toilet training ?

[mervyn2233]

I feel a bit silly raising this topic but my african grey "lucky" is pooping all over the furniture in the living room when we have him out of the cage.Is there a way to train them to only poop in the cage or on a poop tray of some sort .Again i feel a bit silly asking but i do know greys have great learning abilities so i said why not ask the question so i am open to any suggestions ?Thanks again guys ,

mervyn

[mervyn2233]

Its like whenever he flies onto another surface he does a poop on it like as if he is marking his territory .I dont know if its normal but for every hour i have him out i must clean up poop about 3 times .I dont mind having to clean it straight away but if i miss him doin it somewhere my wife gets rather annoyed as you would imagine coming across it after few hours .

[siobha9]

I dont think this is a silly question, in fact here, here, I think it is a great question! Liath poops on her stand as soon as I take her out...brilliant!

 

But then she does loads of tiny ones all OVER the place.

Please help us with this one??? I have renamed wet wipes, Liath wipes at this stage as I have to have a pack with me where ever she goes.

 

Siobhan

[mervyn2233]

HA HA i am the exact same babywipes are beside me everytime i have lucky out of the cage ,like i said i really dont mind the on the spot ones but whenever i take my eye of him and he does it i must comb my living room to see if i missed any or the wife will give out ha .

[siobha9]

I have found the antibacterial wipes from Lidls are the best value "liath" wipes around!! Luckily in my house I am the one that does the housework, so my husband wont be complaining. Mind you he got his own bird on Sunday, so his Grey can add to the mess.

 

Liath often asks me "What are you doing?" and then answers herself, saying "Cleaning your Sh**!" (said in a very grumpy voice....)

[mervyn2233]

God it sounds like your goin to have to invest in alot of the liath wipes ha ha .Its not a major concern we still love him like its just if it can be reduced if not avoided would be great

[danmcq]

Yeah, same boat here too. :pinch: I and Kim have learned what Dayos body language looks like when he's ready to go (about every 20 mins) and catch him when we do see it and take him to his Cage. But, we have not been consistant enough yet for him to understand that we want him to poo in his Cage.

 

We are busy running around the house a lot when he's out and so don't notice most times when he's doing a poo before it's too late. :-)

 

So, I think the key to really being successful at potty training, is to watch them constantly when their out and take them where you want them to go poo at everytime.

 

Some on this Forum have been successful at this and hopefully they will chime in here :-)

[nevjoe]

My guy is doing well about going when I tell him to. I started it when he was 8 weeks old. He hates to poop on his cage so I put him down to the floor and say POOP over and over again. When he started to do it I yell and carry on like you do with kids being trained. When I get ready to take him out, I walk outside and put him down within seconds and tell him to poop. If he doesn't do it I would not pick him up, so he goes in about 15 seconds. I put him down as soon as we get where we are going and wait till he goes again. This works about 80 to 90% of the time. I am going to take some videos of him doing just that.

Note: He loves when I get so excited with him, when he goes.

 

Joe

[mervyn2233]

Yes i have noticed our fella makes a wiggle for about 3-5 seconds right on the spot where he goes so he doesnt leave us very much time to pick him up and bring him to the cage .

[siobha9]

I had read a long while ago about getting excited and so we yell BINGO when she does it in the right place.

 

I put her straight on her stand when I take her out and say Bingo Liath. When she goes we yell BINGO. This works a treat, but as Mervyn says when she is out and about, it is so hard to get her back to her stand and I usually end up with poo all over me if I try. Or if I leave her on the back of a chair or something there is poo waiting for me when I get back like a little present from her to me... Look Mammy what I made you!

 

Personally I am not too bothered, once I get the early morning Bomb on her stand, the rest of them are manageable!

 

Siobhan

[loviechick]

So far I have been able to train 3 of my 4 birds to be potty trained...I'm still working on water bottle training for Zsa, but after that I'll begin the potty training. It's not silly to potty train them it's super convenient IMO. What I do is I just hang out with them either on the couch or on the floor etc. Everytime I see them go potty I say go potty and give them a treat and praise them. They will eventually correlate the event with the phrase and as long as you praise them they will eventually pick up on it. It took me about 2 weeks with all of my birds, and they now poop on command and know not to go on their mama!

[mervyn2233]

I must try that , so how often would you ask him to go poop when he is out ?

[kiwibarb12]

you know- if you miss finding a poop and it dries, it is really easy to get up by scrapping at it into dust then vacuum. hehehe- kind of like kids and noses and jeans. Disgusting, but managable.

[BMustee]

I did the same thing as Lovie. I would say “Go Potty” every time I saw him do it and after only a month of working with him he goes on command and knows that he goes over the toilet and over paper without being told. He will let me know he needs to go by doing his “poopy dance” and I will take him to the bathroom or hold him over paper. He knows that he can go free range when he is on the shower certain and when he is outside, but my shoulder and furniture are off limits. He also does not like to poop in his cage and most days will hold it for as long as he can till I get home to take him to the toilet.

 

I agree Kiwibarb…stray poop on the carpet is much easier to deal with dry then wet.

[danmcq]

Hmmmmm, seems Ive been doing the carpet spot cleaning of poop all wrong...

 

First I smash the wet goo into the carpet trying to swipe it off with a paper towel. Then I get the resolve and squirt a little on and let sit for a minute and then scrub the snot out of it with a clean dry towel.

 

Letting it dry sounds much more efficient and probably gets less into the fibers of the carpet than my method.

 

Thanks for the Tip!! :-)

[BMustee]

Most of the time the little poops that he lets out on the carpet are all solid waist, so most of the time it will only dry to one or two fibers so you don't even need to do anything but run the vacuum over it. The what I call "Pelican poops" are the ones you got to scrape at first.

[Cyard]

I am not sure if this is totally helpful but what we have been doing here is watching Newtons body language.

 

I have noticed that he will begin to wriggle a bit and then I simply lift him onto his perch and I too tell him to poop over and over then once he does I have been giving him a treat of something he likes (grapes for Newton).

 

My theory positive reinforcement and bribery will get you everywhere;)

[mervyn2233]

Yes i think i will trial that for a while just trying to get him onto your hands and over to the cage in time is the difficult part .I will keep you posted on how i get on with ,id like to thank everyone for there opinion on this you have all been very helpfull again thank you ,

mervyn

[Trina]

I wont take Ying Mo out of the cage before he poos. I sit in front of the cage and say poo poo poo and finally he got the message, kinda like Nevjoes bird and now we have no big poo problems. I have tiles in my house so accidents aren't that much of a problem. However I have noticed that if you don't wipe them up right away they can discolor the tiles. Must be the acid. The only poo that really scares me is the first one in the morning it is really a turbo turd. That one must be in the cage!

[n2fisher]

I think I read somewhere that they will injure their internal organs if you get them to poop too much; am I mis-remembering or is this a possibility?

 

Gandalf has been doing something pretty amazing without any training on my part; he's a 3-year old owned by my brother-in-law prior to me, so perhaps this is something he taught him.

 

I have a perch with newspaper under it that I made out of PVC pipe; I can move this around the house, and I have it near the chair that I'm sitting in normally.

 

Gandalf will get uppity shortly before he poops .. giving his upset noise or pushing at my hands with his beak when I'm petting him. I put him on his perch and usually he will poop. I will of course praise him then bring him back to my lap and give him lots of love before resuming my normal holding him in my lap while doing something else.

 

Not it may be somewhat because of my reaction previously when he's pooped on me, or as I said perhaps previous training, but he seems to naturally know that he has a place to poop. He's has only one accident in the past 2 weeks where he went on my lap.

 

So my initial concern .. I've taken to putting him on his perch when i think that 20 minutes have gone past, and tell him to go poop; he will usually do that, and I'm just concerned that I might be triggering it too often ... ?<br><br>Post edited by: n2fisher, at: 2007/10/24 19:21

[BMustee]

I've never heard of pooping too much harming a bird. They can only poop out what is already "ready" to go, so it can't hurt them to let it out 5 minutes before they would have gone on your pants. I sometimes take my grey to the toilet before he needs to go and he will give me this look and just want his reward scratches.

 

I bet he has had some poop training in his lifetime, and I'm sure you giving him ample toilet time helps a load too...lol<br><br>Post edited by: BMustee, at: 2007/10/24 19:33

[mervyn2233]

I am def not an expert but i would imagine it would cause no harm to poop alot as it cleans out there system just like humans ,unless its one extreme or the other i.e (runny or hard) but like i said i would only assume that .

[mervyn2233]

So it seems with the exception of a small percentage that we must live with the poo after all its a small price to pay for having a great friend and companion hopefully for the rest my life .

[BMustee]

I don't mind the bird poop too much...I would much rather clean parrot poop up than dog poop. :sick:

[n2fisher]

Others have said that they use baby wipes or some such to clean up. I recently noticed "Poop-off" Anywhere Wipes at my local pet store.

 

http://www.busybeaks.com/62001-5_poop_off.htm

 

 

I purchased the wipes, and they seem like magic to me. It cleans dried poop from the cage easily, no more scraping for me. I've also used it for cleaning carpets and other items; it seems to get rid of all trace of any stains when used quickly or later after it's dried.

 

I'm not advertising it; the link I provided is only one place that I've found it on the web, but I just wondered if others had found this and/or if it's better than baby wipes. I haven't tried baby wipes, the poop-off wipes seems to just disintegrate the traces, I can't imagine baby wipes working as well.