help taming lovebirds - first time owner

[breanne_bone]

I received 2 peach faced lovebirds for Christmas this December just gone. I am unsure of how old my birds are, the pet shop where they were bought from were extremeley uninformative. As a first time bird owner, I have tried researching the best methods for taming birds (my lovebirds are not hand raised).

The majority of the information that I have found has been extremely contradictive and hence to a first time bird owner, extremely confusing as you can imagine.

One such blog insisted removing untamed birds a minimum of five times a day for a maximum of 15min at a time. As my birds are untamed I was required to "force" them out of the cage, this method has also been mentioned acceptable on this site. After doing this for about a week I noticed a digression in their friendliness both in and out of the cage (especially in thd cage). Due to this I ceased forcing them out of their cage. They are now a lot friendlier however, still flee when my hand enters the cage. They still will not accept treats from me even when I offer them from outside the cage. I am scared that I have caused irreparable damage.

Currently when I am in my room I leave the cage doors open allowing them to come and go as they please, I am still unable to handle them when they are outside their cage, so I guess what I need to know is how do I establish the level of trust required so that I can start taming and handling my birds and also the steps I should take to establish this trust.

Thanks in advance to your suggestions.

[Wolf]

Well I don't think that you have done any irrepairable harm at this point. I have not seen this way of doing things on this site, so please provide a link to the thread on this site where you found tis at, as I want to see it. I want to see it and respond to it because it is wrong and is flooding and flooding should never be used. I am so glad that you have brought this to my attention, thank you.
I do not believe that forcing a bird is ever the right way to approach any situation as it does not teach them to trust you nor does it show them any trust from you. Although I can and do on occasion reach into my birds cages and ask them to step up and bring them out, for the biggest majority of time I prefer to respect the bird and open the door and allow them to come out as they choose to. I think that if you know what their favorite food is that you should reserve that for treats only or else it will lose its value to them as a reward. I think that I would spend the first 10 minutes outside of their cage just talking to them while offering the occasional treat and then back off and open their door and let them go in and out as they choose. If it is feasible I would do this two or three times a day. I would begin with offering the treats to them through the cage bars and gradually work towards offering them through an open door at the entrance to their cage.
once they start accepting the treat at the open door then I would begin asking for them to step up to get the treat from my hand. This is accomplished by holding the treat so that they must step up to get the treat and saying step up when they do this.
It is wonderful that you are already letting them come out of the cage of their own volition and I would definitely continue to do this and just occupy myself with talking to them and perhaps playing with one of their toys while watching them out of the corner of my eye. Just not watching them very much directly. Since you are playing with something of theirs they will start getting curious about you doing this and will in due time come over to see what you are up to. Ignore this and keep playing with the toy they may start asking you for the toy, but I prefer to wait a little bit longer for them to want it enough to try to take it from you and of course you let them take it from you.
I do not believe that they will learn anything of value by forcing them, I believe in giving them the opportunity to make up their own minds and to respond at their own rate, this is how you earn their trust and assist it in growing, There is nothing wrong in understanding their natural predilections and using them to you advantage and theirs as this will speed things up a little while still allowing them to progress at their own rate and in their own way.
I hope that you find this both helpful and useful. Thank you for asking about this.

[Pajarita]

Wolf is correct, forcing them is never a good option in the long term. Parrots are intelligent animals that actually reason things through so showing them that we cannot be trusted is NOT a good idea if what we want is their trust.

I've never had a single lovebird play with anything so I don't know if your playing with one of their toys will work (all mine wanted to do was be birds and, during breeding season, cut strips of paper and stick them in their rump to be used as nesting material (they do this with leaves in the wild).

I'll be honest with you, personally, I think that the smaller species (and most especially the ones that were parent-raised) do much, much, much better when just enjoyed as they are without trying to put ourselves in the middle. People always talk about lovies been aggressive but I had a flock of around 30-38 and I've never got bit by a single one of them - and the ones that had been with me the longest would perch on my head, my shoulder, pop into my pockets, go into my sleeves, etc without me doing anything.

But, if you have your heart set on training them, I would suggest you put them on a schedule so that everything is done at the same time every day. I would feed them gloop and fresh produce in the morning and, around mid-morning, after I spent a while with them just talking, singing, whistling, etc. I would start target training them inside the cage, giving them a sunflower seed as a reward. Sessions should be not longer than 10 minutes (small species have a higher metabolism and a shorter attention span) and I would do two a day and no more. Once they target and step up to a stick consistently from inside the cage, I would start doing it when they are loose - but wait until they've been out for a couple of hours and have gotten all the ants out of their pants. I doubt you will be able to train them to do much but they will learn to target, step up and down and, possibly, recall -but I would not bet on it, little ones just want to be with other little ones, it's what Natured decreed.

One more thing, please be careful with the light schedule and the diet, lovies are highly hormonal and HUGELY opportunistic when it comes to breeding so you will need to be very vigilant about it.

By the way, have they been DNA'd male and female? Because you can have a male and a female or two males but you can't house two females together for the long term.

[liz]

Tweetle Dee played with toys. He also played with his cage. It was like moving furniture. He took feeders off the cage and put them on the bottom then moved them around the cage. He learned to open the door and make it stick open. He would stand outside his cage until I saw him then he did a little dance and jumped back in before I could get to him. He picked his rope perch, rang his bell and redecorated a cocoanut. The cocoanut was his bed. It still had the hull on it so he made patterns in it. He was a busy little guy. I had to rehome him to be with another love bird because I couldn't find one for him. I miss him.