Hi. I'm new to this forum and have been attempting to train my new African Ringneck using techniques described on this site but I am not having much success. I'm hoping that someone might be able to offer me some advice.

I acquired a female African Ringneck approximately six weeks ago and named her the very original name of 'Africa'. All I know about her history is that she turned up in someone's backyard about five months ago. She was having a bit of difficulty flying and was awkward on landing, so these people assumed she had recently escaped or been let loose from a cage where she hadn't been able to fly much. She sought out these people's company and they began feeding her but left her free. This was all fine until two months ago when she started flying down and biting both the husband (whom she had bonded with) and the wife. Her bites were quite severe, drawing blood and leaving bruises, and as they have two small children, they felt it necessary to get rid of the bird in case she attacked the children. This is where I came in.

When I first brought her home, she would try to bite me every time I put my hand in the cage, even if I was just trying to change her water and food. After a few days, she started taking peanuts out of my hand and licking jam off my finger, but that is about as far as we have come. The first thing I tried to teach her was to step onto my finger so that I could start getting her out of the cage. She would just try to bite me every time. I tried to get her to step onto a stick, but she just runs away. I thought maybe she was one of these birds who will bite while your hand is in her cage, but are okay once they are out of the cage, so I started bringing her cage inside and letting her get out herself. On these occasions, she is happy to walk around and investigate things, but she still wants to bite when I put my hand near her. She no longer bites at me immediately like she did when I first got her home, but instead investigates my hand/finger/leg with her beak and tongue first, then bites down hard. There have been a few occasions where I've been sitting with her, not trying to touch her or get her to do anything, and all of a sudden she has gotten it into her head that she wants to bite me. She heads straight for the nearest bit of skin, does a bit of investigation with her beak & tongue, then bites... hard! One time, I was pushing her away from my leg because she was intent on biting me and she just kept coming back for more!

I have recently put her into a bigger sized cage with toys to play with and bottlebrush perches for her to chew on. The problem is that now I can't just take her whole cage inside for her to get out as it is too big. She has to learn to step up so that I can get her out.

I have tried the idea of trying to get her to step onto either my finger or perch by holding a peanut or jam just out of reach of her, but if I persist with this, she just decides she doesn't really want it anyway and leaves.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Do I have a hope of ever getting her to step up? If she has been mishandled in the past is it possible that she will never forget that?

My final question is, should I get her some friends. It is very difficult to get single African Ringnecks where I live as they are all sold as pairs. Can I introduce a pair to her cage or would there be problems with an odd number of birds in the cage? If so, I can probably order a single male from a private breeder elsewhere and have it flown in. This probably sounds like a really stupid question but would he have to be the same colouring as her for her to accept him (i.e. green instead of blue or lutino for instance)?

Sorry about the length of this email but I wanted to cover everything. I will welcome any suggestions that you can give me.

Cheers!