Please help me with my very aggressive lovebird

[Sofia]

Hi.
I have a female Lovebird called Pixie, she's been acting crazy for over a month now and it's getting worse and worse and I don't know what to do. It's important to say that she is my first bird and I don't really know what I'm doing.
I'll start from the beginning: When I first got her, she seemed scared of everyone and didn't want to leave the cage. I tried to build her trust, and eventually she started eating some millet spray from my hand while inside the cage, which was a huge progress. I tried to use the millet to invite her to come outside, and found that she was afraid of fingers, she bit fingers but not the hands. So, I adjusted for that and started offering my hand as the perch and that worked great. Time passed by, she played on my lap when I was on my computer, she tried typing on the keyboard, she even used to go near my mouse hand and lower her head asking for snuggles.
The problem started when other people wanted to come near her and she bit them, now nobody wants to go near her. One problem is that I let her out of her cage, and although she has her wings clipped, she jumps to the ground to climb on other people's clothes and bite them.
I think she's on a nesting phase because one day I noticed that she didn't care about being on my lap or on the keyboard anymore, but wanted to explore dark spaces on some shelves and put paper shreddings on her tail when she found some.
Also, for a month or so now, she started biting me for every single thing too. She doesn't want to go to the cage, bites. Wants to keep destroying a towel, bites. I'm trying to use a perch to handle her now, and she just runs and bites my hand. I tried the timeout, and she's only getting worse and worse. I thought maybe I should have started with a training stand, so I got her one, but she doesn't want to go there, just jumps off and bites me. If she's doing something bad and I interrupt her, if my hands are not in reach (when I use my arm or a perch), she quickly climbs and runs up to bite my earlobes or my neck. If I'm trying to talk to her while she is caged and she's in a bad mood, she doesn't care and frantically bites the cage trying to get out. I can't watch tv with her nearby either, because she just screams at the tv.
What can I do? In my country I don't have bird trainers, not that I know of at least. The vets here don't know much about this breed and hormonal stuff. I don't want her to be caged forever, but I don't know what else to do.

[linda040899]

Hi and welcome to Lovebirds Plus Community! Hopefully, we can help you with the aggressive biting problem. I, personally, am a retired Lovebird breeder so I have been around them since the early 1990s.

Of the 2 genders of Lovebirds, females are usually the more aggressive and when they bite, they BITE! Sounds like you've tried everything that most people might suggest so I'm going to offer a different approach. When she bites, does it elicit a reaction from you? Do you yell at her or scream in pain? If yes, some of her love of biting is related to the thrill of what the bite produces, noise! She likes the reaction she gets. Time outs don't work because all that is is a change of venue. She's in her cage and there's food to eat, toys to play with and other things she can do to entertain herself. Shoulders are dominant places because it's hard to see what a parrot is doing, let alone being aware of when you are about to get bitten. Too close to eyes and other tender parts, so most of my parrots are not allowed on my shoulder.

Here is my best suggestion. Get yourself a spray bottle that has a nozzle that can be set to "stream." If/when she bites your hand or any other part of your body, spray her with water. Trust me. It will get her attention! Just make sure you do it quickly enough so that she associates behavior with your reaction to that behavior. Most parrots do not like getting wet with streaming water. Even though they don't like it, the water doesn't hurt the bird. We have a member that is using this and last update we got indicated that all she had to do was pick up the bottle and the behavior stopped.

Hopefully, this will help. Please keep us updated!

[Sofia]

Thank you very much for the quick response.

When she bites, I don't cry out in pain, nor run away from her, nor remove my hand.

As for the time-out, when I do this I leave her on a flat surface by herself without any toys for 2-3 minutes.

Regarding the suggestion, I would like to know if the bites will eventually stop, or if that will only stop the behaviour at that moment.

I also read that changing her diet can help. She is a picky eater and only eats seeds.
I plan to progressively change her diet to pellets, starting with 10% pellets and the rest seeds and progressively changing to only pellets over the course of 2-3 weeks.
Today started beautifully, she sent all the pellets away.
Let's see how it goes over the next few days.

[linda040899]

Regarding the suggestion, I would like to know if the bites will eventually stop, or if that will only stop the behaviour at that moment.

It should stop the behavior at the moment but I always have a water bottle in an easy access place because we are dealing with parrots who tend to be creatures of habit. I have several African Greys and Greys are extremely smart. My analogy is that I live with the equivalent of a 5 yr old every day of their lives. I brought them into my life and I have to work around them and the fact that they are still wild creatures. Parrots have not been domesticated anywhere near as long as cats and dogs.

In their natural habitat (Africa), Lovebirds are seed and veggie eaters. Pellets are concentrated seed with added nutrition so it's still seed. However, per my avian vet, more than 20% pellets in the diet of any small bird is too much nutrition and can eventually cause death by kidney failure. Being native to Africa, they have a dietary requirement of needing more fat in their diets (sunflower seed) than parrots from other parts of the globe. I feed a base of seed, maybe 10% pellets (maybe) and fresh veggies. My oldest lovebird lived to be 20. Parrots in the wild spend most of the daylight hours foraging for food. It keeps them very busy. Try creative ways for her to forage for her food. It will keep her occupied and may have an affect on her aggressive behavior. Start slowly and give her a chance to get used to the idea.