My Parakeet Bites Hard

User Question
i have 3 parakeets i'm 12 years old and i only have one parakeet and my dad has 2 parakeets and if i'm lucky i'm going to buy myself another parakeet because i love parakeets they are so beautiful. My bird's name is Peanut and he is a light blue and i have a problem if you can help me whenever i try to hold him or try to get him he bites really hard and i don't know how to train him to stop biting and to stop flying of back bacause he hurts himself so if you can e-mail me that would be great. I have another thing i want to make my bird nicer.

Lisa's Answer
Parakeets aren't normally biters. They only bite when they're upset or scared. It sounds like somehow you're upsetting or scaring Peanut if he is biting at you! I have lots of information on biting on my website, did you read that all already?

Peanut isn't biting because he's not-nice or mean. Peanut is biting because he's afraid of you and is terrified and trying to protect himself. You're the older one here, you need to be the one to treat Peanut nicely. You can't blame him for defending herself from an aggressor.

You say you're grabbing him. No wonder he's biting you! Birds should NEVER be grabbed. They need to be finger-trained to step on YOUR finger. You shouldn't be grabbing the bird. You should be offering your finger, saying UP, and your bird should VOLUNTARILY get on your hand. You bird should NEVER be out if it is untrained. If there was an emergency, how would you get the bird back into the cage, so you could take the cage to safety?

I have full instructions on the site how to finger train a bird - and it starts with a perch. It does NOT start with your finger. The bird needs to learn to trust you before your hand is anywhere near her. So start with that and work with your parakeet every day, being slow and patient. It will take a while to finger train him but it is well worth it. Again, you really shouldn't let your keets out of the cage until they are fully finger trained. Otherwise if there was an emergency, you wouldn't be able to get them back into their cage and to safety.

And you most definitely should never be grabbing at your bird! That causes the bird to be scared of you, and bite you in self defense.

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