My crazy cage aggressive Quaker

I have a 3 year old Quaker that I am slowly trying to gain his trust, I have had him for a year and when I got him, he was a really bad "Plucker" and he no longer is with a lot affection and love, I can get him out of his cage as long as I have a towel around my hand and arm so he wont bite me, once he is out of his cage he is perfectly sweet and fine! I need to know how can I start to break him of being so cage aggressive. It's starting to make me nervous.

If he is aggressive only while in the cage, try letting him come out of the cage on his own and then interact with him. You could try moving things around in his cage to "shake up" his home a bit, or try moving him to a travel or smaller cage occasionally, just to keep him guessing. He may become less territorial if he is not sure which "home" is his. You could also try target training while in the cage and get him to "target" onto your arm.

Sorry I don't have any more ideas, I have a rather fear-aggressive and hand-shy fid of my own that I am working with, with limited success with all the above methods. It's been up and down for over a year now. Right now we are in a down phase.

There are some great resources here that may be able to help you, as they have far more experience with rehabilitating birds than I have. We just need to get them to chime in.

Roz? Vikki? VickiNumbers? Richard? Anybody out there? Need some advice here!

I will try it, he is a sweet boy, until you go to his cage, he is fine if I move things around, take his toys, food dish, water dish, and everything out to clean and sanitize it, but when it comes to him coming out he gets so mean! I will open his cage doors and he will turn around and close them and start screaming at me, like How dare you open my cage! When I take him in to another room though he is 100% fine... It's just sad because I know he wants to be loved, he talks, blows kisses, and when left alone for 15 minutes will start saying "Come here" when you walk over to him he starts talking up a storm. I just dont understand my crazy boy!

Quakers are the only parrot that builds a nest, the rest search out tree cavities for nest. So your Quaker sees his cage as sort of a nest and defends it. Quakers keep their nest all year round and roost there every night, very different from your average parrot. Maybe providing him a card board box to play "nesty" in will move his defensiveness to somewhere else but you'll still have the same issues. The answer is to become his "mate" then you'll be welcome . He's fine with you as a friend but he doesn't see you as his mate. he's not "bonded" to you. I would suggest learning to "preen" his feathers.Something only a trusted mate would be allowed to do.

You could try target training him, I haven't done this with birds, but I know people do. I've played with it with horses. The idea is that you use treats to reinforce them for following a "target" around. It can be anything that's handy to put in between the cage bars and is recognizable -- some people say they use chopsticks with a bit of bright tape at the end. Once he will follow it around inside the cage, you could use it to draw him outside for further interaction. Might be worth a shot, anyway!