Serama Cockerel Biting Hands - How to re-train/discourage biting

[eveliens]

TL;DR: serama cockerel was watched by a sitter for 2 weeks and was handled too roughly - now he bites when you try to pick him up

More detail: Lucky Duck is a 4 mo old cockerel who's hormones hit 3 days before I went out of town. Usually I rehome cockerels well before the hormones hit but he got very sick as a chick and took a long time to recover. Apparently, he bit the sitter (to mount) and the sitter is rather... old school about this. The result is every time the sitter went to pick him up, he was very aggressive and rough about it. The cockerel had zero problems being picked up prior but now he bites (hard!) whenever hands come near him. If I could, I'd just not pick him up at all for awhile, but unfortunately he has to be picked up 2x a day to get him in/out of his sleeping place. I'm planning to see about changing this up but that doesn't resolve the biting just decreases it.

What are some humane and kind ways I can train him into allowing himself to be picked up without panicking and lashing out. He's shredding up my hands LOL - his bites are mostly harmless but they hurt because he latches and twists! I will need to rehome him now that he's crowing, and I can't in good conscious rehome a rooster that bites. I'd be too afraid he's bite someone and they'd react like my sitter and accidentally hurt or kill him since he's so small.

(he does not chase or spur. he's actually very wimpy, so it isn't an aggression or horny problem, it is definitely fear of hands )

 

[Jajika]

Hi Eveliens: Sorry for the problems. I had a hen that started biting at my legs and even drew blood once. She was very, very aggressive. Someone on this board suggested putting my hands firmly on her back and holding them for several minutes so she could not walk a way , basically establishing that I am in charge. After several times doing so she backed off.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Get some leather gloves to protect your hands and introduce the gloves gradually. If your cockerel is biting out of fear due to a bad experience rather than just the usual hormonal angries, I worry a bit that pushing him down as is often done for aggressive roos could make the problem worse since it reinforces the idea that the hand is bad. See if he'll take treats from a glove, etc. With gloves, if nothing else he may learn that the biting doesn't have the same effect and he may calm down while saving you from bruises. Training through the principle of "extinction" is a thing (un-rewarded behaviors may go away eventually unless the behavior is, in itself, a reward somehow). You could try training him to step up on a hand and keep your hand safe with the glove.

 

[Jajika]

DonyaQuick...Great advice.

 

[eveliens]

Hi Eveliens: Sorry for the problems. I had a hen that started biting at my legs and even drew blood once. She was very, very aggressive. Someone on this board suggested putting my hands firmly on her back and holding them for several minutes so she could not walk a way , basically establishing that I am in charge. After several times doing so she backed off.

What a witch! That's definitely a situation where you need to be the Top Bird - I'm glad it worked out for you. Hens can be really obnoxious too sometimes but drawing blood definitely crosses a line.

Get some leather gloves to protect your hands and introduce the gloves gradually. If your cockerel is biting out of fear due to a bad experience rather than just the usual hormonal angries, I worry a bit that pushing him down as is often done for aggressive roos could make the problem worse since it reinforces the idea that the hand is bad. See if he'll take treats from a glove, etc. With gloves, if nothing else he may learn that the biting doesn't have the same effect and he may calm down while saving you from bruises. Training through the principle of "extinction" is a thing (un-rewarded behaviors may go away eventually unless the behavior is, in itself, a reward somehow). You could try training him to step up on a hand and keep your hand safe with the glove.

Thank you for the advice - this is pretty close to what I've been doing. I actually did don gloves for the first few days because he was definitely leaving bruises where he latched on. He's fine with taking treats and even being petted and once he's up he likes being cuddled - it is specifically the action of hands reaching down to grab him.

I have tried to train him to step up before because it's a convenient way to get a hold of a chicken without chasing them but he never got it the way some of my hens have - he has poor balance due to the illness so I think he doesn't trust it. So I've been pretending to pick him up but let go after a few seconds without actually picking him up. I've been picking up his mother and some other hens in front of him to show him they're not bothered (provided I bribe them with food LOL). I've also been picking him up, holding him gently for a few minutes until he calms down then letting him down again. It seems to be going well. He's gone from running blindly while clucking then biting for all his worth to bracing and giving a hard peck to let me know he doesn't like it. Not ideal but definitely better than biting.

Hopefully with a little more time he'll go back to at least tolerating being picked up, although I don't know if he'll ever be as comfortable as he was before.

 

[eveliens]

Little guy came up to me and allowed himself to be picked up without pecking this evening. He thought about it really hard and tensed but decided to make good choices LOL. Hopefully in a few more days he'll stop biting/pecking all together.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Little guy came up to me and allowed himself to be picked up without pecking this evening. He thought about it really hard and tensed but decided to make good choices LOL. Hopefully in a few more days he'll stop biting/pecking all together.

That's really good! Don't hold it against him if he backslides a bit every now and then. Training rarely heads in a completely straight line.

I'm also working with a nippy cockerel right now; he's 6 months right now and pretty big, so his bites can be nasty. He has good days and bad days; yours may too. My cockerel's biting phase was also triggered by a fear event - he's terrified of snow and is still getting used to it in his first winter. On good days, he still wants to gently nibble my gloves but is otherwise a big cuddly baby. On bad days where something sets him off (like more snow...), I sometimes have to just stand still for a while with him clamped onto the glove huffing and puffing until he calms down.

 

[eveliens]

That's really good! Don't hold it against him if he backslides a bit every now and then. Training rarely heads in a completely straight line.

I'm also working with a nippy cockerel right now; he's 6 months right now and pretty big, so his bites can be nasty. He has good days and bad days; yours may too. My cockerel's biting phase was also triggered by a fear event - he's terrified of snow and is still getting used to it in his first winter. On good days, he still wants to gently nibble my gloves but is otherwise a big cuddly baby. On bad days where something sets him off (like more snow...), I sometimes have to just stand still for a while with him clamped onto the glove huffing and puffing until he calms down.

I guess being a teen boy is the same for all animals. I know in dogs, males (and some females) go through a "fear period" in their teen years. If something traumatic happens to them, it can be really hard to deal with the results because they're primed to make those associations. It appears chickens work a similar way. Makes sense, this is when the cockerels are learning the appropriate things to fear, what/when to fight or run, and are getting their adult social skills (plus the nasty little surge of hormones scrambling up what little logical thought they have). Not necessarily the bird's fault, just how they're wired.

Unfortunately, he went after me twice yesterday and drew blood, so he's moved on to pre-emptive attacking when he SEES hands. He solicited the interaction on both counts, so today I went hands off. He's not happy with how hard his life suddenly became but I'm not interested in being bitten for the crime of bringing him in at night so the owls don't eat him or he doesn't freeze to death. He had to bring himself into the house this evening, which left him standing in the dark, perplexed and distressed - it took 3 tries and 30 minutes for him to figure out he'd have to do it himself. He's not getting any extra treats (if I don't hand feed him the hens will bully him out of treats - he's going to have to learn to be faster I guess ). And when he jumped up to hang out with me on the bed, he received no pets or ruffles like he was expecting even when soliciting them (don't trust him not to change his mind). He's going to be in for an even ruder surprise when he learns he's going to have to put himself in his sleeping crate and that the lights are on a timer that goes off at 10. He's probably going to be a bit cranky in the morning LOL.

All my other cockerels have been completely hands-off, never came inside, no real interaction beyond nice words and food tossed at them - it was a pain to catch them but they certainly didn't bite or spur once you got your hands on them. Its disappointing such an easily handled and sweet bird is now ruining his chances at being someone's house chicken but obviously no one wants an indoor pet that bites them (except parrot people XD). His life is going to be a lot harder if he has to stay out in a coop due to his health problems though. Going to work with him some more but it is already past time to rehome him so we'll see. Lucky's luck might have run out.

 

[Sussex19]

Reading this, I am wondering how much might be fear, and how much is just a teen cockerel behaving badly.
Going by the last post, it seems more like the latter.
If it were fear, I was going to suggest putting your hands against him, don't move if he bites. Once he has stopped biting, then calmly remove your hands to reward him.
I don't know if it would work, but wouldn't be surprised if it did.
But if he has just decided to be an idiot, I'm not sure there's very much you can do.

 

[eveliens]

Reading this, I am wondering how much might be fear, and how much is just a teen cockerel behaving badly.
Going by the last post, it seems more like the latter.
If it were fear, I was going to suggest putting your hands against him, don't move if he bites. Once he has stopped biting, then calmly remove your hands to reward him.
I don't know if it would work, but wouldn't be surprised if it did.
But if he has just decided to be an idiot, I'm not sure there's very much you can do.

I can see how it'd look that way without context. The first time he nailed me, he was asking to be picked up to go inside. He got me when I tried to do so. He's been picked up to come inside since he was 3 days old, so I think he feels he HAS to come to me to come inside not that he wanted to be picked up. The second time he caught me by surprise because I wasn't trying to pick him up, but I was taking his food bowl (to refill it, the ungrateful wretch LOL). That one I think was bratty behavior, since I wasn't coming for HIM and he had to come towards me. So it is probably a combination of teen hormonal moron and legit fear mixing into a cocktail of dumb. It isn't helping that the adult hens are kicking the snot out of him during the day, which is making him very jumpy and unhappy in general, so he's not in the best of moods by evening.

As for picking him up, he will shake violently and dilates his eyes if you corner him with your hand near him (faces, feet, elbows do not get this reaction just hands). I suspect if I did it long enough he'd start panting and thrashing but I'm not interested in flooding him too hard. He will track your hands while tensing if it is near him. If given the option, he will choose to run away first, not attacking. I do think it started as bratty teen behavior with the sitter but he's definitely afraid of hands now. As I said, he spent at least a week of being roughly handled (not hurt but definitely handled too hard) - I asked the sitter to show me how he was picking the chicken up, which entailed jabbing at the chicken from different angles until he was too dizzy from defending himself then grabbing him hard with both hands from above like a hawk, staring him aggressively in the eye and swinging him a bit in the air during the trip to the crate.

I actually was doing what you suggested and it appeared to be desensitizing him a bit prior to the blood draw. Unfortunately, when he got my palm, I did react poorly/instinctively because I wasn't expecting it and definitely made it worse. I think he realized in that moment he'd made a very large error and exactly how much bigger I was, since I've never been anything but nice to him before. I plan to keep doing it (with gloves!) after giving him some space to get his head back on. He wants to be friends again, just not with my hands unfortunately

I did spend some time just see how far I could push him last night while he was in my lap. Not the nicest time, since he was trying to sleep, but it made him less likely to run all over the room in a panic or commit to biting hard. If the hand (singular) remains unmoving, he allows it next to him (but watches). If the hand is moving but is outside of a 2" range (probably his neck range LOL) he will alert, tense or train his beak on it. He particularly does not like hands near his shoulders and will peck if they come closer than the 2". If both hands came together, he'd get up to run. If you touch him physically, he will peck and he bites when you close your hands around him to pick him up. Just got to work on it more I guess, but I can see why people get upset when their formerly nice cockerel turns into a jerkbag