Feathermint
Meeting neighbors
Hello there, new blue and gold macaw mom here (though some may have already seen my post in the welcome area, hiii! ). While I haven't had my Abby girl long enough for her to present any serious problems, there's a question I am having trouble finding the answer to and I'd like to address it now before starting any sort of training with her. Also sorry in advance for the long post.
So to start off, when we let her out of the cage to play there eventually came a time when it was getting late and we had to figure out how we were going to get Abby back in the cage (since then I have figured out how to lure her back in there without resorting to the towel like the first night). While trying different things though, I attempted something that has always worked with my past birds: pulling out a wooden perch and having them step onto it for easy transport back to the cage. I've always had no problem teaching my birds how to step up onto a perch, until now.
Soon as we pulled out that perch Abby became deathly afraid and would try to get away from me if I moved closer with the perch. She'd raise hell, lift her wings, do that little back and forth dance, and have a general look of "put that thing back where it came from or so help me!"
So I hid the stick and this made her noticeably less upset.
She seems less afraid of my arm than the stick, though after getting the sleeve of my shirt chomped on during a miscommunication (she held her foot up and said "step up!" very clearly) I will be very careful about making sure my arm is covered before offering it to her. My bad though, she looked like she wanted to get on my arm, but I guess that also conflicted with her current distrust of me lol. Or could be related to her negative view of the phrase "step up".
I'm wondering if she had a bad experience learning "step up" in the past? She won't even attempt to bite the stick, she just wants it as far away as possible and will move away if the stick is brought closer. It's the only thing I've seen her get this upset about so far and I've seen what she looks like when she's apprehensive about new toys. It's nothing like this display. I've also been learning she uses the word "step up" whenever she is upset or apprehensive about something. My mom seems to think maybe someone hit her with a stick in the past. We just don't know much about her history other than she has been through 3 homes before ours and a few bits and pieces of other info (like the only reason her last home gave her up is because they could not financially care for her anymore).
Would it be better if I just skipped stick training and instead (when ready) just move to offering her my arm, or should I ride it out and try to desensitize her to the stick? Should I try something else altogether?
I just don't want her to be unnecessarily upset if she doesn't have to be. Especially if she might have had a bad experience with sticks in the past. I'm thinking about using a different word/phrase besides "step up" as well since it seems to have a negative meaning to her. I've never seen a bird get this upset over a stick before. Either that or I'm just new to macaws and am not familiar with overly dramatic displays. Like yeah, my birds at first were afraid of the stick, but I was usually able to eventually teach them the stick was not so bad. Not the case with Abby. At least thus far, since she seemed to get so upset over it I questioned if it was humane to even keep the stick within her line of sight.
If it helps, I am not afraid of her and I try to always remain confident yet calm around her. She's been a very crazy, but gentle soul and even her "aggressive" lunges aren't bad at all right now (compared to some aggressive parrots I've seen at least). We want her to know we will never hurt her for any reason.
So to start off, when we let her out of the cage to play there eventually came a time when it was getting late and we had to figure out how we were going to get Abby back in the cage (since then I have figured out how to lure her back in there without resorting to the towel like the first night). While trying different things though, I attempted something that has always worked with my past birds: pulling out a wooden perch and having them step onto it for easy transport back to the cage. I've always had no problem teaching my birds how to step up onto a perch, until now.
Soon as we pulled out that perch Abby became deathly afraid and would try to get away from me if I moved closer with the perch. She'd raise hell, lift her wings, do that little back and forth dance, and have a general look of "put that thing back where it came from or so help me!"
So I hid the stick and this made her noticeably less upset.
She seems less afraid of my arm than the stick, though after getting the sleeve of my shirt chomped on during a miscommunication (she held her foot up and said "step up!" very clearly) I will be very careful about making sure my arm is covered before offering it to her. My bad though, she looked like she wanted to get on my arm, but I guess that also conflicted with her current distrust of me lol. Or could be related to her negative view of the phrase "step up".
I'm wondering if she had a bad experience learning "step up" in the past? She won't even attempt to bite the stick, she just wants it as far away as possible and will move away if the stick is brought closer. It's the only thing I've seen her get this upset about so far and I've seen what she looks like when she's apprehensive about new toys. It's nothing like this display. I've also been learning she uses the word "step up" whenever she is upset or apprehensive about something. My mom seems to think maybe someone hit her with a stick in the past. We just don't know much about her history other than she has been through 3 homes before ours and a few bits and pieces of other info (like the only reason her last home gave her up is because they could not financially care for her anymore).
Would it be better if I just skipped stick training and instead (when ready) just move to offering her my arm, or should I ride it out and try to desensitize her to the stick? Should I try something else altogether?
I just don't want her to be unnecessarily upset if she doesn't have to be. Especially if she might have had a bad experience with sticks in the past. I'm thinking about using a different word/phrase besides "step up" as well since it seems to have a negative meaning to her. I've never seen a bird get this upset over a stick before. Either that or I'm just new to macaws and am not familiar with overly dramatic displays. Like yeah, my birds at first were afraid of the stick, but I was usually able to eventually teach them the stick was not so bad. Not the case with Abby. At least thus far, since she seemed to get so upset over it I questioned if it was humane to even keep the stick within her line of sight.
If it helps, I am not afraid of her and I try to always remain confident yet calm around her. She's been a very crazy, but gentle soul and even her "aggressive" lunges aren't bad at all right now (compared to some aggressive parrots I've seen at least). We want her to know we will never hurt her for any reason.