Hi I've read your training guidelines page and had a few questions. I have a 2 yr old lovebird I just got back from college so I want to train him, I told my family this so they would help. But there are somethings that still confuse me. Sometimes he will obviously want to come out to be with me, but when I open the cage he runs into his hut and starts biting it. Also when I ask him to step up hell put his head down for pets, or try to bite but sometimes he's fine doing it. What is causing this?
Does this happen year round or only currently? There’s quite a few environmental factors that could be affecting this, two more significant ones. Seasonal hormones would cause a lot of this strange behaviour, the hut in the cage would also encourage these hormones, and the other would be you just coming home from college and a general lack of trust coming from your absence.
I’m willing to bet it’s a combination of those two, if you’ve been gone for a while the bird will likely require you to earn back trust, you ditched the flock and can’t be trusted anymore until you prove you can be beneficial to the flock. That means he will likely be very on edge around you, any tiny misread signal or pushing his limits just a bit too far will cause an aggressive outburst such as biting when you ask him to step up. The seasonal hormones will cause a lot of mixed reactions, birds will commonly pretend to be nice then lash out sporadically, or they will participate in courtship behaviours and get frustrated when you don’t reciprocate.
I would spend the first while just doing basic target training to start building up a bond and establishing more trust and just really focus on body language and basic commands like step up in a variety of locations. Once hormones can be ruled out and the season passes I would look more deeply in to the cause of these problems but for the most part I’m certain it’s just hormones giving you troubles. So just stick with the basics, build up trust and wait it out until things settle down, you can use target training to get him in and out of the cage as well as stepping up until he’s calmed down and established a good amount of trust. Best to stay away from more complicated tricks and commands as they may cause confusion and further aggressive concerns, things like wave, turn around, or other introductory tricks would be fine and are another great way to work at bond building and communication.
