Easy ways to tame my parrot

[PollysFamily]

Has any one got any great idears on how to train or tame my new baby African Grey, Polly. We have only had her a day and she is young so we want to get her tame as quick as possible.

[Caspersmum]

Hi Pollysfamily,

 

First of all, is Polly hand reared? If so she should be pretty tame already - and the more you can handle her the better - just be confident and gentle.

 

If you haven't already got a book, I'd recommend you get one ASAP - this forum's great for specific questions, but I don't know what I'd have done without a good basic book. The one I've used lots is 'Parrot Training: aguide to taming and gentling your avian companion' by Bonnie Munro Doane. It gives really sensible advice on how to handle your bird from the start.

 

Hope this helps to get you started,

 

Julia

[dblhelix]

Patience, repetition, patience, repetition and more repetition. Good advice to purchase books on the subject and educate yourself on the best way to achieve the pet you want. While very intelligent and able to learn an amazing amount, do not expect overnight success. Each bird is an individual and you need to learn its personality to see the areas requiring the most focus for training. These are animals with average life spans of 50+ years. Similar to humans, there is a fairly lengthy development period lasting several years and they are learning their entire lives. Be calm confident and patient! It will pay off, but dont set unreasonable expectations for immediate success.

 

Have fun with your new family member! :laugh:

[Guest Monique]

Hi PollysFamily! Welcome to the Forum!

 

A book is great advice.

 

Make sure you handle your baby every day. Always treat her with kindness, patience, and gentleness, teaching her that the world is a safe place to explore. Introduce her to new items all the time, at a pace she is comfortable with (new foods, new places, new toys). Be sure not to feed avacado or chocolate as those are poisonous to her.

 

I look forward to hearing more about your baby & your adventures with her!!

[CeasarsDad]

Not much needs to said after all the above excellent advice.. Show your Grey as many new people as you can.. Take it in the car for rides.. Expose it to as many new things as you can.. and keep doing that..

[judygram]

Yes patience you will need patience.

Another good book is "For the love of greys" by Bobbi Brinker.

[PollysFamily]

For CaspersMum -

No, she was kept in a bedroom for a year, we saved her basically.

 

for everyone -

Thanks for all the advice, we will look for a book straight away! :woohoo:

[Caspersmum]

Wow - well done - and it's very brave of you! I think all the above advice still goes - I've not read for the love of greays, but I know the book I mentioned has quite a lot of advice on previously traumatised birds - it's why I got it.

 

But as everyone's been saying, patience is the main thing - it's kind of like adopting an abused child - she's likely to have a fair amount of enotional baggage, and you have to let her earn your trust at her own pace.

 

Let us know how you're getting on, and just let us know if you have any more specific questions,

 

Julia

[PollysFamily]

We got a book, now we know alot more. She is improving everyday and very soon she will be sitting on our shoulders! Now we steps on aswell. The only bad point is that in her old home they clipped her wings really bad and now she keeps falling off of things, we have got a doctor to clip them properly. Is there anyway we can teach her to glide properly?

[Caspersmum]

I'm not sure how to teach her to glide, but it's likely that if her wings were badly clipped that her flying muscles will be weak. You can help to strengthen her muscles by encouraging her to flap her wings more to build them up - as Casper's clipped I do this with him anyway, to make sure he gets plenty of exercise. Once she's more confident on your forearm, if you raise your arm up and quite gently she'll start flapping her wings (you need to experiment as to how fast you need to do this). If you give her lots of praise, you can make it into a game, and from my exerience, once she's strong enough she'll try to fly too - just keep your arm pretty close to the floor so she doesn't have too far to fall.

 

I'm sure other people will have more advice, but this has worked for me. Let us know how you're getting on - it sounds like you're ,making great progress,

 

Julia

[Guest Monique]

I will second Julia's advice here. As her wings grow back out and you assist with her muscles I think this will hopefully come naturally to her.