Screaming Goffins Cockatoo Help

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Goffin Cockatoo

My Goffin cockatoo likes to scream too – until I take him out then he will be quiet for awhile. -Rebecca Naquin

Whether you realize it or not, you are actually saying quite frankly to your bird, “If you scream, I will give you attention and take you out.”

So what does your cockatoo do? Screams, because it wants you to take it out. It’s quiet because it got what it want, so it’s content until it realizes it wants to hang out with you again. And maybe the next time it will want to stay out longer, so it will scream louder and for longer periods of time…

When you reinforce this type of behavior with attention, it only gets worse. The bird learns the more it screams, the more attention it gets and its a dangerous downhill spiral from there. This is only the beginning of a terrible “screamer”.

What Rebecca should be doing is waiting until her bird is quiet for at least a minute or more and then go in and give the bird attention for being quiet. The bird will then start being quiet for longer periods of time in order to get the attention it wants because it will learn a person only follows after silence.

The only tricky part to it, is that you can’t forget about your bird when it’s so quiet, otherwise you’re forgetting to reward! So keep in mind the fact that your bird doesn’t necessarily come with bad habits, “parronts” create them.

For severe screaming behavior cures, pick up a copy of our Stop Screaming course. It’s guaranteed to work!