Hi all, I am new to this forum, thanks for letting me be a part of it.
I am not good at keeping things short, so apologies for the length of this post. English is also not my first language, so please be patient with any mistakes.
My husband and I have had Gerry - orange-winged Amazon - for about 6 years. When we got him he was 6 months old and came from a parrot breeder, he was parent reared and did not have much human interaction. It was our first bird and despite having done a lot of research nothing could have prepared us for him!
Gosh he is a handful for sure. We watched all the videos about a parrot being loving and cuddly and boy we were wrong if we thought we could ever get there with Gerry!
He lives in a large cage, the ones suitable for macaws, but has time out of the cage for at least 4 hours every day. He is not clipped, so he flies around, sits with us while we work, watches TV with us, jumps on us when he feels like seeing what we are doing up close, he looks relaxed and happy.
When we started to let him out of his cage, at the very beginning, he was terrified of us; our vet suggested we towel him to get him back to the cage and in his words this was the way to get him used to us. Note: this vet specialises in exotics and has several large parrots himself.
We did the towelling for about 10 times and every time the experience was terrifying for both us and him - he would scream out in terror, fly away, we would chase, I would have to wear thick gloves as he would try to bite my fingers off. So despite the vet's recommendation, we decided to stop towelling and instead trained him to step on a perch and then we use the perch to carry him back to the cage, which he now does 100% of the time. He is now also clicker trained, which he learned pretty fast and goes everywhere we put the stick to get treats (he loves almonds). Doing the step up on hand is out of the question as he would just bite and draw blood (I tried a million times always with the same result which left me hurt mentally and physically, my husband doesn't even try as he saw what happened to me for being brave).
Now it has been 6 years and he likes spending time with us, he is super excited to sit on us, he takes treats from our hands, he follows us around, he will go as far as giving us his paws when asked for, but all of this on his terms, if we ever try to touch him (e.g. his head or go near his belly with a hand to ask him to step up) he will growl and act terrified and fly away or bite.
Just to make sure I don't get judged unfairly, we love him and he loves us: I can see how excited he gets when we gets back home after being out or because he always comes and sits near us. He is also pretty much in love with me over my husband as he follows me around and when he cannot see me he looks for me everywhere and calls me until I respond to him.
The thing that hurts is that he is still wild and mistrusting of us.
I am not sure whether this can ever be improved.
I am not good at keeping things short, so apologies for the length of this post. English is also not my first language, so please be patient with any mistakes.
My husband and I have had Gerry - orange-winged Amazon - for about 6 years. When we got him he was 6 months old and came from a parrot breeder, he was parent reared and did not have much human interaction. It was our first bird and despite having done a lot of research nothing could have prepared us for him!
Gosh he is a handful for sure. We watched all the videos about a parrot being loving and cuddly and boy we were wrong if we thought we could ever get there with Gerry!
He lives in a large cage, the ones suitable for macaws, but has time out of the cage for at least 4 hours every day. He is not clipped, so he flies around, sits with us while we work, watches TV with us, jumps on us when he feels like seeing what we are doing up close, he looks relaxed and happy.
When we started to let him out of his cage, at the very beginning, he was terrified of us; our vet suggested we towel him to get him back to the cage and in his words this was the way to get him used to us. Note: this vet specialises in exotics and has several large parrots himself.
We did the towelling for about 10 times and every time the experience was terrifying for both us and him - he would scream out in terror, fly away, we would chase, I would have to wear thick gloves as he would try to bite my fingers off. So despite the vet's recommendation, we decided to stop towelling and instead trained him to step on a perch and then we use the perch to carry him back to the cage, which he now does 100% of the time. He is now also clicker trained, which he learned pretty fast and goes everywhere we put the stick to get treats (he loves almonds). Doing the step up on hand is out of the question as he would just bite and draw blood (I tried a million times always with the same result which left me hurt mentally and physically, my husband doesn't even try as he saw what happened to me for being brave).
Now it has been 6 years and he likes spending time with us, he is super excited to sit on us, he takes treats from our hands, he follows us around, he will go as far as giving us his paws when asked for, but all of this on his terms, if we ever try to touch him (e.g. his head or go near his belly with a hand to ask him to step up) he will growl and act terrified and fly away or bite.
Just to make sure I don't get judged unfairly, we love him and he loves us: I can see how excited he gets when we gets back home after being out or because he always comes and sits near us. He is also pretty much in love with me over my husband as he follows me around and when he cannot see me he looks for me everywhere and calls me until I respond to him.
The thing that hurts is that he is still wild and mistrusting of us.
I am not sure whether this can ever be improved.