Ask Lafeber

My IRN is scared

I recently bought a female indian ringneck , she is around 2 years old and her story is pretty sad. She was owned by an old lady that didnt take care of her , let her out of the cage most of the time with no interactions and fed her only apples. A bird lover saved her from the old lady and wanted to keep her, unfortunately he couldnt because he has 2 other parrots and they didnt accept her. So i found her and i love her a lot, she is family for me now. She is healthy, eating , not playing a lot and being very scared of human hands. I have her for a week now, she wont let me get close to the cage because she will perform the biting movement with her mouth, which makes me believe she used before to scare people away. I had to put my hand inside the cage and she didnt bite, but she is jumping at the back of the cage and breathes very fast. She is quiet most of the time ,but she can scream noises at me if i am going too close to the cage to show me she is stressed. I dont know if she is agressive or scared, but i want to make her trust me, i want to give her a good life. My goal is to create a bond with her, i dont want to force her to be very social, i just want her to trust me, please help me 🙂
p.s. because of her nutritional history , i couldnt find what its her favorite food, so i dont even know what i can offer to give her a treat, she seems uninterested in the stick with cereal, uninterested in fruits and vegetables other than apples, and she will eat all kind of seeds and good pallets.

Hi Beatrice,

With a bird like this, it will take a lot of time to make a little bit of progress. There are a lot of factors here – she probably wasn’t hand fed, if she was hand fed she wasn’t handled after she weaned, IRN are generally stand offish, and she is in a 3^rd home now. She needs time to settle in before you try to work with her at all. Focus on her nutrition and letting her get used to her new home and routine. Pellets are great – loose seeds are just junk food. However, you can offer whole seeds with our foraging diets. These diets are nutritionally balanced the same as a pellet, but the ingredients are left whole instead of being ground up. The seeds in them have the hulls removed, so they can absorbed the added nutrients, unlike seed mixes where the seeds have a hull she removes. So you need to focus on getting her off the loose seeds and either offer pellets only, or combine them with our foraging diet. Introducing some of our foraging diets is ideal because parrots are natural foragers, so this type diet is more natural than pellets, which are all the same. Nutritionally, both are the same. You can keep offering different veggies, greens and fruits – don’t give up. Some birds can take months or longer to accept fresh foods and most owners give up long before then.

Don’t try to handle her or reach for her. Talk to her, sit near the cage and talk or read to her, but keep your hands in your lap or out of sight. When feeding her, use slow movements and speak gently to her. The same goes for when you clean the cage. Don’t react to what she does, just be reassuring. She will hopefully eventually start approaching you out of curiosity and wanting some companionship. Again, don’t reach for her approach you. Just keep telling yourself this is a slow and generally long process. And the best you may ever do is get her to stop being scared of you.

IRN’s are an interesting species. You can have a clutch of four, hand feed them, give them identical attention, and once weaned, likely only one will remain tame. That bird will be a great pet, the other three will be happy with a big cage and toys, but not having contact with you. Or they might want to sit on your shoulder. But their tendency is to be very hand shy, regardless of how you raise them.

I’m going to give you links to our behavior, training and nutrition pages, and these can help you a lot. Be patient, be understanding, and don’t have expectations other than to build trust. Anything else will be up to her and you simply can’t force a bird to be handled and like it if it’s not within their personality.

Teaching Your Bird

Pet Bird and Parrot Behavior

Bird Food Guide

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda