What is a Conure?
Conures are small to medium sized parrots that originate from Central and South America. There are over 30 recognized species of conure, with the most popular types kept as pets being:
- Green-cheeked Conure
- Sun Conure
- Jenday Conure
- Nanday Conure
- Blue-crowned Conure
Conures are intelligent, active birds that can make great pets. However, their high energy level and loud vocalizations may make them challenging to care for at times. Proper training and discipline are necessary to promote good behavior and prevent problem behaviors from developing.
Why Discipline is Important for Conures
There are several reasons why it’s important to discipline your conure:
- Prevents the development of problem behaviors – Nipping, screaming, aggression, and destructive chewing are common conure behavior problems. Implementing discipline early on helps avoid these issues.
- Establishes you as the authority figure – Conures are naturally social flock animals. They require leadership and will test boundaries. Appropriate discipline helps reinforce your position as their flock leader.
- Promotes safety – A well-disciplined conure is less likely to bite or get into harmful situations. This keeps both the bird and owner safe.
- Allows positive reinforcement training – Discipline stops unwanted behaviors so you can redirect your conure and reward desired behaviors.
- Makes living together pleasant – A conure without discipline can be loud, disruptive, and destructive. Proper discipline creates a more harmonious household.
In summary, bird discipline is a crucial part of conure ownership. It provides the structure conures need and allows a healthy relationship built on mutual trust and respect to develop between bird and owner.
How to Discipline a Conure
Disciplining a conure properly takes patience and persistence. Here are some dos and don’ts for effective conure discipline:
DO:
- Be consistent – Apply discipline every time a rule is broken, not just when you’re frustrated.
- Correct immediately – Discipline your conure right after an undesirable behavior to associate the consequence with the action.
- Use a firm tone – Speak in a authoritative but not angry voice so your bird understands you mean business.
- Remove rewards – Take away a favorite toy or treat when your conure misbehaves.
- Use timeouts – Place your conure in their cage for a brief timeout after biting or other serious behavior issues.
- Provide alternatives – Redirect your conure to a more appropriate behavior after discipline.
- Reward good behavior – Praise and give treats for obeying rules and commands to positively reinforce desired behaviors.
DON’T:
- Use physical punishment – Never hit, shake, or use pain to discipline your conure.
- Shout or scream – Loud, aggressive yelling will only frighten your bird.
- Discipline after the fact – Your conure won’t understand what they did wrong if too much time has passed.
- Discipline for minor infractions – Use discipline judiciously for serious offenses so it has maximum impact.
- Discipline while frustrated – Only correct your conure when calm so you’re fair and consistent.
- Forget to praise – Withhold discipline as soon as your conure improves their behavior.
It often takes many repetitions and a good deal of patience for discipline techniques to work with conures. But sticking to the methods listed above and being consistent will help curb problem behaviors.
Common Conure Behavior Problems
Here are some common conure behavior problems and effective ways to discipline them:
Excessive screaming/vocalizing
Conures are naturally loud birds. But excessive screaming, especially indoors, is unacceptable. Strategies to curb vocalizations include:
- Use noise interruptions – Say “quiet” firmly, bang a pot, or make another loud noise when screaming starts. This distracts your conure and disrupts the behavior.
- Ignore attention-seeking screams – Walk away and withhold affection if your conure screams for attention.
- Reward silence – Praise and give treats when your bird is calm and quiet to positively reinforce periods of non-vocalizing.
- Provide enrichment – Make sure your conure is getting adequate mental stimulation and physical activity. A bored conure often screams for entertainment.
Aggressive biting
Conures may bite for various reasons – to show dominance, out of fear, or simple crankiness. Biting discipline methods include:
- Say “no bite” in a authoritative tone and immediately put your conure down if they bite you.
- Withdraw your hand and ignore your conure for a few minutes after a bite to convey that biting makes you go away.
- Redirect your conure’s beak to a toy if they go to nip you.
- Evaluate cage setup and diet to address any causes of aggression like territory guarding or hormonal issues.
Destructive chewing
Conures chew on inappropriate items like furniture, books, and wiring. To teach what isn’t okay to chew:
- Use taste deterrents like bitter apple spray on off-limit items.
- Give a firm “no” and present an acceptable chew toy whenever you catch inappropriate chewing.
- Keep plenty of bird-safe chew toys available to satisfy your conure’s natural chewing urge.
- Use booby traps like double-sided tape on furniture to discourage chewing when unsupervised.
Failure to obey commands
If your conure ignores commands like “step up” or “come”, use these training tactics:
- Go back to basics and reinforce easy commands with treats before moving to more difficult skills.
- Ensure your conure understands the command – simplify verbal cues or use hand signals.
- Practice short, engaging training sessions multiple times a day.
- Say the command once firmly and if your bird ignores it, put them away briefly so they don’t get rewarded with freedom.
The key is being calm, fair, and absolutely consistent when applying discipline for any behavioral issue. Eventually your conure will learn which behaviors result in positive outcomes versus correction.
Common Discipline Mistakes
It’s important to avoid these common discipline mistakes bird owners often make:
- Being inconsistent – Sometimes letting a behavior slide and sometimes correcting teaches your bird confusion, not discipline.
- Punishing after the fact – Conures associate discipline with whatever they’re doing in the moment, not several minutes later.
- Using physical punishment – This erodes trust and may lead to increased biting and aggression.
- Yelling – Loud, angry yelling is frightening and teaches birds to be afraid of hands.
- Disciplining when frustrated – It’s easy to overreact when you’re upset; only discipline when calm.
- Not praising good behavior – Rewarding desirable behaviors is equally important as correcting unwanted ones.
Avoiding these common pitfalls will lead to much more effective discipline that provides clarity and consistency for your conure.
When to Get Professional Help
For minor behavior issues, disciplining your conure appropriately at home is usually sufficient. But in certain situations professional assistance may be needed:
- Aggression that results in serious bites or attacks.
- Self-mutilating behaviors like feather plucking.
- Excessive screaming that disturbs neighbors.
- Ongoing destructive chewing that can’t be resolved.
- Refusing to step up for handling when previously trained.
- Loss of previous training.
- Fearfulness, trembling, and hiding that indicates extreme stress.
If discipline efforts have failed to improve any of these serious behavior problems after 2-4 weeks, consult an experienced avian vet or bird behaviorist. They can help uncover potential medical issues or evaluate your discipline approach. For severe cases drug therapy, environmental changes, or even re-homing may be considered for your conure’s well-being.
Discipline Strategies for Adult vs. Baby Conures
Discipline is important for conures of all ages, but tactics should be adapted based on your bird’s age and developmental stage:
Baby Conures
For conures under 1 year old:
- Focus on positive reinforcement and redirecting to teach appropriate behaviors.
- Keep training sessions very short – 2-3 minutes.
- Use scruffing restraint only as a last resort for serious biting.
- Avoid timeouts – young birds may become frightened alone in a cage.
- Provide lots of enrichment toys and supervised out of cage time.
Adult Conures
For mature conures over 1 year old:
- Can begin incorporating discipline like timeouts for unwanted behaviors.
- May use restraint by holding wings/scruffing if necessary for aggressive or self-injurious behaviors.
- Can handle longer 5-10 minute training sessions.
- Will have more developed screaming/nipping habits requiring greater consistency in discipline.
- Reduce triggers like cage-territoriality and hormonal aggression through environmental changes.
While being gentle and patient, adult conures should be disciplined similarly to how a parent would discipline a young child. Calm consistency, not anger or retaliation, is key for effective discipline at any age.
Disciplining Conures in Multi-Pet Households
In homes with other pets, special considerations help promote proper conure behavior:
- Separate animals at first to establish household rules and obedience for each pet before interactions.
- Supervise all interactions between species closely to correct inappropriate behavior immediately.
- Never let conures have unsupervised access to other animals to prevent trauma.
- Ensure each pet gets individualized daily enrichment time with owners.
- Give conures high perches to retreat to for safety and confidence when other animals are loose.
- Keep conure and companion pet supplies/toys separate to avoid resource guarding against other pets.
Start introductions slowly, keeping conures caged initially so they learn to be calm around other pets entering their space. With time, consistency, and supervision, a harmonious multi-species home is certainly possible.
Using Discipline Alongside Positive Reinforcement
Balancing discipline with generous positive reinforcement provides the most effective behavior modification program for pet birds.
Use discipline to reduce problem behaviors by:
- Interrupting screaming with noise distraction
- Ending biting by putting your conure down
- Giving timeouts for aggression
Then replace those behaviors by positively reinforcing desired actions:
- Reward silence with treats/praise
- Encourage chewing bird toys with petting
- Clicker train your conure to go to their cage on command
With patience and consistency, the misbehaviors will decrease as your conure discovers which actions pay off with rewards versus correction. This balanced approach lets discipline provide boundaries while positive reinforcement shapes the behavior you want to see.
Conclusion
Proper discipline is essential for owning a well-behaved conure. Setting clear rules and expectations early prevents problem behavior from developing and leads to a more harmonious home. Strategies like timeouts, removing rewards, noise interruptions, and restraint can be used to correct issues like screaming, biting, and destruction. Providing lots of mental stimulation, overseeing interactions with other pets, and balancing discipline with positive reinforcement are also key for maximum effectiveness. While conures can be challenging parrots, their antics can be successfully managed with time and patience. The long-term results of proper conure discipline are a tamer, happier pet bird.