Tweety has always had a tendency to bite, he will be happily sitting on your shoulder and then decides to bite on your neck or ear. He has never bit me only my children and hubby. It started a few months ago when he was moulting but he has finished moulting and still doing it but getting worse. He bite my daughters nose last night and my 4 year olds lip and drew blood in both cases.How can i teach him that it is not acceptable behaviour? My 4 year old is scared of him now. It is not like my kids pick him up and he does not like it so bites. They will be sitting on the lounge watching telly and he climbs on the lounge and on to them and then goes up to their face and bites. He does not do it everytime so they think he is being friendly and coming to talk to them but you never know what he will do.

during the time he was doing it in the beginning he should have been corrected but because he wasn't he finds it okay and he is top budgie, when he does it you say no, if he doesn't stop some members have advised to gently push up on their beak, I personally put him back on the cage or the table and then say no, wait a couple seconds and then let him hop back on your finger if he does it again say no and put him back off of you, they do get the point. Merlin went through this and he started to really bite hard and that is what I did. I found that flicking his beak or pushing upward make him bite me more so that was what I did instead.

Thanks Elly because when he first starting it he was moulting and it was not very often, i ignored it and thought it would just stop when he stopped moulting but i was wrong. I will tried what you did with Merlin, i do not believe in pushing his beak either. With the budgies Runt is boss, Runt was bullying him yesterday so much that Tweety was hiding under furniture to get away from him. Somtimes they are very close and feed each other and then other days if Runt wakes up on the wrong side of the cage he is mean and Tweety is scared of him. Could the way that Runt treats Tweety be the reason that Tweety bites?

Yes, Tweety could feel that he can't dominante Runt but he can you but you need to change that and you need to be the top bird.

If a budgie (or tiel) is sitting on me and gives me an unacceptable nip, I put them straight down on the floor. They hate being on the floor and they get the hint pretty quickly. I find putting them back in their cage is a reward as most birds like their cage.

I agree with Liv, don't put them back in the cage, her suggestion is pretty much what I do just a different place, the key is to get them off ASAP so they understand that is not acceptable while they are on you.

Also a blow in their face works ....

Only problem with putting him on the floor is that his wings are clipped so he normally plays on the floor so i do not know if he would see it as punishment.

Do you have a box in the corner?

 

I use to do it with Harley and will do it with Boof and Buddy if they start something like this. Basically put them in the box, if their wings are clipped leave the top off they go in the box, there is nothing in there, no food, water, toys, it's kind of boring then let them out about 30secs later they get the drift very quickly that they are in time out. Harley had an issue of flying at peoples faces (he did not have his wings clipped) so I would put him in his box in the corner and put a towel on top of it, then open it up and he would be allowed out. then one day he was annoying my sister and she told him NO very loudly he flew to his box and got in very cute but it what then that I knew he had the message about time out corner.

thanks AV, i like the idea of a box because he also has times where he wants to bite feet and will chase my kids biting their feet. i am worried he will get stood on if he does not stop it.

I was shocking I treated Harley as if he was a kid, when he did something unacceptable then he got time out like any child I looked after when he did something good he got rewarded. If possible I would rather not use any form of physical punishment so the time out box worked well.