Off-Contact Transportation

               In order to transport our birds around the house, lots of people think though our arms or hands. The bird must step up onto our skin in order to be transported. With birds with a severe aggressive history, hand aversion, or distrust between bird and caretaker, you are left with not knowing how to transport your bird. That also means the bird likely stays within the cage and never gets out. There are some off-contact forms of transportation that could help you with your bird to use full-time or only when needed. These methods are taught to your bird where they feel safe and comfortable utilizing these methods, as well as keeping us safe.

               A lot of conversation in the bird work talks down about utilizing these tools. I will agree, if you cannot step up your bird on to your hand or arm without aggression or without the bird flying off, there is an issue that needs to be resolved. Working with a trainer, building the trust and confidence between you and the bird, and the bird mastering a variety of behaviors to achieve that goal can take a long time for some birds depending on their history. Some birds have such an extensive history of aggression that it may not be safe to ever trust them on your skin. If your bird is pair bonded, it can be difficult to transport those pairs depending if one of the mate resources guards the other. If you adopted an ex-breeder bird that is older and has never been handled, or only handled improperly, it is going to take time to resolve that.

               So, when I work with clients, we create these realistic and achievable goals, and most of the time, it is to step the bird up by your skin. But for the birds where we cannot see that be realistically done within 6 months, or ever for some birds, we think of a “what are we going to do now” situation so the bird’s quality of life does not suffer. Utilizing an off-contact form of handling may just be it. We have to think realistically with behavior to keep everyone safe and happy, while also meeting the bird’s needs.

               This also boils down to your approach. A very well-known form of off-contact handling is a welder’s glove. A glove that is super thick that the bird would have a hard time biting through. The traditional “training” utilizing these thick gloves is to go in and grab the bird, forcing it to come out and step up, disregarding the biting because you are not affected. Using force because you are not affected is NOT the form of off-contact training and handling that is recommended or condoned by Fluff and Feathers. Off-contact handling is designed to start your bird from scratch utilizing a neutral stimulus object or covering with no previous association (positive or negative) that creates security of the caretaker while giving a clean slate to teach appropriate step-up behaviors. These step-up behaviors will then be phased onto your skin if that is the rout you are able to go with your individual parrot and situation.

               So, what are forms of of-contact transportation. We already briefly discussed gloves as a traditional option. Another traditional option is a stick. Stick training can be beneficial because it can create distance between you and the bird, especially if you build a “T” shape perch out of PVC and you hold the perch end away from you. This can help if you are still desensitizing your distance to a bird with a history of being uncomfortable when you are close. The stick can also be a known thing to step up onto, making training possibly less time. The downfall can be that there is a lack of control of the bird. The bird can jump off at you if it has a history of launching itself. It can also walk down the perch towards your arm, in which most people then drop the stick to avoid conflict, increasing risk of injury to the bird and distrust in the stick.

               Target training is a wonderful off-contact way of transportation. You can target your bird onto a play stand that is small and easily wheeled across the environment to the desired location, another perch or tree, or another cage. This would be completely hands off work. If you are unsure what target training is, we have an online class going over exactly what it is, how to train it, how to desensitize the target stick if your bird is naturally more fearful, and practical uses that can be found here. We also sell target sticks and treat pouches to help you start training these behaviors. The target training can also be used to get your bird back into the cage and to teach the step-up onto skin in the future.

               My favorite method is a towel folded and wrapped around your arm. All of my parrots are taught to step up on a towel. I really prefer this method because it is the best of both worlds. Training the desensitization and step up with the folded towel allows for your bird to be less fearful of one, which helps in emergency situations and going to the vet to decrease stress. It gives the control that the stick does not. You can train your birds to accept your hand holding their feet through the towel so any launching birds will not be able to. Though I also will say if your bird is launching at you, that behavior needs to be investigated and worked on, and not ignored because you can now hold your bird’s feet. There is a reason your bird is launching to get you away, usually fear based. But it is reassuring when the launching has decreased that you have a “fail-safe” when handling where you can hold the birds’ feet. It also is easy to transition your bird stepping up onto your hand from the towel, as you just walk them up your arm to the bend of your arm and remove the towel after.

               I have a flock where most of the birds that have come to me had a severely aggressive history. That is what I work best with behavior wise. Bird’s wanting to kill me is my comfort zone. I like working with them to decrease the need to have those responses. All of my birds, I have 11, I can step up onto my hand but one. That is my wild caught, male, blue front amazon who is over 35 years old. He has vision problems, balance problems, died and was resuscitated, and has a deep fear of humans. He learned that aggression and launching are very effective forms of communication to get people away from his so he is not so afraid. He tried to kill two people, literally, one rupturing a minor artery and another was in the hospital for two weeks with sustaining injuries. He has a rap sheet of people he sent to the emergency room needing stitches from bites and attacks. When I got him, I wanted him out of the cage. The rescue could not safely get him out often because his behaviors were so severe and it was not safe for staff. How do I get a bird out like that? Off-contact transportation is a life-long transportation for him. He has come leaps and bounds, no longer launching, lets me clean his cage with him in it, not biting the bars or trying to get me. But, if he gets slightly off balance, if we walk too quickly near something, he is quick to bite out of fear. Working through that has taken 2 years and counting. If I did not rely on off-contact handling, that would have been 12 years total he has been in a cage and more to come. We are limiting our training by not utilizing off-contact training, as I cannot work though the balance and walking concerns without him being out, and I need to put my safety into consideration as well.

               My vet and pet sitters also love that my birds are taught this. Everyone has extreme confidence around my bird that helps my birds feel safer and trust them more, allowing for more positive and number of interactions with a wide verity of people. Never do the birds bite down on the towel, show fear or aversion to it. They always willingly, happily step up and never bite unless an extreme situation, in which I would have gotten bit anyway if it as skin. For some of my birds, stepping up on the towel is preferred because it was something neutral that was taught by a professional trainer as something only positive where force is not used, where hands have such a negative association, there is more of a level of distrust in seeing my hand or arm than the towel. My goal is to keep my birds comfortable and both parties safe. Most of my birds do now prefer my hand more, and I only have them step up with the towel to keep the behavior well-rehearsed.

               All in all, we should be utilizing tools to our disposal effectively for our parrots. Teaching them and not forcing them to step off off-contact can save relationships and keep birds in homes. The goals for most birds are to not always utilize the towel and work towards the normal step-up onto skin. But for some, it may be the end goal, and that is perfectly fine! There is no rule that says there is one accepted way to step-up your bird, but there are wrong ways like using force. We also do not only want to break out the off-contact handling when we know there will be biting involved. We want to work on those behaviors so your bird doesn’t feel the need to do them, using the off-contact measures to keep everyone safe and happy, not to just avoid biting. These things need to be taught appropriately. If you are interested in learning more about the training needed to decrease aggressive or fearful responses and teach an off-contact step up, feel free to contact us to set up an online behavior consultation!