How Changing Your Bird’s Cage Can Reduce Aggression

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Recently we got this great question, as well as observation, on the birdtricks.com facebook which you can check out here if you haven’t already.

“I was just watching the video where you guys changed Storm’s cage to help reduce his aggression. Are there a set of general circumstances where changing a cage is recommended? This week I adopted a 15 year old Senegal with some biting/aggression issues but also has some phobias. I have kept him in his original cage as …to not freak him out. But I’m wondering now if I should put him in his new cage sooner than I had planned? Also, what is the procedure for this?”

- Kate Underwood

What Kate is referring to is our whole 45 days with blue fronted Amazon parrot, Storm. Storm’s story is somewhat long, and was well documented here on the blog. Check some of it out here.

Storm started out severely obese and with serious aggression issues, mainly towards men but really to everyone. His aggression was so severe that he would bite and never ever let go… tearing into flesh as hard as he possibly could like an animal on prey. But his signs were tricky as he showed the same signs for aggression that he did for admiration, too, and he would call the unknowingly person over with a cute, “C’mere, step up… c’mon… hewwo… come over here…” with a cute stubby foot high in the air as if he wanted nothing more than to step up nicely on your hand. Little did you know, he really wanted to get ahold of it so that you couldn’t get away from his firm grasp until there was nothing left for him to hang on to!

Can you believe this face would do such a thing?!

Not anymore, but he used to…

We started with Storm’s health. We had to first deal with his obesity and his obesity ended up being the root of his aggression. Storm was in a fairly small cage and could hardly ever come out because he would chase after the family member’s feet ruthlessly and getting him back into the cage was a dangerous task. And that was literally the only exercise Storm got – chasing after his owner’s feet on the floor (he couldn’t fly though he was fully flighted, because he was too fat to get himself off the ground) and he would be huffing and puffing after an attack, trying desperately to catch his breath before the next attack.

We switched Storm to an organic parrot pellet – our own – Feed Your Flock. We took the bad stuff out his diet immediately – the chicken he was being fed often and all the people food that were unhealthy for people and terrible for a bird. He was offered the freshest veggies, fruits and more. We found that Storm had a great and HEALTHY appetite! He just hadn’t been offered that stuff before so no one knew he liked it.

We also put him into a huge cage with water on one side, and food on the other. We also hid his food into toys all around the cage so that he was being made to climb all around the cage to eat his daily meals.

Although he was full every day, he was losing weight in a healthy way because he was exercising more and eating healthy. We began to see an active parrot in our cage, instead of a couch potato one. I actually was wondering if he was eating enough one day and put a bowl of his old food in his cage, and he tipped it over and pushed it through the grate of the cage so that it was not accessible. He wouldn’t touch it! It was amazing and I was so impressed. Especially since his old food was mainly nuts and seeds.

Once he did that, we decided some time in outdoor aviary would do him some good. Because the aviary was even bigger than his cage we had switched him to, we could make him fly now for his daily food and flight became his new passion!

Storm was flying in the aviary when he didn’t have to – for fun! That’s when we realized flight training could help cure his aggression. He was already making leaps and bounds of progress because we were able to move him from cage to aviary, so we began flight training and the more exercise he got, the healthier he ate, and the better he felt! Storm did all his flight training with Dave (a male he didn’t like – like all males) and because it was such a fun activity, he didn’t have a problem with men anymore – or anyone, for that matter.

When he went home to his owners there were NO attacks from Storm ever again.

A new cage with lots of room for exercising cured this bird’s aggression – think of what a larger cage can do for your bird. And remember… food on one side and water on the other. Make your bird work for its meal, it will be happier to do so.

Also, if you can rotate cages with your birds often, it’s a great thing to do to keep your birds from getting territorial over “their” cage. Our birds travel around a ton, and are always changing locations so they are never possessive of their cages because they don’t really know if they are “theirs” or not. We change it up so much they don’t get the chance to become territorial. We rotate their travel cages, indoor cages and outdoor aviaries. Every cage is decorated differently so it keeps us from having to change toys out (instead we switch birds!) and it keeps aggression down to a minimum.

A few good reasons to change your bird’s cage:

• Your bird needs more exercise and a larger cage is available (space from side to side is more important than space in height)
• A bird is defensive of his cage or has territorial aggression (changing it up will make it a new space that isn’t exactly “his” right away)
• To get used to other cages it might be staying in while you’re on vacation
• So that it doesn’t become phobic of change and take change stressfully – slowly getting your bird used to change can help immensely when a big change comes along you can’t take so slowly
• To be able to move your bird into an aviary in the future
• On the occasion your parrot is becoming hormonal/nesty within his current cage, a change of environment is always a good thing!

For adoptive parrots that may have issues or phobias you don’t know about, you may want to start a lot more slowly. You can put their old cage by the new one and let the bird check it out by walking on and around it first, possibly putting familiar toys inside so that it has some sense of comfort in the new environment. When we moved Storm, we took along some toys he had in his old cage but he didn’t like them anymore so we go rid of them and he came to like new toys instead. Every bird has the potential to respond completely differently but being the “familiar” in the world of “unfamiliars” can help aid in less aggressive behavior in the immediate.