REDh04x
Checking out the neighborhood
- Joined
- 1/21/24
- Messages
- 4
So, I'm out of ideas on how to fix this one. I have a hypothesis on why my right hand appears to have committed a crime, but am no closer to a solution. Bear with me as I do a full biopsychosocial assessment of my birds' wellbeing issues
Context:
I have a [female] GCC, Jerry, who is about 7yo going on 8 later this year. Bird uses male pronouns, but is DNA tested as female.
I also have a pineapple female, Monty, who is 4yo, and a pied male cockatiel called Lionel who is also about 7yo.
Jerry's always been very strongly bonded to me, and has always had a very gentle, cuddly temperament. He got along with Monty until she reached maturity, and now he's a turd to her.
He has metabolic bone disease (presumably something that developed from his parents being on a seed only diet) which has lead to advanced arthritis in multiple joints. He's given gabapentin twice daily to manage the pain. He's never shown much jealousy towards other humans around me, despite how strongly he's bonded to me. He's never laid eggs either.
Back around January, two things happened:
1. Monty became very sick. She was hospitalised for several days (presumed heavy metal toxicity; I later found a tiny bit of filler wire on the cage that she'd stripped the powder coat off of
)
2. Lionel, who has pair bonded with Monty, was moved back into Jerry's cage because his clingy behaviour was pi$$ing Monty off and she was enacting DV against him (e.g. pulled a few blood feathers in retaliation to him breathing down her neck while she ate)
Lionel and Jerry originally shared a cage when they came to me, as I first fostered them from a pet store amid a major flood in my town in 2017. They had nowhere to go and the store people just put the birds wherever they could to try get them to safety. They were friends enough, so I kept them together over the years. This changed when Lionel met Monty in 2020, and was so distressed* by being a whole metre away from her that I decided to let them share and see how it went. This lasted until Monty yanked two of his blood feathers.
*Lionel has some trauma from the death of my late Quaker, who he pair bonded with, before she passed very unexpectedly in 2019 from a possible parathyroid autoimmune disease.
So Jerry, while being bossy, is generally not a dick to Lionel. Occasionally he chases him out of the way but it's always goal oriented. He didn't show any real ill behaviour towards Lionel after I put him back in the cage with him, but he was certainly more pi$$y with me. I figured he would punish me for a while, like a kid sharing toys against his will just because his parents told him to. I was patient, gave it time, and he eventually seemed to chill a little bit.
Then Monty got sick. When she got home from hospital, she was still weak and sooky, so I gave her lots of extra love and attention. I also didn't have a decent cage to put her back into, so I resorted to my tiny stainless travel cage until I could source a stainless one big enough for her. This meant she needed much more time out of the cage because of how small it was.
It was after this I started seeing Jerry become hostile towards my right hand, arm, and shoulder. Initially I thought it was my watch or watch band, so I removed them. Still got my flesh demolished. Then I removed my tungsten thumb ring, which had never bothered the birds before. No difference, still mauled. I then considered if it was because I usually give him his medicine with my right hand (he dislikes his medicine). I can't hold him with my right and drug him with my left to confirm this or not, but I did recently get him a different flavour of medicine. I don't think it's helped, I'm pretty sure he punctured my ear cartilage over the weekend because I lifted my right hand to move something.
I'd describe the aggression as extreme: if he's on my left hand, arm or shoulder and I move the right arm much at all, the left side gets bitten in retaliation. If I use my left hand to pull the sheet down over the cage, or change the paper, he charges at me through the bars, furiously following the right hand. I've seen him, on multiple occasions, leap off or fly off of things to try and attack my right hand. And now, trying to medicate him (he usually is happy to snuggle up in my hand to get the medicine), he relentlessly bites my left hand anticipating the right one coming up to him with the syringe.
Interestingly, if I pull my arm inside a sleeve, he will crawl into the sleeve of the right arm without trying to bite my hand. If I have him in low light conditions, he will step onto the right hand. But if the light comes on enough, he then attacks it. I've tried reward training a little by giving him a sunflower seed from the right hand, carefully timed so as to not accidentally reinforce behaviours from before the seed is given. He takes the seed fine, but I can't do this often as he has a history of pancreatitis. I've also worked hard on learning to not react/minimally react, but it's still hard because the bites are exquisitely painful and almost always bleed.
I brought this up at the vet recently and she placed an IUD to help with hormones. It maybe helped a tiny bit, in the sense that I was allowed to use both hands on my switch but wasn't allowed to scratch my face.
So, I've ruled out hormones, wrist or hand jewellery, one kind of medicine, and probably skin cancer (I went as far as to check my skin for any new moles in case he was reacting to that--nothing looks new).
My hypothesis is that this is maintained by negative reinforcement from my initial reactions, which were to withdraw my hands after biting. I think it stems from the medicine and was possibly exacerbated by his space being reinvaded and his human doting extra on the other little lady for a while.
Does anyone have any other suggestions of how I can reinterpret, investigate or otherwise help stop this behaviour? I love him so much but I need both of my hands and miss scritching him with both
TLDR; normally gentle bird with an IUD and medicated for arthritis suddenly hates my right hand, arm and shoulder following other social environment disruptions.
Photos of the devil chickens for tax
Context:
I have a [female] GCC, Jerry, who is about 7yo going on 8 later this year. Bird uses male pronouns, but is DNA tested as female.
I also have a pineapple female, Monty, who is 4yo, and a pied male cockatiel called Lionel who is also about 7yo.
Jerry's always been very strongly bonded to me, and has always had a very gentle, cuddly temperament. He got along with Monty until she reached maturity, and now he's a turd to her.
He has metabolic bone disease (presumably something that developed from his parents being on a seed only diet) which has lead to advanced arthritis in multiple joints. He's given gabapentin twice daily to manage the pain. He's never shown much jealousy towards other humans around me, despite how strongly he's bonded to me. He's never laid eggs either.
Back around January, two things happened:
1. Monty became very sick. She was hospitalised for several days (presumed heavy metal toxicity; I later found a tiny bit of filler wire on the cage that she'd stripped the powder coat off of
)2. Lionel, who has pair bonded with Monty, was moved back into Jerry's cage because his clingy behaviour was pi$$ing Monty off and she was enacting DV against him (e.g. pulled a few blood feathers in retaliation to him breathing down her neck while she ate)
Lionel and Jerry originally shared a cage when they came to me, as I first fostered them from a pet store amid a major flood in my town in 2017. They had nowhere to go and the store people just put the birds wherever they could to try get them to safety. They were friends enough, so I kept them together over the years. This changed when Lionel met Monty in 2020, and was so distressed* by being a whole metre away from her that I decided to let them share and see how it went. This lasted until Monty yanked two of his blood feathers.
*Lionel has some trauma from the death of my late Quaker, who he pair bonded with, before she passed very unexpectedly in 2019 from a possible parathyroid autoimmune disease.
So Jerry, while being bossy, is generally not a dick to Lionel. Occasionally he chases him out of the way but it's always goal oriented. He didn't show any real ill behaviour towards Lionel after I put him back in the cage with him, but he was certainly more pi$$y with me. I figured he would punish me for a while, like a kid sharing toys against his will just because his parents told him to. I was patient, gave it time, and he eventually seemed to chill a little bit.
Then Monty got sick. When she got home from hospital, she was still weak and sooky, so I gave her lots of extra love and attention. I also didn't have a decent cage to put her back into, so I resorted to my tiny stainless travel cage until I could source a stainless one big enough for her. This meant she needed much more time out of the cage because of how small it was.
It was after this I started seeing Jerry become hostile towards my right hand, arm, and shoulder. Initially I thought it was my watch or watch band, so I removed them. Still got my flesh demolished. Then I removed my tungsten thumb ring, which had never bothered the birds before. No difference, still mauled. I then considered if it was because I usually give him his medicine with my right hand (he dislikes his medicine). I can't hold him with my right and drug him with my left to confirm this or not, but I did recently get him a different flavour of medicine. I don't think it's helped, I'm pretty sure he punctured my ear cartilage over the weekend because I lifted my right hand to move something.
I'd describe the aggression as extreme: if he's on my left hand, arm or shoulder and I move the right arm much at all, the left side gets bitten in retaliation. If I use my left hand to pull the sheet down over the cage, or change the paper, he charges at me through the bars, furiously following the right hand. I've seen him, on multiple occasions, leap off or fly off of things to try and attack my right hand. And now, trying to medicate him (he usually is happy to snuggle up in my hand to get the medicine), he relentlessly bites my left hand anticipating the right one coming up to him with the syringe.
Interestingly, if I pull my arm inside a sleeve, he will crawl into the sleeve of the right arm without trying to bite my hand. If I have him in low light conditions, he will step onto the right hand. But if the light comes on enough, he then attacks it. I've tried reward training a little by giving him a sunflower seed from the right hand, carefully timed so as to not accidentally reinforce behaviours from before the seed is given. He takes the seed fine, but I can't do this often as he has a history of pancreatitis. I've also worked hard on learning to not react/minimally react, but it's still hard because the bites are exquisitely painful and almost always bleed.
I brought this up at the vet recently and she placed an IUD to help with hormones. It maybe helped a tiny bit, in the sense that I was allowed to use both hands on my switch but wasn't allowed to scratch my face.
So, I've ruled out hormones, wrist or hand jewellery, one kind of medicine, and probably skin cancer (I went as far as to check my skin for any new moles in case he was reacting to that--nothing looks new).
My hypothesis is that this is maintained by negative reinforcement from my initial reactions, which were to withdraw my hands after biting. I think it stems from the medicine and was possibly exacerbated by his space being reinvaded and his human doting extra on the other little lady for a while.
Does anyone have any other suggestions of how I can reinterpret, investigate or otherwise help stop this behaviour? I love him so much but I need both of my hands and miss scritching him with both
TLDR; normally gentle bird with an IUD and medicated for arthritis suddenly hates my right hand, arm and shoulder following other social environment disruptions.
Photos of the devil chickens for tax
