Some aren't good unless fully cooked for human consumption and even then, there's better options out there... for instance, I don't recommend feeding kidney beans.



The recent changes in his life could have indeed upset him so it's a lot for him to take in and he could be getting overwhelmed. Sorry about your loss.


It may help to drop a special treat into his cage any time someone walks by, be it you, your mother, your friend, anyone! Maybe finely chop up some almonds or other healthy nuts (want them half the size of a sunflower seed, or smaller!) and have a container either side of his cage about 5-ish feet away. Then have a special treat cup inside the cage. Any time someone goes to walk past the cage, they can grab that treat and put it into the treat cup and go. Don't need to sit and wait, just drop and go! This can help teach him to look forward to anyone's presence!