Hello! We have a 14 month old hand raised cockateil. We have had him since he was 3 months old. He talks, chirps is usually very vocal. He comes to greet us when we are near the cage. We try to let him out daily for at least an hour, he is fully flighted. The only problem is that he hisses and bites, hard, when we try to pet or scratch his head or if we reach in his cage to replace food or water. Also, he does this when we try to collect him to go back in his cage. I think he is a happy bird, maybe he’s not? I dont know, very confusing. Any ideas?
Answer:
Hi Crystal,
This sounds more like the way a female behaves. It sounds like “he” has a lot of freedom? Do you let him come out on his own or does he come out on your hand? Some birds can get too independent when they are allowed to come and go as they please and remain fully flighted. It’s also common for a bird to bite when he doesn’t want to go back to his cage. You need to go back to the basics on training. It would be helpful to have his wings trimmed a bit. They will grow back, but it’s very hard to make much progress with a fully flighted cockatiel. He can simply fly away when he doesn’t like what you are asking him to do. Birds respond to positive reinforcement and really do not understand punishment. You should set some boundaries – he needs to learn to come out of the cage on your hand or a stick and go back the same way. It’s also better to pick him up for other reasons, than just going back to his cage. If he’s a biter, then it might be better to stick train him. He sounds like he is territorial about his cage, and that is a natural behavior and not necessarily a bad behavior. You can try to stick train him, and then take him to another room for handling. But he does need to learn to let you feed him without biting. Is his cage possibly too small? With any training, try to find a treat he likes a lot. You can give him a treat before you replace his food and water. Same when you need to put him back in the cage. As far as petting him, not all birds enjoy being touched, so if he doesn’t like it, there is no reason to force him to be petted. Again, I feel like this might be a female. I’ll give you the link to our training and behavior pages. I also recommend watching our webinars by Chris Davis – all of these questions have been covered in the past webinars. I think both sources will help you out a lot.
