Taming

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kazrowley
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 1:01 pm

Taming

Post by kazrowley »

Hello,
I'm new to the group. We have 2 African Grey Parrots and Quaker Parakeet. We have just brought a baby Indian Ring Neck he is 5 months old. He is not tame but wish to start. Could anyone please give me some advice, I have looked on various sites and not sure what method to use?
Many thanks for reading.
InTheAir
Posts: 2040
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2013 4:24 pm

Re: Taming

Post by InTheAir »

Welcome to the noisy world of indian ringnecks :)

I have a hen who was raised in an aviary and she responded incredibly well to the technique described in links below.
http://learningparrots.com/blog/trainin ... l-parrots/
http://learningparrots.com/blog/trainin ... ing-trust/

We quarantined her in a spare room for the first 2 weeks she was with us. Having her in a room that is not used in our daily routine really helped, it meant whenever we were in her sight we were concentrating on ensuring we behaved in a manner that wouldn't scare her. Basically, I frequently went into her room (after warning her I was about to open her door) to drop a treat in her dish and then back off as far as it took for her to feel comfortable enough to go to the dish and eat the treat. At first she would wait until I was back at the door, but within a few days she was taking treats the moment they hit the dish, then snatching them as I was putting them in. Sapphire is a fruit junkie, so any kind of fruit offered is enthusiastically received. Our other ringneck was a sunflower junkie, but we have removed them from his diet and use tree nuts as treats instead.
The links I have posted go into detail on movement and eye contact, so do read them. The author is much better at explaining things than I am!
I also find it interesting that she doesn't advocate sitting by the cage and talking to them. I completely agree with that. As soon as Sapphire started to take treats from me she wasn't particularly phased by anything else I did around her as long as I still avoided staring at her and moved carefully. I took a video of the first time I vacuumed the floor around her, she was sitting on a waist high perch, loose and fully flighted, playing with a toy while I vacuumed right under her.

The first link also has some good tips for setting up the environment to minimise stress when cleaning etc.

Best of luck and I hope you find this post helpful. There is also an epically long post on here that I wrote when I got Sapphire about our day by day interactions.
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