Water

[srirachaseahawk]

So......my Linnie hates water
Odd, right?

I've tried the following with zero success:

1. Gently misting above him and letting it fall onto him while he's in his cage.
2. Gently misting above him and letting it fall onto him while he's on a nice perch.
3. Using a flat-bottomed colander in a sink and letting it just run with a dribble.
4. Seeing if he likes a bowl of water to play in or be dripped on from.

100% "I need to escape this now" rate. He does not assume the standard Linnie bat-pose at all for this.

Any other things that I can try?
I'd like to do the light misting daily to see if we can desensitize him to it, but his siblings took to it like...well...Linnies. Their first "bath" they immediately hung upside down and spread their wings. My guy was climbing the cage walls.

 

[Love My Linnie]

Toula doesn’t really like water either. Some days she just flies away and other times she’ll sit still and spread her wings and let me mist her. I guess it depends on what mood she’s in. Silly girl!She has never gotten into the bird bath bowl she has in her cage, but she will stick her toes and tail in once in a while. Be patient and keep trying. Once they get a little wet, I think they decide it’s not going to kill them and it really makes them feel better.

 

[LinnieGirl]

Some Linnie’s are like that. Try all of the above with the vacuum running. I know it’s odd but it triggers bathing desire in most Linnie’s. They think it’s a rainstorm coming or something. If it doesn’t work, keep trying, eventually they learn to love it. If it works, you won’t need the vacuum every time they bathe after that.

 

[srirachaseahawk]

Tried the vacuum once, will do so again
We tried again tonight with misting on my shoulder. He made a cross between the normal call…an alarm call…and the baby begging sounds. He didn’t fly off of me, but I can’t say that he cared much for it..?

 

[LinnieGirl]

If they weren’t exposed to bathing when young, it may take a while to get them used to it. It’s important to continue trying as it helps to keep their feathers healthy. Whether it’s a spray bottle or different kinds of dishes ( flat, round, oval, shallow, deeper, etc…in cage or out of cage), it’s important to keep trying. I’ve seen some folks placed a large lettuce leaf on a plate with water and that worked for them. Worth a try.

 

[srirachaseahawk]

Totally going to keep trying. After misting today, we got some slight bat wings! He would lay down and do it instead of hang on a perch, but still.
He needed a lot of misting before he got to that point though. He would crawl around the cage chirping until he did so. Then he went into a slight “siren”, so I knew that we were done

Post bath wet chicken chortles.

 

[Eddie's Aviary]

Takes a month to settle in completely. He will totally get there!

 

[srirachaseahawk]

Hemi is now 3 months old and he just took his first bath that he actually enjoyed. Bat wings and all!
Up until this point, the best response that I got was "unimpressed tolerance"...
This was the end result of a lot of persistence and patience

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

 

[Love My Linnie]

Yeah Hemingway!

 

[LinnieGirl]

Patience paid off.

 

[Eddie's Aviary]

Great! Yay!!