Self-Isolation with Bonded Pairs

JoJo (yellow nape amazon) and Ringo (orange wing amazon) are two male amazons and a bonded pair. Ringo will attack me when I interact with JoJo in anyway.

One thing I am working on with the two is self-isolation. It sounds bad but it isn’t! What it means having animals choose to separate from their social group to be completely alone. It’s generally taught in very social animals with large social groups like lemurs, parrots, horses, so on and so forth.

The importance of this is for them to be comfortable separated. See, if one of them became ill and had to be quarantined, or needed to be in a special medical cage for injury, they could not be together. Instead of them being incredibly stressed apart, I teach them to be okay being apart so it’s less stressful. This also allows me to train behaviors independently, be able to take them to the vet alone, be able to interact with them individually, and it builds trust between the three of us. I promise I will give your boyfriend back safe and sound and you will be okay without them for ___ amount of time.

Self isolation training is very easy to do... what is difficult is working with the bonded pair relationship and slowly building up the distance and duration. The steps are easy on paper but much more tedious when working through it, but not impossible!

I’ve taught self-isolation to many many parrots and it’s led to a major decrease in aggression and a major increase in trust. The human can become apart of the bonded pairs relationship. Nothing but good things from this group training exercise!

In this photo, it really shows the isolation training. Jo is about a foot away from Ringo on me and Ringo is staying on his tree, as before the training I would have gotten attacked when trying to get Jo to step up and he would be launching himself at me to get me away from his boyfriend. Training means small steps, but each accomplishment no matter how small is cherished and celebrated.

If you are looking to teach your bonded pairs self-isolation, feel free to contact me to set up an online or in-person behavior consultation.