Don’t Discipline, Distract!
January 17th, 2012Jamieleigh
People still seem to think discipline works with birds. IT DOESN’T! Yet I’ve been teaching a person how to touch train and when they don’t get a reaction they want or when the bird looks to bite them, they – without even THINKING – immediately react to hitting the bird on the head with the target stick… WHAT?!?!
Or shouting a firm, “NO! That’s not allowed!”
I can tell you right now if I told my husband that stuff, he’d do it anyway JUST to prove a point that he CAN and I can’t tell him what to do.
Umm… sound like 100% of parrots? Do you really think your bird is going to react like a dog and feel bad for hurting you?
Sometimes, no matter how much I told someone “Stop yelling at your bird, distract it with something else.” they just wouldn’t listen and nothing is more frustrating to me than having someone ask for my help and then not take it and then COMPLAIN that whatever they are doing isn’t working. Ummm…? Maybe you should stop what you’re doing since it’s not working and listen. Kind of like the reaction you want from your bird, huh?
Many people don’t hang out with their birds because they’re destructive. I get that. I spent a lot of money on my furniture, I don’t want it ruined. But I still keep my birds out on it with me, and I keep a PILE stock full of TOYS for them, things I use to distract them with when they’re up to no good. It works like a charm! I keep a variety, things they haven’t seen before, colors and textures and everything you could think of, I also use myself. You can always click and reward your bird for just being cool and collected, not doing anything but being a sweet bird. Nothing wrong with that, everything right with that.
It seems to me people (ie: humans) have much more tolerance with kids (grandchildren and the like) than they do their birds. Well, your birds are pretty much like children.
If you look at it like that you might treat them differently, you might PREPARE to have them out and about by having things for them to do instead of yelling at them for trying to find something to do on their own that only gets them hit or yelled at or put back in their cage.
I hope I don’t sound too much like I’m ranting…
Above is my toy box I keep around the TV. We only watch TV in our den and we love to do so with our birds a bit so they can hang out and have no expectations of us or themselves to do anything. I keep lots of balls and a variety of weird things (I shop in the cat toy section for these because they’re different and only serve this single purpose) the birds are supervised with them and spend the whole time playing with them while I can calmly watch TV or chill out and talk with Dave. It’s nice, it’s peaceful and it includes them.
It’s not disciplining, it’s distracting.
Diversion is the answer for most things but eventually our birds will challenge it.
Ebony, she’s a 31 year old disabled red tailed black cockatoo, will humor me until she sees an opportunity to tease.
She loves the car and normally sits on me or the back of my seat every morning when we go to work and evening when we return. She hates red lights! So now when she thinks they are taking too long to change to green she grabs a tuft of my hair and pulls hard and sharp. I yelp with pain, the light goes green and life returns to normal. My friend tells me that I am lucky to live in Tassie. If it was Melbourne with their traffic I would be bald now.
I have slowly during 25 years learned a little of her language ( she thinks I am a really slow leaner) but now I know a very quiet CaCa as I exhale means be good, behave. I must do as I’m told and when I do she will respond when I say CaCa . Time is a great teacher but still she likes to be the boss.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidewalk_tribal_galleries/367681938/
Our 3 year male old blue crown conure has a bad past time of using anything he has in his cage to try to (and does successfully) move water from his water cup to his Zupreen dish. He makes a soggy mess of it in short order. Everything goes into the water dish and then over to the food cup. He had started this with moving pieces of zupreen to his water dish. I gave him a pill bottle (thouroughly cleaned of course) with a penny inside as a toy. At first it took him almost 3 weeks to get the lid off of it. Now it takes an hour. He carries it almost constantly. Sometimes holding it with his beak and other times holding it with one foot. He uses it to move water by the “bucket” to his food dish once he gets the lid off. Is this a normal desire among birds like a blue crown conure? He gets bitey if I take his pill bottle toy but becomes less defensive of his cage when it is gone. Sill, it provides him with hours of fun so I give it back to him after a while to play.
This is addressed to Bill…I made the same mistake of using an empty pill bottle to put my quaker’s treats in. Now she identifies ALL pill bottles as having treats inside. I wish I could go back and change the fact that I ever did this, but it’s too late. I did, however, remove the treats and put them in a different container after my husband pointed how the danger in this. I strongly urge you to find a different container and take the pill bottle away from your bird, ESPECIALLY since your bird can get the cap off. This is extremely dangerous. You may say that you never leave other pill bottles out, but it only takes forgetting once. You would be heartbroken if your bird removed the cap on a real pill bottle, ate the plls and died. I’m hoping that eventually my bird will forget that a pill bottle ever held treats, but I doubt it. I just have to be extremely careful from now on. At least she was never able to remove the cap. Please consider what I’m saying.
Also, lots of birds like their dry food wet and will often dunk their pellets in their water. This activity sure keeps your little guy busy!
You are right Jamie. Birds act exactly like children and need to be distracted with toys and things to do. Parrots are very intelligent and need something to keep them busy. I can’t stand to hear that people hit their birds and yell at them. Humans can be so awful and are way worse to keep busy than children and parrots. It is very important to think of birds as toddlers. That is exactly how I see my 2 little cockatiels.
No bird should ever be hit or yelled at.
I have a Quaker too his name is peanut he was taken away from his nest when he was about five days old. here in Florida the pet stores pay kids to take the birds from the wild so they can sell them for money I was told they are not to take them out of the nest until they are 5 weeks old but when the bird shops pay these kids $25.00 each bird they don’t care how old they are as long as they make money that’s how I ended up with peanut and four of his brothers the bird shop wouldn’t take the baby birds and the kid didn’t know how to take care of them I was in the write place at the write time to save them all I took them home and care for them I gave them all away and just had peanut and we both were learning from each other I found he didn’t like the toys the stores had he liked the ones I made for him try taking a paper towel and rolling it up then tie some nots in it he loves it you can play with him with it or tie the paper towel on a string and put it on where every he likes to play they will play with it until it’s gone peanut will even chew up the paper towel till he only has the nots left then I play with him with just the nots he thinks is a small ball and I can roll it at him he brings it back to me so I can do it again it’s one of the games he has to play with me every day there are so many toys you can make with out buying them and not even knowing if your bird is going to like it when all is said an done it takes love and patiences to take care of anything!