Lisa Shea Forums Parakeets General Parakeet Chat will they trust us after this?

a couple days ago we had the keets out and my hubby kept grabbing them to hold them and they would fly away or bite at him. Is this going to cause them to never trust us? I tried to get him to back off from my birdies, lol but he really just wanted to hold them even though obviously they don't want to be. Also, i bring them in my office to hang out so they won't be alone all day and sometimes they fly out and if i don't have my stick near me, i try to help them get back into their cage by having to grab them so they don't hurt themselves. i know i shouldn't grab them but i know they are scared as heck and try to talk soothingly to them and put them back in their cage. I do mostly either try to put the cage on the floor so that they can climb back in themselves or use the stick and get them to perch on there and put them back in their cage.

have we doomed ourselves from having them trust us? we've had them for 1 month today and they are both around 6-7 months old.

Absolutely not! I got my birds from my cousins, and it took 3 months to train them both in the same cage. When she came over (she's 10 and her brother is 12) she told me that they used to grab them with mittens and put them on their shoulders. Kirby always flew away, but Kiwi stayed. I was like, "OMG, that's why it took so long for me to train them!" They go on my finger now, when away from the cage, but they don't exactly love me. You should stop letting them fly out when they're not trained because then you'll have to force 'em back to the cage and it will think of you as the bad person more. Work on training them, and when they're done, you can let them fly out!

ok thanks I will work on that, i just don't want them to get used to being in the cage all the time and turning lethargic.

well i grab my birds hand around their lil bodies when i need to pick them up off the ground jsut make sure you dont apply pressure to their lil bodies they are fragile

nope i don't do that, i just grab them so that their heads are sticking out so they bite me while i'm trying to put them back in their cage.