Lovebird Eating Defensively

[Decolor]

A little background, I've had my lovie Kiki for about a year and a half now, she came from a situation of very severe neglect and was deprived food and water often, in fact when I first got her she was quite underweight and drank like a fish for almost a month just because for once she had water. But she's still having some problems...

Whenever you go past her cage too close, touch her food dish, or refill it even when it's not empty, she is instantly on top of it and proceeds to eat for a good ten to twenty minutes straight. During the day and when nothing is done with her cage, she eats normally, nibbles every now and then and leaves. Sometimes she gets so overzealous that she actually makes herself vomit... and will still go back to her dish and eat more. She will even defend and eat food she normally wouldn't touch if she seems to think you're going to take it away.

Is there anything I can do to help work with this behavior? This can't be good for her, and the vet has checked her over more than once to show that her vomiting is not caused by illness, but by crop irritation probably caused by her scarfing her food.

[linda040899]

Kudos to you for taking Kiki and getting her out of a horrible situation! Birds have remarkable memories and it's going to take a while before the memories of where she came from fade to the background and reality of her current situation takes hold.

Love, kindness and patience are what she needs most from you! I can relate to what you are saying, as I adopted a badly abused male Double Yellow Headed Amazon. He was abused by 4 previous owners before he came here and he used to hate men (He was abused by men.) It's taken Monty 5 yrs to realize that no one here is going to hurt him and he's calmed down. He has an orgasmic woman routine that he goes through when he feels stressed and no one here has heard it in several yrs.

Just give Kiki a bit of time to heal from what's happened and I think you will see changes once she feels safe.

[Decolor]

That makes sense. I suppose it just stands out more as a problem since She's doing swimmingly otherwise as far as rehabilitation goes. She's a complete Velcro bird who's shown an amazing capacity for learning to do tricks (She's up to 11). I started training her to help with some behavioral problems she used to have (Rewarding her for not biting me and teaching her recall) and now it's just become a fun little bonding game, but things dealing with her cage and her food still stress her.

[linda040899]

I can truly understand why the food issue would be so traumatic for her. In her mind, no food = death and that's a scary thing!!!

Work with her on things you can modify and accept those that you can't. :) Kiki is also a female and they tend to be cage territorial to begin with!

[kimsbirds]

I wonder if adding a couple more food dishes to the cage would ease her feelings of needing to protect/gorge like that?
Thoughts?

[linda040899]

I wonder if adding a couple more food dishes to the cage would ease her feelings of needing to protect/gorge like that?
Thoughts?
You know, Kim, that just might work! I wasn't thinking in that direction but it's a great idea and definitely worth trying!

[Decolor]

That's certainly worth a shot!

[Bubblelady]

Poor baby! Thank you for rescuing her :clap