Hey everyone,
I'm new to AA and I hope you guys will help me out with my wild-caught amazon Izzy.
The story of how we got Izzy is long, but the important thing you need to know is that I don't live in the US and where I live, we don't even have Avian vets, since not a lot of people keep birds as pets. This means I can't consult with anyone when it comes to Izzy's health or behavior. We rescued him from a cramped cage where he was kept together with other wild-caught birds. The worst thing is, they were caught legally by the government of the country of his origin.
We've had him for 7 months now, but we don't know the age or sex. At first, he was extremely quiet and never bit us or anything. Lately he's been getting super loud and super brave.
And here's the problem: Biting.
Even when we sweep the floor around his cage, he will follow us around until he reaches us and bites us. I try to sit close to his cage a lot. He climbs down the cage from outside, tries to reach me and at first, it looks like he's reaching out to grab a hold of me and sit, he feels around with his beak and as soon as he finds the right spot, instead of grabbing he bites really hard!!
I try to sing and dance around him when I can, he usually gets excited and gets loud when we do this. He often makes attempts to sit on our heads, but usually can't hold on for more than a few seconds. He doesn't seem afraid in general anymore, I think most of it is aggressive biting, but I have no idea why he's doing it. The only progress we've had is that he takes food from our hands, but he's been doing that for months now, so that's not much.
We still haven't started training him, we've been waiting for him to get comfortable first, I ordered a clicker and it'll arrive in about a week but I still don't know how to train him since he bites all the time.
Any advice will be much appreciated! Thank you!
P.S. I bring me cat from the office sometimes and when Izzy first saw him, he got spooked from across the room, ever since that we've been hiding the cat at all times. The other day, my cat snuck out and was watching Izzy, but Izzy was relaxed and preening and didn't even care that the cat was there, that makes me think he's not a scared bird anymore.
I'm new to AA and I hope you guys will help me out with my wild-caught amazon Izzy.
The story of how we got Izzy is long, but the important thing you need to know is that I don't live in the US and where I live, we don't even have Avian vets, since not a lot of people keep birds as pets. This means I can't consult with anyone when it comes to Izzy's health or behavior. We rescued him from a cramped cage where he was kept together with other wild-caught birds. The worst thing is, they were caught legally by the government of the country of his origin.
We've had him for 7 months now, but we don't know the age or sex. At first, he was extremely quiet and never bit us or anything. Lately he's been getting super loud and super brave.
And here's the problem: Biting.
Even when we sweep the floor around his cage, he will follow us around until he reaches us and bites us. I try to sit close to his cage a lot. He climbs down the cage from outside, tries to reach me and at first, it looks like he's reaching out to grab a hold of me and sit, he feels around with his beak and as soon as he finds the right spot, instead of grabbing he bites really hard!!
I try to sing and dance around him when I can, he usually gets excited and gets loud when we do this. He often makes attempts to sit on our heads, but usually can't hold on for more than a few seconds. He doesn't seem afraid in general anymore, I think most of it is aggressive biting, but I have no idea why he's doing it. The only progress we've had is that he takes food from our hands, but he's been doing that for months now, so that's not much.
We still haven't started training him, we've been waiting for him to get comfortable first, I ordered a clicker and it'll arrive in about a week but I still don't know how to train him since he bites all the time.
Any advice will be much appreciated! Thank you!
P.S. I bring me cat from the office sometimes and when Izzy first saw him, he got spooked from across the room, ever since that we've been hiding the cat at all times. The other day, my cat snuck out and was watching Izzy, but Izzy was relaxed and preening and didn't even care that the cat was there, that makes me think he's not a scared bird anymore.