A Tale of Two GCCs (and Their Behaviors...)

[asthenia]

Hello guys! My boyfriend and I have two little Green Cheek Conures (named H & L) who are now almost 5 months old. They came from a breeder who we believe offered very little human interaction and started the downward spiral of some of their bad habits. We've talked with our vet, other bird owners, read books, websites, you name it. At this point, we have exhausted ideas on training our GCC, and wanted to reach out to the Avian community to see if you guys had some other ones. Please excuse the length of this!

1. Bringing H out of her shell.
H is a very sweet bird, albeit extremely shy. When she first came home, we couldn't touch her, she wouldn't step up, and she just freaked out at the slightest noise. Now almost four months later, she steps up beautifully on command, but she is still painfully shy. On a good day, we can kiss her head and gently pet her, but it is still fairly rare. Her favorite place is on our shoulders, and if she thinks we are going to try to touch her, she flees. H often wants to be "part of the party" and will come near us if we're playing with L, standing above us on the couch, or watching from the cage, but won't interact and if we reach for her, she flies away. Little noises (even the sound of a kiss) make her jump, and she is absolutely glued to L's hip - if we leave the room with L, H yells for her and pursues by flight. Cutting H's wings or trimming/filing her nails on our own are just out of the question. We've tried treats, talking sweetly, letting her come out of the cage on her own, praising her for anything/everything, giving her solo "H time" with us, playing with her, offering her toys, wrapping her gently in a blanket or towel and cuddling with her. 95% of it results in her fleeing. We just want to make her more social.

2. Stop L's biting.
L is one of the best birds you'd ever meet. She's rambunctious, hilarious, she wants to play all the time, all day long. She is extremely loving, will nap on us, preen us, she yells excitably for us when we come home, flies after us, play hide/seek and tug of war, wants to share food with us.. you name it. But L's biggest problem is biting, and we don't know how to stop it without compromising the bond she has with us (which is extremely strong.)

L is very food and cage protective and sometimes even protective over H, so we take special precaution to watch ourselves when she gives off her telltale "I may bite you" signs, such as ruffling her feathers or pushing herself down onto the cage (like a pouncing cat.) Sometimes we even know we're at risk if she's on our shoulders or back and doesn't want to get off - she pulls back, and the way we see it in these scenarios is, if we get bitten here, it was our fault.

However, other times, her bites just plain baffle us. L loves to play rough, so naturally she will roll on her back and try to grab our fingers, etc, but she bites extremely hard when she plays like she's trying to hurt us and not play; she's drawn blood from us both and my boyfriend fears playing with her. Sometimes to get our attention to play, she starts it with a hard bite. L has now bitten friends too; she starts out gently by nibbling, but quickly escalates and "tests" it to see how hard she can bite. Other times we've had her on our shoulders just doing household tasks/on the phone/watching TV, and she's bitten the top of our ears so hard she's made us scream - I still have a bruise on one ear presently from a recent bite. L bites when she's tired, when she's energetic, when we're petting or feeding her, when she wants our attention, when she wants us to stop something. We never exactly know WHEN L may bite, and we're always on high alert because of it.

For L, we feel we've tried EVERYTHING. We've tried treats when she is good, handing her toys when she bites to chew on them instead, we've tried banishing her from our shoulders, setting her on the floor in "time out" for 10 seconds, gently pulling her beak off and saying "no," gently touching her beak (just holding a finger there) and saying "gentle" trying to teach her to loosen her grip, we've tried the hand "earthquake", dropping our hands a few inches to startle her, we've tried the step up ladder, the step down ladder. We've put towels on our neck/shoulders to protect skin, we try to deter her from biting fingers/electronics since it may encourage her biting. The BF and I have also worked very hard to have NO reaction when she bites anymore (even in times she's made us bleed we try to hold it in to the best we can) but sometimes it just hurts way too much. We're just at a loss, and don't know what to do.

I absolutely love L, and she's my adorable sweet girl just like H, but we'd both love her even more than we already do if we could get her to understand how much she hurts us. We fear cuddling or kissing her sometimes because she may break into sudden "crazy L time" and bite our lips or nose too hard. Even times when nothing is happening she can lash out - on Friday I was walking around with her and H on my shoulder while on the phone, and she latched onto my other ear and bit until I dropped the phone in tears.

HELP!

Thank you guys.

 

[Hallie]

Did you steal my Green Cheek?!
Really though, I have a 5 month old GCC that sounds exactly like yours. If you helps ease your mind about how they were raised, I hand fed mine right out of the nest and socialized him constantly... he still grew up to be a nippy, crazy bird. We call him 'crazy bird' affectionately, most of the time. He is a sweet bird sometimes but he is so rambunctious and hyper that he bites like crazy. We too have tried everything, and the only thing that has helped is ignoring him when he bites, giving him a cat ball with a bell in it, and time. In the the past month he has gotten so much better. Now the only time he bites hard is when we're laying down paying attention to the tv, he will fly to my bf and I and lay on his back between us kicking his feet around and trying to play with us. We find it adorable, but the bites are anything but adorable.

So there is hope for you! I swear that people have to own a GCC to really understand that they bite unprovoked. They're play biting, and they always want to play. So coming from someone who has a bird like yours, it does get better. With time my little guy has stopped biting as much, and he's stopped biting as hard as he was. He rarely breaks the skin now, whereas a month ago he broke the skin with his bites daily.

Good luck! They are the best birds once they learn that they don't need to bite constantly.

 

[Maxsmom]

Hi - give them time and space. 5 months is not a long time. Positive reinforcement. Good Bird Inc. Lara Joseph. I have a nine year old rescue pionus whom I have had 11 months. Settling in can entail slow progress. But progress does come with patience and learning new techniques. Hang in there

 

[Laurul Feather Cat]

Your H and L sound exactly like my Bocca and Pichu; but my birds are several years old, each of them. I knew Pichu before coming to me; the owners thought she was a cock, but that proved incorrect: Pichu had been hand tame, easily handled and social but with a bite now and then to say she had enough social interaction. The owners gave Pichu to a friend of mine from another forum, Bea, who has a birdroom with most of the birds flying free. Unfortunately the birdroom has both large and small birds loose in it all at the same time and the smaller ones are always getting their beaks and their toes bitten; so Pichu,and Bocca, who lived in that room as well, have no point of their upper beak and their lower mandible is overgrown and I had to have my vet trim them back (the upper beak curve and sylus control the growth of the lower mandible and shapes it).

Since being several months loose in the birdroom at Bea's, Pichu is hand shy and bites when picked up or asked to step up; she also acts quite wild: I have started socializing her again (had both about five months) but she still will not take food from my fingers. Also starting with hand held perch step up training. Otherwise, Pichu is a pleasant little girl and, aside from being closely bonded with Bocca, is a pleasant bird to have around. She likes sitting on my shoulder and being ignored; if I acknowledge she is there, she flies away.

Having described Pichu, who sounds like a less shy version of your H, I wonder if you are correct about H's sex; are you sure she is not a cock bird and these two are a bonded pair, soon to be mating when the hormones break through? For me, if Pichu and Bocca decide to become a functional mated pair, that is OK for me: I just will abort the embryos and not allow the eggs to hatch. It could be why one does not want to be out of sight of the other. Or, of course, it could just be because they are flock birds and do not want to be separated. I know very little about the natural history of the GCC, but my cockatiels are like that; remove a member of the flock and the removed member calls incessantly to the flock and the flock calls for the individual removed.

My problem is Bocca. Bea says he is a dna sexed cock, and he is very, very aggressive, just as you describe your L. Bite without warning, without reason, just for the heck of it, etc. I had a Meyers cock, Hobbs, who bit to the bone in the past, but he always had a reason for his biting and I eventually was able to train him out of being a biter. But, as you said, nothing I do makes an impression on Bocca. I walk into the room and he is immediately on me; and if I am carrying their breakfast or supper, he immediately either attacks my hands holding the food, or he goes straight for my earlobe and "there will be blood!" All I can do is arrange the foods and stuff I am bringing into the birdroom so he does not make me spill them and then remove him from me when I sit everything down. But he is biting constantly during this time.

I learned my less on with Pedro Zon to not meet Bocca's aggression with more aggression; that only makes him worse and continues the punishment. But interaction with him is always after the fact of the attack and I am getting nowhere with him and his unpleasant behavior; at least he is smaller than an Amazon and I am not longer having to go to the ECU for stitches. I thought he would get used to me and my routine, but that has not happened. He is still right on me when I come into the room and demanding instant service. He does not want me to take time to even serve the food to the different foraging areas. Lately I have taken to sitting down the covered and secure food, towelling Bocca and caging him with a few bites of his favorite foods while I take care of all the foraging stations. Later, when I let him out, he comes straight for me and attacks my ear and will not let up until I towel him again, lay the towel on a flat surface with him in it, and allow him to extracate himself out of the towel; usually by the time he gets out of the towel, he has worn off his "mad" and does not attack me again. He goes and eats with Pichu and later comes back for one on one attention; he is even loving and nice and although he will not allow me to pet him with my hands, he loves lying against my neck or ear and rubbing himself against my skin. Some minutes later, he will decide I need to be punished again and he will attack me until I have to towel him again, and the behavior starts all over again; until I get tired of the attacks or want to interact with a different bird than just him and I put him in his cage: again with a treat to occuply him.

When he is going to mellow? Do these birds mellow?

 

[Laurul Feather Cat]

Sorry for the different fonts in the above post; my old cat keeps stepping on the keyboard and I can't see around her while she is standing in front of the monitor to correct it until she moves.

I know. I'm a patsy.

 

[Mrcrowley]

I think as long as you do not show reaction to the bites and say 'NO" calmly that might work have you had your birds sexed? Sounds like L is a male with all the protection signs cage ,food and H. My wifes Sweepee is a male and he is wicked proective of his cage if you do not let him know you want him to step up and of his food and of the th two female . That is the observations I have made jope that helps . I usually give him a few minutes to calm down and offer my finger to step up again and he is fine. If L trys to bite back away no reaction accept "no" calmly.

 

[Kelli]

It sounds like you have made remarkable progress - they are also still babies and going through that testing time.... I have two green cheeks but have never had issues with them biting or even drawing blood (now my blue crown is a different story LOL).

 

[asthenia]

Thanks for all your responses, everyone!

We indeed had L and H sexed, that was a big concern of ours actually, we'd wanted girls, and she drew from a few birds in the clutch, and told us that H and L were girls, so home with us they came. Sometimes I wonder though about L for the same reasons as all of you, since she is so wild/rough playing, and pretty cage protective. However, they've made NO courting/breeding motions, so I guess time will tell about this.

We really appreciate the advice; it just sounds like we're doing the best we can and this is how GCC are (Hallie, your post especially reassured my bf we were good bird-parents ^^). We're just going to keep having to move forward and hope for the best. With more time I'm sure L will tone down, and H will continue to come out of her shell... Even in the past few days H has wanted to join the group and ride around on my shoulder while I do laundry, etc. They also snuggled with me and took a nap on Sunday which was awesome. Progress is progress!!

 

[shel]

good luck with your babies!

i have a GCC named beaker. no idea what sex he is, but we think of him as a male. he can be very cuddly and sweet, but he is a biter! i'm lucky that he mostly bites my fingers, but still it hurts a lot.

looking forward to hearing more about L and H!

shel