Need Help... Anti-Social Behavior, Biting, general questions

[tallison]

Hello fellow owners.

I have a few questions as we just got a pair of IRNs and have some problems, issues and concerns.

We are a family of 5 with other pets...... ie... 4 dogs. Just got a pair (Male / Female) IRNs from a family in CA. We adopted them thinking they were 6/9 months old.

However, the male already has is ring which I understand doesn't show up until like 2 years? Is this correct.

Ok, I guess onto the questions.

1. How do we clip their nails? How far up can we go and can we use a high quality dog nail trimmer?
2. How can we get the male to be more social? I can only handle him with leather gloves or oven mitts... He bites very, very hard.
3. How large of a cage do they need? I have an old antique cage but don't think it's big enough..?? Read they need a cage the size of like a Macaw.


I guess this is a good start for now.

Thanks for any tips, tricks or advice you may have!

Tony

[Chase]

Welcome to the forums! I've only been around here for a few weeks, but there is a lot of good information and hopefully something will help.

"However, the male already has is ring which I understand doesn't show up until like 2 years? Is this correct."
Correct, the ring on males show up about 2ish years in. So if he already had a bold ring then he is not 9 months.

"2. How can we get the male to be more social? I can only handle him with leather gloves or oven mitts... He bites very, very hard."
About two weeks back I got two "untame" ringnecks, I still have some bites that are healing. It's a slow process, and from what I've been told the older they are the more difficult it becomes to tame them. However, with understanding and time you can tame most birds. My first suggestion would be to search the forums, there are a lot of people asking the same questions and there is already a lot of good info out there. You can also look at my own post, which details some of the things I've done to help tame the birds http://www.indianringneck.com/forum/vie ... =2&t=12519

"3. How large of a cage do they need? I have an old antique cage but don't think it's big enough..?? Read they need a cage the size of like a Macaw."
It all depends honestly, how many birds in the cage, is the cage going to be open, ect... I current have two cages for my two ringnecks, one is the one shown at the link below and the other is about the same size but half as tall. http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.j ... Id=4186112
I think the smaller cage is a bit too small for long term, but it helps that I generally open up the cage and let the bird run around the top and sides. Though you might want to be careful about doing that with all the other animals in the house, I've seen more dogs hurt birds then cats.

Wish you the best of luck with the birds!

[Donna]

To start if you want to tame them into pets give them their own cages. Take the gloves and the oven mitts off this only freaks them out more. This tamming is going to take time and patents don't rush them, it doesn't happen over night.


Donna

[wide-eyed]

2. How can we get the male to be more social? I can only handle him with leather gloves or oven mitts... He bites very, very hard.

There's only one method: time and lots of it.

I got a ringneck three months ago with three major problems: she bit all the time; she refused to come out of her cage sometimes; and she would refuse to go back in. It would take me up to 45 minutes to get her back in. Now, she hardly ever bites and I get lots of warning before she does. In fact, when she does, she essentially just hits me with her beak rather than actually grabbing the skin. She also comes out of her cage without complaint and she either goes back in on her own when she's ready or I can get her back in within a minute just by saying 'in your cage' if I need to put her back early.

I've never had a bird before so I had to read everything I could to get to this point. Basically, I found that the most important thing was to stay calm all the time and try not to push her too far. I think the best tip I read was to never back down and let her win. If, for instance, I was trying to put her back in her cage, I spent the entire 45 minutes I needed to get her back in and then praised her heavily when she did. If I was doing something and she kept biting me, I kept doing what I was doing until she stopped and then I left her alone on my terms.
It's at the point now where she puffs her feathers at me and threatens to bite but I put my finger in front of her beak, say 'no' and then she starts whistling at me and does whatever I'm trying to get her to do.

What I found most helpful:

- Don't give in.
- Don't react when he does bite - apparently yelling (even in pain) causes them to think you're excited.
- Don't hit him or get otherwise rough. I found that tapping her beak gently seemed to make her worse.
- Get excited and praise him loudly when he does the right thing. I can have Cosmo clucking and whistling just by telling her she's a good girl now and she seems to expect it when she knows she's done the right thing.

Good luck!!