Hi all,
I am back to this wonderful forum for some more advice
Just a quick recap on my situation: we have an 8 years old OWA parrot, Gerry. He was parent reared and not socialised with human until we got him at 6 month of age. When we got him he was pretty feral: would growl, bite drawing blood and by no means we could get any close to him.
We worked on it, over the years and in the last few months, I finally managed to stroke him: he generally comes on my lap or my legs, I wiggle my finger and he sort of bends his head a little signaling that he is happy to be scratched. I will scratch him for a few seconds, one minute if I am lucky, but then he is still nervous and goes to bite me. He generally bites gently, but at times he bites hard. I try saying the word "gently" but he has no clue of what I mean; I try squealing the way he would when he is hurt but again, no luck; I try tapping his beak but nothing. He still bites hard. I read somewhere that people hold the bird's beak between their fingers when stroking, but my parrot is not that tame, so holding his beak would not be possible.
How do I get him to be gentle and how do I get him more relaxed? He still seems pretty scared and wary.
I am back to this wonderful forum for some more advice
Just a quick recap on my situation: we have an 8 years old OWA parrot, Gerry. He was parent reared and not socialised with human until we got him at 6 month of age. When we got him he was pretty feral: would growl, bite drawing blood and by no means we could get any close to him.
We worked on it, over the years and in the last few months, I finally managed to stroke him: he generally comes on my lap or my legs, I wiggle my finger and he sort of bends his head a little signaling that he is happy to be scratched. I will scratch him for a few seconds, one minute if I am lucky, but then he is still nervous and goes to bite me. He generally bites gently, but at times he bites hard. I try saying the word "gently" but he has no clue of what I mean; I try squealing the way he would when he is hurt but again, no luck; I try tapping his beak but nothing. He still bites hard. I read somewhere that people hold the bird's beak between their fingers when stroking, but my parrot is not that tame, so holding his beak would not be possible.
How do I get him to be gentle and how do I get him more relaxed? He still seems pretty scared and wary.