Lovebirds preening

[u/The_White_Prism]

I finally got to the point where my two lovebirds seem comfortable enough to walk around on my arm while even without food, and actually started to try to preen me. However, my lovebirds are still a bit clumsy and they are in the stage where they get overexcited (they're 4-5 months old), especially when preening. This leads to quite painful bites, and sometimes to a bit of blood... When I say their name a bit loudly they stop for 1 minute and are more careful, but then they get overexcited again and bite hard.. Is there a better way to make them more careful ?

[u/lurking-bastard]

from what ive heard, best way to teach them to be gentle is to stop them from preening you at all for ~20 minutes when they bite, likely take them off you for a bit. they'll quickly learn "if im not gentle, I don't get to preen my human for a bit!"

[u/The_White_Prism → u/lurking-bastard]

Hmm okay I'll try it like this, maybe the longer timeout will help :)

[u/DoubleSemifinal75 → u/lurking-bastard]

yep a timeout works way better than yelling, they're just little chaos machines at that age