Teach Your Parrot Not To Bite

How To Teach Your Parrot Not To Bite

When parrots are in the wilderness, they are guided by their natural instincts.  In the wild, parrots survive by using their beak when gripping objects for balance, climbing, and of course eating the food that they find on a daily basis.  Once we bring a parrot into our world, its instincts do not simply disappear.  Although people are in charge of their pet parrot, there are a few things that each of us needs to learn before handling our parrot.  One of those things is a parrot’s natural instinct to use its beak.

When handling a parrot, one of the first things that you will notice is that it will have the tendency to want to chew on your hands and fingers.  This is a common behavior reported by most parrot owners, and can cause major damage to your flesh.  Even very calm parrots can do damage when they are simply trying to use our hands and fingers the same way that they would in the wild: objects to grab when moving and climbing.

Another possibility is that your parrot is trying to show you that it is the dominating bird in your home.  It could also be trying to protect the area where it lives, or it could merely be angry at you because you did not allow it to get its way.  Parrots, as you will find out, can act as happy, and as moody, as any person can.  What needs to be done is a little bit of training in order to set the ground rules on how and when to use their beaks.

If your parrot is healthy, and it is not breeding season, you should have success in gradually teaching it that it is not proper to use your hands as a chew toy.  One of the easiest ways to begin training is to spend quality time with your parrot so that it gets to know you.  By developing a sense of trust between the parrot and yourself, it will relax and be more open to the training you will provide. Remember that only a startled parrot, or any bird, will use its beak in a hostile way toward an owner with which it has a quality relationship.

A very simple way is to start your training is to begin in a very quiet room, on a regular basis, by placing your hand in the cage away from your parrot.  Doing so will acclimate the bird to your hand being in the cage.  If the bird is very young, more than likely it has not developed a biting pattern and training will be much easier.  However, if the bird has already developed a routine of biting, using a stick instead of your finger may be the best course of action.

The training that you will do is what is commonly called a step up training mixed with a food reward system.  Basically, the bird will initially sit on a stick and you will push the parrot with another stick to step up to another point.  Doing so will focus the bird’s attention on using its feet primarily, and not its beak, when it steps up.  Furthermore, you will say praises to your parrot each time that it steps up to reinforce this new pattern.

Reward your parrot with not only words of praise but also food.  Doing so will escalate the learning process and quickly reinforce using its feet instead of its beak when interacting with you.  This entire process can take several weeks, but if the bird is young enough, it will learn quickly that using its feet, instead of its beak, is the best course of action.

Alternate solutions would be using gloves with your hands in a cage. This could lead to the final step which is allowing the parrot to come out of its cage and sit on its perch in the open air.  Just make sure that your parrot is now very comfortable with you on your hand before taking it out.  The change in its environment may cause it to panic if it does not feel safe and cause it to grab on to the outside of the cage, or you, with its beak, thus setting the training back a few days

Using these suggestions, and common sense, you should be able to train any parrot to not bite when being handled by you and eventually other people.