How to Teach a Parrot Not to Bite

Teaching a parrot not to bite takes commitment. Parrots are intelligent and can learn many things given the right circumstances, patience and repetition. Keep at it and your lovely pet parrot can be taught to stop biting and the rest of the family can enjoy your pet parrot.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Give the parrot a lot of attention. Parrots that are left alone too often may retaliate and bite.

2. Introduce the parrot to new people, birds and other animals. Give the parrot adequate time to settle and feel at ease with guests. The bird may bite if it feels its territory or owner is being threatened.

3. Gently blow in the birds face and say no if it bites. Give it a toy or something else to nibble on instead. Try this process for a few weeks.

4. Say no and put your parrot in its cage if the previous step doesn't work. Cover its cage, and ignore it during the time out period.

5. Pay close attention to the parrot's moods and temperament. Give the bird time alone and attention, when it seems appropriate. Most biting can be avoided if you are sensitive to your pet's needs.

6. Expose your pet parrot to change regularly, but slowly. The more the bird is accustomed to new things and is less likely to become defensive and bite.

7. Leave the parrot alone when it's molting and during mating season. Hormonal changing can make the parrot frustrated and irritable.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't ever allow your parrot to playfully nibble on your fingers. This teaches them it is ok to bite.
• Don't give the bird a big reaction if it bites you. It may bite again to get the same reaction.
• Don't every drop or shake your parrot.

[imme911]

on 8/1/2009 Parrots mouth everything like a two year old almost. This behavior is different from biting. There can be a fine line here when your parrot goes from "beaking" to hurting. When he crsses the line...put him on his perch

[chrissymariero]

on 9/9/2008 First off there is three different types bird bites. One because they only have too claws to grasp things, they use their beck as a third claw, mostly to help them move around. Second is an attention nibble, if you are doing something wrong and they want you to stop without hurting you it gets your attention. Third is the angry aggresive bite that will hurt. This is usually done with a bird not properly trained. Please look at the bits and dont judge any bit as aggressive. And my 2 year old almost 3 Cockatoo has NEVER bitten, no exageration, around children all the time, never shown aggresion. If the bird has never recieved pain from a human than there is no anger in the bird. Older birds are a different story.

[Tiki]

on 12/30/2007 Don't blow in its face, this will annoy it and also will make your face be very close it its beak.