mehul93

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So I've been really struggling with our newest ringneck flipper over the past couple months.

It started out with constant contact calling. All she would do is contact call if I ever stepped from my room to the en-suite bathroom. I would wait till she stopped then entered the main room again.

This behaviour then changed to contact calling at all times if I wasn't in the room. Whether I leave to go to the bathroom or just leave the room she would contact call. This would settle down at around 1pm.

Then she injured her foot which meant she was cage bound for 2 weeks. During this time the behaviour got worse, extreme contact calling and then not taking treats from me in the morning. Usually she would be really excited in the morning and would target and accept treats. When I mean by accepting she will take it but just drop it. Now she just doesn’t take anything. As well as this her appetite is no longer there. She is put to bed at 7.30pm, cage covered and is uncovered in the morning at 8.30am. So she has a good amount of time where she hasn't eaten. (she still has access to water if needed). When I put her food in she will take a peck at it and then just climb up the cage cling on and contact call. I have tried a variety of ways to feed her, bowl, hanging skewers foraging ball with large slots for her to take food from and even tried hand feeding her. Nothing, she'll take it from my hand and just drop it. I've tried different types of vegetables, fruits, cooked mash, chop and even tried yoghurt with a sprinkling of Nekton that @Roz suggested, but again one peck and then leaves it.

Now her behaviour is changed for the worse. I let her out in the morning and she would fly around contact calling, she never used to do this. She used to fly around and I would be able to put in her breakfast and she would go straight into her cage/ would let me put her in without hesitation. She now contact calls while flying and also while I'm just standing in the room, something which I haven't enforced at all.

If I now put food in her cage she won't fly over to investigate and be eager to get in. She will in-fact fly away from me in the mornings and would not want to cooperate at all. Whenever I put her back in her cage I always enforce that with a treat, but for some reason she now just hates going back in. I would have to try alot harder to have her go back in and in general just have her cooperate. She doesn't cooperate, I let her be, she contact calls... I don't know where I'm going wrong

She has many different toys that are cycled all the time but she just doesn’t seem interested in them half the time, it's just cling onto the cage and contact call.

Could she be going through a moult? I noticed that she was rubbing her head against the rope wrapped around her training perch an on my computer monitors when she was out last week. Could this loss of appetite and behaviour change be hormonal?

I'm at the point where I have no idea what to do, disheartened and questioning whether she wants to be her/ I should keep her.

I have uploaded videos of what she does on youtube or you guys to see: Playlist
 
Hi, I am sorry to hear about your situation, she sounds a bit like Bluey my second IRN who we adopted last year in July, we are her 4th home and her screaming behaviour started 6 weeks after she came to us, I am not home now but once there and when I get some time I can write some things which we did with Bluey which helped a little, we sometimes now get very good days with her when she is very engaged in everything and some bad ones, but at least it’s not constant by the way we took her to vet twice first time it was just general check up, second time it was more detailed one ( because she was screaming so much we got worried maybe she is not well) and vet ruled out medical reasons he said behavioural/ hormonal
 
Ok thanks! Whatever you have will definitely help.

I've trued putting music on, any kind of background sound, she even has her own phone to watch cartoon's on...

When I last took her to the vet they took bloods and she had an x-ray and out of those nothing came up. So medically I think she is ok.

She's only like this in the morning now for some reason, I just went up to check on her as she settled down and we had a little flight recall session, practiced her spinning and she went back into her cage as normal.
 
Anddd just like that the peace is over, I can hear her contact calling again haha
 
Bluey is older, she just turned 3…
What helped us a bit was getting Bluey into foraging and encouraging discovering things around her, we hide seeds and different treats in her toys, for example we stopped serving her seeds in food bowl, instead we put them into foraging toys which she has now on the bottom of the cage, as well we put some foot toys on the bottom of the cage ( although she likes to play with plastic lids from milk bottles most)we rotate her cage really often ( weekly) and often I cut toys into pieces and “create” new toys or we make some easy diy toys,on the outside of the cage we made few foraging places so she has one tray with dry flowers and I put in it some dried pieces of veggies , then she has some small containers/trays with different toy bits ( at first she wasn’t really interested in those so to get her into it I used to hide small pieces of millet in there and now she goes and throws all toys around and usually picks something to chew) we serve her organic dry loose chamomile flowers daily (over chop or we make tea ) and I add little bit of mint to the chop sometimes ( apparently mint is calming ) we reduced amount of nutriberries to one every other day but again if she wants it she will find hidden somewhere in her toys) as well we did treat test… we basically placed to few different treats on the table and see what she picks first/ eats most…turned up walnuts ( I was using safflower seeds before treat test) so if we have training sessions I use tiny walnut pieces and response is much better, going back to cage nicely is walnut too, but if let’s say if I do something else around house and she lands on me to see what’s going on I give her safflower seed ( I do it because she used to be totally not interested in anything else then screaming and never followed me around house)we recently increased her beauty sleep from 12 hours to 14 hours ( but that was due to being aggressive probably because of hormones or at least that what vet suggested) we introduced some herbs and spices, she likes rosemary, she doesn’t eat it but enjoys to sit and shred it, same with cloves…sometimes it’s useful to record interactions… I was for very long time under impression that she prefers my boyfriend as she is more calm with him and usually training sessions last longer, but in fact it was my behaviour which was causing trouble, I used to praise her a lot and get excited while my boyfriend usually use clicker or just say good girl, so seems my excited behaviour was getting her over excited and then screaming followed…
 
Are there any veggies which Flipper will eat? With our first IRN we took it easy, she came to us from home where they fed her seeds and occasionally pepper, chilli, carrot and apple so at the beginning we mostly gave her pepper and carrots and we slowly introduced another veggies, if I would made her chop with ingredients she didn’t know or never tried she wasn’t keen on eating it, for some reason our first IRN is definition of neophobia not only with food but everything around her, so we always show her new toys, we try to kind of play with them in the front of her and encourage her to touch them with her beak before we put it to cage, for her soft wood toys and cardboard works best while Bluey is not fussy about any toys… Flipper is still very young… personally I find our younger IRN easier to train than Bluey so I think with patience and consistency you can achieve a lot❤️
 
Have you taken her to meet Gopal yet? She might do better in a room with him too since she seems to want company?
If I now put food in her cage she won't fly over to investigate and be eager to get in. She will in-fact fly away from me in the mornings and would not want to cooperate at all. Whenever I put her back in her cage I always enforce that with a treat, but for some reason she now just hates going back in.
I wonder if after two weeks of being forced to stay in her cage because of her injury, she is now reluctant to go back in, in case the door shuts for another two weeks? The pacing inside may mean she wants to come out.
Really love the way you have furnished her cage by the way!
 
I'm trying to get her to forage but she most of the time she loses interest really quickly. She has 2 hanging foraging items, with like a cage ball that is filled with shredded paper and another which is a ball with slots. She seems to enjoy those 2 the most and I put them in to keep her busy. She will happily spend time trying to get whatever is out of it. Alot of the times it's the case of me pretending to play/forage myself to get her interested. Sometimes she'll only play with the item if I've got it in my hand.

I've actually stopped giving her seed mix during the day in her bowl, I found that she would skip her morning veg and have seeds in the afternoon. She gets seeds in the form of training or as you do in foraging. She used to love sweetcorn and passionfruit seeds, but even those don't work in the morning, should I feed her later in the day? Do i entirely skip her breakfast and feed her midday? When we got her she was eating, or atleast trying everything I put in her bowl. I'll try adding more spices in her mix, I've tried mint and rosemary to entice her but that didn't work

This issue seems to only happen in the morning only, she somewhat afraid of me in the morning and won't stay on my finger/shoulder for too long. Thats when it is really difficult to get her back in her cage. I find in the afternoon she is fine, she'll recall, step up, spin and generally want to be with me.

I might try change the treats I give her. Maybe do a test again and see what she goes for first, I'll keep doing it until I can list her top three then treat according.

Highest value = going back into cage
Second highest value = training
Thirds highest value = for interacting with her

@Roz I've been introducing both the birds this week, just putting her in a travel cage next to his cage, they are both interested in each other and plan to let him out first now to see what he does. Yeah the pacing I can tell is her wanting to come out, since yesterday I've ben letting her out and spending some time in the room with her before trying to put her back in. I just sit and let her fly around, if she makes a contact call she gets no attention, and other sound she does. But she won't really let me come near her and she will fly off my hand straight away
 
So they were out together for about an hour. Gopal was abit more scared than her but they did sit relatively near each other. They did however lock beaks if they got too close together but usually one of them would fly off before anything escalated. I'm not sure how first meets are supposed to go, but hopefully the next they are more comfortable with each other.

I was worried flippers would not cooperate at all while out with him but she seemed to be okay and would step up, was even able to put her back into her travel cage and back into her main cage with no issues... if only it was like that all the time.

I gave them both a slice of apple to eat but they both are now having a late breakfast.

However... as usual flippers has now gone back to contact calling and pacing up and down. I don't think she's even bothered to have breakfast
 
@Wera Forgot to ask, you said you increased sleep, are you putting her to bed early or letting her sleep in till later?
 
In my case we had to go with putting them to bed early as boyfriend starts work at set hours, do you have her cage in the same room with your other ringneck?
 
They both look beautiful❤️ Mine two don’t really like each other to much but last time when I took Bluey to vet our other one was calling a lot and even before at the beginning when Bluey arrived once they realised there is another parrot somewhere in the house they were contact calling to each other a lot
 
They look great together. :feel_loved: Giving both an apple slice pairs a good experience in the vicinity of each other. Have you thought of putting both cages in the same room or isn't the sitting room big enough? Having Gopal in the same room might give her something else to think about rather than screaming.
 
Sorry about the late reply! Was going to do an update of how shes been.

Not enough space unfortunately… ive been bringing her down more often. They’re still testing each others limits, still waiting for them to both be okay with each other.

in terms of flippers i did what you said @Wera, gave her a couple more hours of sleep. It initially worked for a week, she would wake up not in a mood, would happily eat treats from me and just be consistent in terms of behaviour. She did still contact call but i noticed it was slightly less. She seemed food motivated, when i stuck her breakfast into her cage she’d go all crazy trying to get inside, the behaviour that I used to see in her.

However the past couple days ive noticed shes gone back to her old self. Won’t interact in the morning and will just stay away from you, constant contact call while I’m in the room with her, and when I now put her food in she doesn’t even care about it.

Nothing has changed in her new routine but shes now decided she wants to be a pain again. I also stopped giving her seeds as a meal and instead put it in foraging items and completely cut out the nutri berries for now.

Should I cut out her seed mix until she starts to accept her fresh breakfast again?
 
Also I noticed her sitting weird on her perch the other day. Im guessing theres nothing to worry about?

I put her stand next to the window and she seems to enjoy sitting there looking out of the window
 

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I wouldn’t cut seeds, seeds are good for parrots problem starts if it’s low quality seed mix and the only food available 😉I put seeds for Bluey into toys because she seems to be always in high gear looking for something to do so it’s good option for her to keep her busy…recently I freaked out about something our other ringneck started to do, she acts like maniac and even plucked few feathers, that obviously send me into panic mode so I posted here on the forum and took her to vet… advice here on the forum and from vet was very similar ignore and monitor from distance, my vet as well said that IRN as species are full of energy it’s part of their appeal but can be tricky to manage… it’s basically trying to find something what works… could it maybe be that she doesn’t want to interact when you want or she wants to interact in different way…I had good laugh today… Bluey didn’t want to do any recall or spin and didn’t care for walnut but apparently sitting next to me whistling together, making clicking noises, saying peekaboo a lot and giving head scratches was fine…then she was making confetti out of old phone book had her relaxed screaming session ( sitting on the swing with leg up and screaming) which is hard to listen to but I ignore it and let her get on with it I usually leave the room and go to do some household work or sit in the bedroom, once she is done with screaming she usually starts to fly around house to find me and see what I am doing, it’s weird thing with her because she rarely screams when she is the cage or it’s nearly like when she is there she can entertain herself but once out she doesn’t know what to do, although I think in past 7 months she had some good progress ( she doesn’t scream for 5 hours straight and we don’t use earplugs anymore )
 
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