Blue Fronted Amazon

Blue Fronted Amazon Parrotes are big birds with even bigger personalities. Their tendency is to be extremely social and entertain visitors with their vocabulary and tricks. As it goes with many dynamic species, the Blue Fronted Amazon isn't without its behavior problems. The males, in particular, can become aggressive as they reach sexual maturity. This aggression shows up with biting and screaming and while they're not generally prone to feather plucking, they may if they're particularly stressed.

There are two common aggressive behavior problems Blue Fronted Amazon's exhibit; biting and screeching . Let's take a look at each behavior and how to tame it.

Biting . Biting generally becomes an issue once your Blue Fronted begins to reach sexual maturity. You may experience biting when you reach your hand into their cage. You may get bitten when you try to play with them or any time you try to interact. To eliminate the behavior, it is important to make sure you're not reacting to it. Reactions may include yelling, dropping your bird (please don't do this!), and a whole slew of strong reactions. The more you react the more your Blue Fronted knows their behavior is working. Whether the reaction is positive or negative, they're getting a reaction and this is all the encouragement a Blue Fronted needs.

It is important that your Blue Fronted Amazon understands you are the boss. To do this, you will want to spend a little bit of time every day focused on positive reinforcement and training them. To protect your hand and to get over the urge to jerk it away, present your hand in a manner that makes it difficult to get a hold of, i.e. turn it sideways or present it flat so there isn't any skin to grab a hold of.

Screaming . Blue Fronted Amazon, like many parrots are social birds, which means they are noisy birds. They are particularly noisy when you least want them to be, for example, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Beyond this normal noisiness, there are times when you Blue Fronted may scream because they're annoyed, aftaid, angry, or frustrated. They may scream because they want your attention, or because they want you to go away. To eliminate screaming, first determine what is causing your Blue Fronted to scream.

Are they bored, afraid, jealous? Explore their environment and take note of when they scream, or bite, and if possible modify their environment to reduce the behavior. In addition, spend some time training your Amazon every day. Training help build a bond of trust, it helps position you as the boss of the home, and it helps your parrot learn the rules - which in this case are "No Screaming!"

While the Blue Fronted Amazon is a wonderful companion bird, they're intelligent, social, entertaining and quite adaptable. They do have some faults, particularly if there is something missing from their environment. Any bird owner, including owners of Blue Fronted Amazons, may have to deal with aggressive behavior from time to time. The best way to deal with any undisirable behavior is to first determine what is causing it, and then to train the behavior away. Training takes time, patience, and a training system based on positive reinforcement. It is critical to ensuring a trusting bond between you and your Blue Fronted Amazon; and, training will help to ensure a long and happy life together. A life without being bitten or screamed at by your Blue Fronted!

Have you ever had a Blue Front Amazon who will not let you touch his food bowls?

They'll flap, scream, lunge, bite the bards of their cage, and lash out at anything hat's near their proximity - just to vent their frustration towards you for touching their food bowl.

If you've run in to this type of situation I know how you feel!

It feels like your bird has ZERO appreciation for the fresh food and veggies you give them on a daily basis (you do feed fresh stuff daily don't you ;-) And it's almost like he'd rather eat your fingers than the great food that you're feeding him.

It's crazy how possessed a bird can get about his territory when going through a hormonal phase.

But that's what you HAVE to remember

He's going through a hormonal phase. Your bird really doesn't hate you. He's just having a hard time processing the hormones that are RAGING through his body.

Most important in these times he needs RULES and STRUCTURE.

You can't continue to let your bird get his way during this phase of his life. Failing to deal with it now will only make his behavior get worse and worse.

You'll become afraid to go near his cage, which causes you to stop interacting with your Blue Front Amazon, meaning the bird resents you for not spending time with it which then causes him to TRULY start to hate you.
So how do you fix this?

Start today with demanding that your Blue Front follow the rules around feeding time.

You've heard me harp on you about how you should target train your bird right? I've told you that you need to make darn sure you've target trained your bird before it reaches the hormonal stage of its life and becomes harder to deal with.

So if you haven't been ignoring this advice you simply can target your 'food bowl attacking' bird away from his food bowls, and onto a perch that's out of reach.

Or you can perform a variation of the Power Pause technique that I teach, only instead of using it to allow a parrot to let you touch him%u2026 you use it to train your parrot to let you touch his food bowls.

Here's how it works

Set aside 10 minutes a day for a week to work on this.

Simply approach your bird's cage, paying special attention to your bird's body language. When you've gotten too close for your Blue Fronted Amazon's comfort, he'll start showing signs of aggression with his body language.

When he shows these signs, stop and HOLD your position. Wait for your bird to relax his body language, 'click' when he's fully relaxed, and then back away from the bird for 20 seconds - letting him realize that relaxing makes you leave him alone.

Repeat this activity as many times as possible in a 10 minute period, making sure that each sequential rep you perform, you are getting closer and closer to your birds food bowls, freezing when he starts to show aggressive tendencies, and then backing off when he relaxes.

In minutes you should be able to DRASTICALLY change your bird's behavior in regards to changing his food without him throwing a hissy fit.

So if your bird's struggling with this same problem, give some of these techniques a try, and report back to me with the results, I'd love to hear how it went for you.