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Ekkie Screaming

Discuss the methods and techniques of clicker training, target training and bonding. These are usually the first steps in training a young parrot.

Ekkie Screaming

Postby DancingDiva » Mon Dec 28, 2020 6:21 pm

Hi everyone,
I am in need of any advice. Our ekkie, Scarlet, has been quite a butt as of late. She is squawking and screaming through out the day. She screams whenever anyone does anything in the kitchen, if we talk too loud, watch TV for too long, if my husband eats near her, if I take too long changing her papers... the list goes on and on. Our housemates have been so patient, but I want to figure out how to reduce how often she does this before their patience runs out. Some background on Scar:
-she is an estimated 20 years old
-was once a breeder bird that was rehomed without her mate
-we adopted her 10.5 years ago
-she is phobic of sticks, hands, and plastic bags.
-she has never ever been hand tamed but enjoys spending passive time with her people.
-she became severely cage bound/phobic of leaving her cage after we moved to a new home (still working on that)
-She has been a feather picker/plucker since before we got her.
-she is on a low calorie/high fiber diet
-our GCC passed away 2 years ago suddenly and she never really recovered from the loss.
-she is on lupron due to hormonal issues

Additional info:
-we originally converted our finished garage into a bird room for her and our GCC. However, someone ratted us out to the HOA so we had to reconvert it to a garage. She now lives in a large cage in our dinning area. This move occurred August of this year.
-my housemate has an anxious geriatric lab that freaks out anytime Scarlet screams and it is potentially dangerous for the dog to do so.
-Due to COVID almost our entire household (myself, husband, and three housemates) is working from home.
-her cage is large, she has lots of toys that are changed out every few days, it is cleaned regularly, she even has a heated perch for her aging feet. I am diligent about the amount of sunlight she receives.

Any advice is helpful, everything that worked before is not working now. I am a behavior analyst (for people lol) and even I am stumped as to where to start.

Thank you all so much in advance.
DancingDiva
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 5
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Eclectus
Flight: No

Re: Ekkie Screaming

Postby Pajarita » Tue Dec 29, 2020 10:21 am

Awww, poor Scarlet is having a hard time of it, isn't she? Now, a couple of questions to help determine what, exactly, caused this:

- I am assuming that she started screaming due to changes in her environment (moving to another house, loosing her GCC companion, change in routine -people being home, etc), right?

- you mention high fiber and low carbs but what about protein and fat? Because, as far as I know, the biggest problem for ekkies is protein, fat -and, possibly, salicylates- although high fiber, high moisture and low carbs are also part of the requirements.

- what is her light schedule and daily routine and has the routine changed?

And I have to tell you that I personally hate the idea of using lupron on birds (did your vet explain to you that it was created for mammals and not birds and that all that is required to keep a bird from becoming overly hormonal is the right diet and light schedule?) For one thing, it never works long term (I don't know how long she has been on it but this could very well be the greatest part of your problem) and, for another, I have never understood why any vet would think that completely messing up their endocrine system can be of any benefit to their health - long term and holistically speaking.

So, please, come back and give us the replies to the question and let's see if we can help poor Scarlet.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: Ekkie Screaming

Postby DancingDiva » Tue Dec 29, 2020 2:38 pm

Thank you for the reply. To be quite honest we aren't too sure what the precipitating event was (if there even was one). She came to us as a screamer and highly aggressive, and she has had phases of screaming throughout the ten years we have had her. And those previous phases we could attribute to something (behavioral, environmental, medical etc.) that could be remedied. Not so much this time. It's like she is trying to control everything and everyone in her environment. And literally everything sets her off. I mention the move (almost 3 years ago) and the death of our GCC because she seems to have a very good memory. She called for her mate by name even after we got her (5ish years after they were cruelly separated), and now she calls for our GCC and sometimes still gets mad if she sees his old food bowls and we are not acting like we are about to feed him. Every time she calls for "Jake-Jake" it breaks our hearts.

As for her diet, we just had her panels done and our vet is happy with where she is at. I work really hard to maintain an appropriate diet for her as she is a wing flipper and toe tapper when her diet is off. She would be a chonk if we allowed it lol.

Her light schedule is admittedly not the best. We live in Northern California and right now it is dark by 5:30 pm and the morning light doesn't burn off the fog/overcast clouds until close to 9 am. We give her any meds around 8pm and cover her after she has finished. We uncover her at about 8 am for morning meds/breakfast. This is when housemate's doggo gets put in her crate so we all can get to work without disruptions. We all are usually done with work around 5-6 which is when dinner is cooked, doggo gets a walk, and the house is super busy in general. Because of COVID our schedules seem to change by the week (holidays do not help either) so I would not be surprised if she is just getting anxious because she can't predict what her day will be like from one day to the next.

As for the lupron, we did everything we could to avoid it. However, she gets so hormonal no matter what we do. She gets hyper-aggressive, will pluck and self-mutilate, and will refuse to eat anything except her pellets and nuts. And because she is not hand tame it is very difficult for me to check if she is about to lay an egg or possibly egg bound (a very big thing I worry about) without traumatizing her. The last time she became overly hormonal she bit through my husband's hand when he tried to feed her. The Lupron has made it so we can work on her behavior. We are doing Lupron right now because we were nervous about the other medication that lasts 3 months other than 1 month. We plan on switching to the new med once this round of lupron wears off and if she still exhibits symptoms that cannot be controlled otherwise. I assure you our vet is very good and did not make the suggestion lightly. It was basically a, "We try this or we need to start looking at sanctuaries that can handle her intensity of care to take her" situation. She isn't on it continuously, just when we can no longer manage the secondary symptoms and problems (normally 1-2 shots a year).

Believe it or not, she is actually a very sweet (albeit spicy lol) bird. She talks and whistles to us all the time, and come so far in learning how to play with toys and just be a bird. While she is not a fan of hands, she has learned to trust us enough that we can pet her beak, give her treatos, and engage in target training. Every morning she greets us with a "hello!" before her morning wake up sqawks and at night she tells us "I love you, you're a good girrrrlll" when we cover her.
DancingDiva
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 5
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Eclectus
Flight: No

Re: Ekkie Screaming

Postby Pajarita » Wed Dec 30, 2020 7:29 pm

Well, I wish you had actually answered the diet question because, when it comes to all parrots and ekkies in particular, it is pretty much the most important thing there is. Avian vets (and I am putting them down, mind you, I have a very good one and had other two that were excellent!) do not study parrot nutrition -even if that was possible, given all the different species and different dietary ecologies they have. Their text books have a ridiculously short chapter on avian nutrition which, by necessity, is incredibly generic because in order for it to be actually useful, it would have to cover all the different types of diets birds have, from omnivorous, to carnivorous, to insectivorous, to pollen and nectar feeders, to frugivores, etc. Ekkies are, by far, the most difficult parrot to feed correctly and the sad thing is that even when you feed them wrong, they still show blood chems within normal levels. And the reason why I know this is because I had a parrot that I KNEW was sick, took him to the avian vet with the oldest and largest practice, a professor of avian medicine at the university which did complete blood work on all three occasions and pronounced the bird healthy on all three. The bird died about one month after he was diagnosed by another avian vet with liver malfunction and about two months after the last visit to the avian med professor who had pronounced him healthy (because all his blood work came back within normal levels - I did not know about bile acids test at that point in time so I never asked him to run one). So, I am sorry, but, when it comes to birds, blood work -which is what avian vets go by- is not always an accurate diagnostic tool.

Now, I don't need to tell you that the light schedule is bad, it's a human schedule and not an avian one - and ekkies cannot be kept at a human light schedule. Period. Ekkies are one of the most hormonal parrots there is - in the wild, the females have been observed spending up to nine months in the nest -that's how bad it is! And that's why the precisely right diet (super low in protein, no fat, super high moisture and super high fiber -natural fiber, not the one added to pellets but I assume you don't feed her pellets as they are a complete no-no for ekkies) and a super strict solar schedule with two hours of twilight exposure both at dawn and dusk is imperative to keep them from becoming overly hormonal. See, the thing is that there is no real alternative because Lupron does not work in the long run and it might end up making things worse. I don't know if you know how Lupron acts on the body but, in case you don't, let me explain. Lupron was originally created for mammals -specifically as a dog contraceptive. And the way it works is that it makes the body produce a HUGE amount of sexual hormones - so much that the body realizing something is terribly wrong, shuts down production altogether. It does this by messing up the endocrine system which is what governs the reproductive system. But birds are not like dogs. Dogs produce sexual hormones all the time, just like people do, only the actual production follows cycles so, when you stop production in a dog, it's kind of okey because as soon as the 'season' is over, you don't give it to the dog and their endocrine system goes back on track. But birds are completely different, they do not produce sexual hormones all the time and their 'seasons' are directly related to environmental clues so, given the wrong (or the right, depending on how you look at it) clues, they will start producing sexual hormones and if you don't change the environmental clues (light, diet, weather), they will continue producing them month after month, year after year, creating a physically unnatural situation where their gonads grow to a size not contemplated by nature even pushing internal organs out of their place (with the corresponding inflammation and pain that this would create - male birds have peed blood because of this). So, when we talk about an overly hormonal bird, we are talking not only about a bird that is HIGHLY frustrated sexually and gets no relief for it but also about an animal that is in chronic pain. That's why they scream, pluck, become aggressive, etc. And I think that is what is happening to your bird.

So the solution to the problem is very easy and very hard at the same time:
1) super strict solar schedule with 2 hours of dawn and dusk with no artificial lights and complete darkness for sleep (and I do mean COMPLETE darkness because there are studies that show that the merest amount of indirect light activates their glands).
2) super strict fresh food diet: raw produce and more raw produce, no pellets, no seeds, only grains and cooked at that.
3) keep the house as cool as you can during the winter months.
4) flight as much as possible (because the only thing that dissipates bad hormones -sexual, stress- is flight)
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes


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