tolerance

so. I'm starting to eye harnesses again, and really would like to get jack harness trained...

HOWEVER. Before I go down that road again....how do you train a bird to be more tolerant to poking and prodding an being touched?

Go through Michael's taming guide, it really is helpful. A lot of desensitization is done with flooding, Apple used to hate being touched with his previous owner but now is such a cuddlebug who loves scritches.

The best way to get your bird used to being man-handled is to regularly man-handle him. Period. You don't have to do it with the harness, just make a habit of picking him up, manually opening and manipulating its wings, grabbing its feet on a regular, daily basis. Make a game of it. Soon, he'll look forward to it. Don't be brusque or rough about it, but don't be gentle either.

Vikki wrote:

The best way to get your bird used to being man-handled is to regularly man-handle him. Period. You don't have to do it with the harness, just make a habit of picking him up, manually opening and manipulating its wings, grabbing its feet on a regular, daily basis. Make a game of it. Soon, he'll look forward to it. Don't be brusque or rough about it, but don't be gentle either.

Absolutely.
That video I posted of Ducky being restrained, you can see he's not that freaked out by my grabbing and manhandling. In those vids he was actually pretty put off as I had grabbed and restrained him at least 6 times to get the best video to post. That's the extent of his "put off" behavior as we manhandle him pretty much every day.

Yes that's pretty much the way it is, I agree. But ya'll know me.

So I wonder where I've gone wrong? In my attempt to handle Scooter daily and get him more and more tolerant of the handling, I've actually wound up with him LESS willing to deal with it. It's possible he's just decided to boss me around and that I should invest in a pair of gloves and ignore him... I used to inspect each wing every morning and flip him over to inspect his toes, but it seems each time Ive gone a trip and come back, I've been able to do a bit less before he gets irked with it. BOTH birds handled being restrained at the pet store with what appeared to be minimal stress and the handlers said they were paying careful attention to respiration and other signs of stress since they didn't know the birds well. I suspect he's been training me quite effectively. But you guys knew that already. I'm hopeful maybe he won't be "mad" this time, but it's an 8-day trip so I'm not sanguine.

..so. poke him in the wing daily even while he bites me?

I agree with the above. Once JJ and I had reached a mutual level of trust, I started increasing the amount of "manhandling" I was doing with her until I could do pretty much anything I wanted. There were things I'd do that she certainly didn't like, and she'd tell me or try and avoid it, but there wasn't any biting.... Until there was. Haha. When that happened, I tried to modify how I was doing whatever it was, or I'd back off a bit for a few days, but I'd always go right back to where I was. The biting always seemed to me to be an indicator that that particular area obviously needed some focused attention. It seemed to work because eventually we'd get to the point where I'd want to be.

Did I make any sense at all?

Now I've got baby bird who is nothing like JJ and I'm having to reevaluate everything I thought I knew about birds. Curvy roads and steep grades ahead for me, I'm afraid.

i know you will do just fine, relax and enjoy the little bundle of love


dusty

VickiNumbers wrote:

Curvy roads and steep grades ahead for me, I'm afraid.

You and me both Vicki, be happy that yours is at least cuddly.

Stop the poking and prodding BEFORE the bird resorts to biting. But do not ease up until the bird's "relaxed". So that might mean putting a finger on a wing because that's tolerated without a bite, but leave the finger on the wing (following the bird around if necessary) until the bird no longer reacts to the finger on the wing.

SnS - It's like desensitizing a horse. You keep the item near them until they relax/no longer react, but the stimulant needs to be far enough away/unconcerning enough not to overly freak them out. Maybe you're releasing the bird too soon from the stimulus (manhandling)? If the bird's not relaxed when you let go of them they learn the freaked out behavior causes you to let them go. What you didn't see in my video is that I held Ducky for a little while after the camera turned off. I was cuddling him, poo poo kissing his belly, etc. until he completely relaxed and was not really thinking about being restrained.

Yeah. What patd said. I'm sure that's what I meant to say!