by Pajarita » Wed Dec 01, 2021 11:25 am
Hi, Rachel and Beaker, welcome to the forum. First of all, let me clarify something: if he is now almost a year old, there is no way on this green earth that he was having breeding behaviors months ago because they do not 'develop' until later (usually, between 18 and 24 months of age). Simply put, if the bird is too young to produce sexual hormones, he couldn't possibly be having breeding behaviors so the problem is something else altogether.
Now, babies and even juveniles (that is what he is now, not yet an adult but not a baby either) don't usually bite unless there is something bothering and, with CGGs, it's usually not enough time spent with them. I do not know how many hours he spends out of cage or on you but, in my personal experience and opinion, when a GCC bites, it's either because it is overly hormonal (not possible in your bird's case) or it feels neglected. Diet also has a lot to do with aggression because high protein promotes aggression so you need to re-evaluate its diet (GCCs cannot be free-fed any type of protein food, they need lots of raw produce, some cooked whole grains and veggies and just a tiny little bit of a good quality budgie mix and nuts for dinner (mine get half a teaspoonful of budgie mix and 1/4 walnut or half a cashew). Also reconsider how many hours it spends out of cage and on you because they need hours and hours and hours and it needs to be in the middle of the day.
Yours is a VERY common problem with GCCs because people see them little and think they are easier to care for than a larger parrot but it is actually the opposite because they are as needy as cockatoos and, in order to keep them happy, one needs to spend almost all day long with them on our shoulders. I have two females and both came to me at around 2 years of age. Codee was handfed but neglected (she was left alone all day long while her owners worked) so she turned to biting. Annie is parent-raised and came to me from a man who thought he was going to make a lot of money selling babies but who had no idea how to handfeed or even care for GCCs so he ended up with 36 babies that were not only not people-friendly but also with behavioral issues because he kept all the birds crowded in a single cage and fed wrong. Codee spends almost her entire day on me -this time of the year, they are let out at 6:30 am and put back in their cages at 2 - 2:30 pm, get dinner at 3:45 pm and are already roosting for the night at 4:45 pm)- she goes on my shoulder at 6:30 am, back into her cage to eat her breakfast for about 1/2 hour around 8 am and back on my shoulder until she goes back into her cage in the pm.
For a GCC, hours and hours of shoulder time is a necessity and not a luxury - they simply cannot get used to being alone, some birds resign themselves to loneliness but most of them don't. Let me put it to you this way: 10 amazons are easier to care for than a single GCC.
Now, if this is the problem that is making Beaker bite you and you work all day long, the solution could be to get Beaker another GCC for company (but you cannot get another baby because Beaker is no longer one, you need to get either a juvenile or an adult, preferably of the opposite gender) and put them both in a room where they can fly all day long. Or you can get a birdsitter or a daybirdcare.
If this is not the problem, then it could be the diet, the light schedule (it needs to be a strict solar one with full exposure to dawn and dusk) or if he is clipped, that could be a reason too because it is extremely stressful for birds not to be able to fly (they can't get away from danger and, if you have, say, a dog or a cat, this could make it worse).
So my advice to you is to re-evaluate his diet, light schedule and daily routine (which needs to be exactly the same every single day of its life) and see if you can find something that could be causing the problem. Once the problem disappears, the behavior will disappear, too. Not immediately, mind you, but it will.