Rhi95
Moving in
- Joined
- 9/17/21
- Messages
- 6
- Real Name
- Rhiannon
Hi all, first time user/poster here, brace yourself for a long post.
We have two IRN’s, a female approx. 2+ years old and a male, we’re assuming around the same age (has his full ring). Both were purchased from a store specifically selling only birds from local breeders.
Anyway, here’s a bit of background about the birds. Nana, our lutino female, was the first IRN we had gotten. The shop didn’t recommend her as she had a bit of an attitude problem, being known as the biter of the bunch. This didn’t really scare us as these behaviours can be worked around with patience and she appeared quite sweet to us. When we got her home we noticed she was a pretty loving bird, it didn’t take long to build trust with her and get her to step up on our arms. We did notice, and still notice she is hesitant with hands, perhaps someone in her life had handled her quite badly making her scared of them, fair enough. But we worked around that, and try not to use our hands as much, but used treats to teach her our hands aren’t going to hurt her. Since then, she enjoys being on our shoulders, whispering in our ears, speaking a couple of phrases we worked hard to teach her. All in all, she’s a pretty great bird. At the time, we were working pretty heavy hours at our old jobs and noticed she was getting a bit neglected so we decided to get her a companion, another IRN but male. We thought if they did bond, have babies, that sort of thing wouldn’t be a problem, we would work around it if she was happy and not lonely.
Now let me introduce Ollie, a olive/dark green IRN. This boy was a lot and still is very different to Nana. He was very quiet And quite scared when we got him. We have worked very hard with him to hand tame him, teach him phrases and try gain his trust. He was an older bird when we got him, think late teenage years in bird years, because we wanted to get a bird around the same age as Nana. He’s managed to pick up a few phrases like ‘pretty bird’, wolf whistling and ‘whatcha doing’ but other then that he chooses not to really learn anything else. We thought this was odd as most of what I’ve read and seen of IRNs is that males tend to pick up these things quicker, but not Ollie. Ollie is still not really hand tamed, has shown absolutely no interested in wanted to be handled, wanting to step up, land on you, sit on your shoulder, nothing. He still flies around like mad whenever you go near him. He trusts us to feed him treats by hand, but let me tell you, took a very long time for him to even consider coming near us for that. So instead of pushing it and making him even more scared, we worked with how/who he was, not an overly affectionate bird. We decided to purchase a very large cage so if he didn’t come out, we would still have plenty of space to occupy himself and be comfortable. And so both him and Nana could be in the same cage eventually. Well, queue the beginning of the problems. Before merging them both into the same cage, we wanted to take this process slow, have their cages near eachother, and slowly moving them closer and closer together until they were pretty much side by side, just so they could grow used to eachother. Well, Ollie became absolutely obsessed with Nana, which we somewhat expected, him being a Male and her being a very pretty female. After a few weeks of them being side by side, we decided to let Nana out so she could fly around his cage and get to know him, and so we could see how she would handled him being so close to her. This all seemed fine, she was somewhat curious but then her attention would turn back to us and she’d forget all about him. We thought this was a good sign that perhaps they would get along, oh how wrong we were wrong. So next step, was getting them both out and seeing how they dealt with each other. At first everything seemed quite civil, there was curiosity and then they would do their own thing. Ollie was always quite happy just sitting on top of his cage people watching, while Nana would be on one of our shoulders watching what we were doing. For the first few times we let them out together they always seemed fine until one day. Ollie started becoming obsessive with Nana, constantly wanted to be near her, trying to whoo her etc. Nana didn’t take to this well, she would give a very obvious ‘back off’ screech every time he would attempt anything, and for a while that kind of worked, Ollie would back off and eventually give up. But that didn’t last long either, eventually Nana started building up quite the aggression towards him, even if he wasn’t near her. She enjoyed tempting him with her breeding behaviours, laying low, tilting head back and making weird noises, Ollie only having one thing on his mind would take this invitation only for it to lead to her standing up straight and lunging at him while screeching then proceeding to chase him to try bite him. It got so bad, at one stage she chased him, jumped onto his back and tried attacking between his wings, giving him quite the shock. Noticing this behaviour immediately, we decided to only have them out separately from then on, as we didn’t want either of our birds getting hurt and Nana had started quite an obsession with getting him, chasing him and tormenting him. She had absolutely no interest in being near him unless it were to attack him.
We worked around this issue, we bought another Xlarge cage and just had them slightly side by side but not together. This seemed to work quite fine, other then Ollie still being obsessed with wanting Nana, we kept telling him, she’s playing hard to get and isn’t interested buddy, but got to give him credit for his spirit, he still tries to whoo her. Doing everything separately with them works quite well and has resolved most of the aggression, atleast she has the company but there isn’t any pressure on her and they both enjoy talking to each other, that’s what matters.
Now our real issue, the one we can’t seem to work around or shake and which is absolutely destroying our sanity. Over the last few months, these two semi quite birds which only made their loud calls, occasional screams etc once or twice a day has now turned into all day every day. From the crack of dawn until dusk they screech and scream. We have tried what feels like every option to prevent this, ignoring them/leaving the room when they start, rewarding them when they are quite, giving them plenty of toys, foraging/destroying toys, fresh produce, large water baths in the cages but nothing is shaking this behaviour, in fact it has gotten so much worse. From the moment the sun makes an appearance in the morning they are screaming none stop, we keep them covered until we are up out of bed and this has always been what we’ve done, then we uncover them, give them attention and treats and normally that’s all they want and they go on about their day.
Now, whether they’re covered or not, they scream, whether we’re present or not, screaming. It seems nothing we do can shake this behaviour and we’re at the last of our sanity, every morning we are woken to the screaming, there is no peace and quite in the day anymore and I can feel my patience slipping. We attempted to put them in their own room, have music on for them whenever we’re not home, even if we are, we tend to leave it on and this used to quiet them down. Not even getting them out for attention helps anymore as they still scream, sometimes right in your ear/face. It’s gotten to the point our only option is to cover them until they’re quiet, this works occasionally but most of the time not even that helps. We’ve ended up having to keep them outside because we can’t seem to have any peace and the noise just echoes through the house, and we got so sick of being woken up insanely early due to their noise.
But now, I worry about our neighbours, as we live in a rental the last thing we need is for someone to complain about the noise, in all honestly I wouldn’t blame them. It’s almost gotten to the point where we might have to permanently move them up the back of the yard to prevent ourselves and neighbours hearing it. We’ve considered maybe having to rehome Ollie if this is the issue, as the screaming has only really gotten worse since we got him as he liked to scream whenever he heard other birds fly by which then encouraged Nana to do the same, now it’s just all the time regardless of other birds. Don’t get me wrong, when they do hear other birds they go absolutely mental. But we really don’t want to have to get rid of him. If anyone could have any advice on what we could try we would be most grateful because at the moment we are at an absolute loss and we don’t want any trouble from our quiet neighbourhood. So please, any advice would be appreciated at this point!
We have two IRN’s, a female approx. 2+ years old and a male, we’re assuming around the same age (has his full ring). Both were purchased from a store specifically selling only birds from local breeders.
Anyway, here’s a bit of background about the birds. Nana, our lutino female, was the first IRN we had gotten. The shop didn’t recommend her as she had a bit of an attitude problem, being known as the biter of the bunch. This didn’t really scare us as these behaviours can be worked around with patience and she appeared quite sweet to us. When we got her home we noticed she was a pretty loving bird, it didn’t take long to build trust with her and get her to step up on our arms. We did notice, and still notice she is hesitant with hands, perhaps someone in her life had handled her quite badly making her scared of them, fair enough. But we worked around that, and try not to use our hands as much, but used treats to teach her our hands aren’t going to hurt her. Since then, she enjoys being on our shoulders, whispering in our ears, speaking a couple of phrases we worked hard to teach her. All in all, she’s a pretty great bird. At the time, we were working pretty heavy hours at our old jobs and noticed she was getting a bit neglected so we decided to get her a companion, another IRN but male. We thought if they did bond, have babies, that sort of thing wouldn’t be a problem, we would work around it if she was happy and not lonely.
Now let me introduce Ollie, a olive/dark green IRN. This boy was a lot and still is very different to Nana. He was very quiet And quite scared when we got him. We have worked very hard with him to hand tame him, teach him phrases and try gain his trust. He was an older bird when we got him, think late teenage years in bird years, because we wanted to get a bird around the same age as Nana. He’s managed to pick up a few phrases like ‘pretty bird’, wolf whistling and ‘whatcha doing’ but other then that he chooses not to really learn anything else. We thought this was odd as most of what I’ve read and seen of IRNs is that males tend to pick up these things quicker, but not Ollie. Ollie is still not really hand tamed, has shown absolutely no interested in wanted to be handled, wanting to step up, land on you, sit on your shoulder, nothing. He still flies around like mad whenever you go near him. He trusts us to feed him treats by hand, but let me tell you, took a very long time for him to even consider coming near us for that. So instead of pushing it and making him even more scared, we worked with how/who he was, not an overly affectionate bird. We decided to purchase a very large cage so if he didn’t come out, we would still have plenty of space to occupy himself and be comfortable. And so both him and Nana could be in the same cage eventually. Well, queue the beginning of the problems. Before merging them both into the same cage, we wanted to take this process slow, have their cages near eachother, and slowly moving them closer and closer together until they were pretty much side by side, just so they could grow used to eachother. Well, Ollie became absolutely obsessed with Nana, which we somewhat expected, him being a Male and her being a very pretty female. After a few weeks of them being side by side, we decided to let Nana out so she could fly around his cage and get to know him, and so we could see how she would handled him being so close to her. This all seemed fine, she was somewhat curious but then her attention would turn back to us and she’d forget all about him. We thought this was a good sign that perhaps they would get along, oh how wrong we were wrong. So next step, was getting them both out and seeing how they dealt with each other. At first everything seemed quite civil, there was curiosity and then they would do their own thing. Ollie was always quite happy just sitting on top of his cage people watching, while Nana would be on one of our shoulders watching what we were doing. For the first few times we let them out together they always seemed fine until one day. Ollie started becoming obsessive with Nana, constantly wanted to be near her, trying to whoo her etc. Nana didn’t take to this well, she would give a very obvious ‘back off’ screech every time he would attempt anything, and for a while that kind of worked, Ollie would back off and eventually give up. But that didn’t last long either, eventually Nana started building up quite the aggression towards him, even if he wasn’t near her. She enjoyed tempting him with her breeding behaviours, laying low, tilting head back and making weird noises, Ollie only having one thing on his mind would take this invitation only for it to lead to her standing up straight and lunging at him while screeching then proceeding to chase him to try bite him. It got so bad, at one stage she chased him, jumped onto his back and tried attacking between his wings, giving him quite the shock. Noticing this behaviour immediately, we decided to only have them out separately from then on, as we didn’t want either of our birds getting hurt and Nana had started quite an obsession with getting him, chasing him and tormenting him. She had absolutely no interest in being near him unless it were to attack him.
We worked around this issue, we bought another Xlarge cage and just had them slightly side by side but not together. This seemed to work quite fine, other then Ollie still being obsessed with wanting Nana, we kept telling him, she’s playing hard to get and isn’t interested buddy, but got to give him credit for his spirit, he still tries to whoo her. Doing everything separately with them works quite well and has resolved most of the aggression, atleast she has the company but there isn’t any pressure on her and they both enjoy talking to each other, that’s what matters.
Now our real issue, the one we can’t seem to work around or shake and which is absolutely destroying our sanity. Over the last few months, these two semi quite birds which only made their loud calls, occasional screams etc once or twice a day has now turned into all day every day. From the crack of dawn until dusk they screech and scream. We have tried what feels like every option to prevent this, ignoring them/leaving the room when they start, rewarding them when they are quite, giving them plenty of toys, foraging/destroying toys, fresh produce, large water baths in the cages but nothing is shaking this behaviour, in fact it has gotten so much worse. From the moment the sun makes an appearance in the morning they are screaming none stop, we keep them covered until we are up out of bed and this has always been what we’ve done, then we uncover them, give them attention and treats and normally that’s all they want and they go on about their day.
Now, whether they’re covered or not, they scream, whether we’re present or not, screaming. It seems nothing we do can shake this behaviour and we’re at the last of our sanity, every morning we are woken to the screaming, there is no peace and quite in the day anymore and I can feel my patience slipping. We attempted to put them in their own room, have music on for them whenever we’re not home, even if we are, we tend to leave it on and this used to quiet them down. Not even getting them out for attention helps anymore as they still scream, sometimes right in your ear/face. It’s gotten to the point our only option is to cover them until they’re quiet, this works occasionally but most of the time not even that helps. We’ve ended up having to keep them outside because we can’t seem to have any peace and the noise just echoes through the house, and we got so sick of being woken up insanely early due to their noise.
But now, I worry about our neighbours, as we live in a rental the last thing we need is for someone to complain about the noise, in all honestly I wouldn’t blame them. It’s almost gotten to the point where we might have to permanently move them up the back of the yard to prevent ourselves and neighbours hearing it. We’ve considered maybe having to rehome Ollie if this is the issue, as the screaming has only really gotten worse since we got him as he liked to scream whenever he heard other birds fly by which then encouraged Nana to do the same, now it’s just all the time regardless of other birds. Don’t get me wrong, when they do hear other birds they go absolutely mental. But we really don’t want to have to get rid of him. If anyone could have any advice on what we could try we would be most grateful because at the moment we are at an absolute loss and we don’t want any trouble from our quiet neighbourhood. So please, any advice would be appreciated at this point!
Don't take them out of their cage to train them! Instead, work on it while IN their cage! Teach them to move towards a target on the outside of the cage (you can put it through the cage bars!) and give a reward looking at, moving towards or even touching the target! There is absolutely no reason that they MUST come out of their cages in order to train them! Start from within the cage and work your way out!