# Behavior Change



## ParkPidge (Jun 5, 2019)

I hand raised a roller pigeon from 5 days old. He’s one month old now and has become really aggressive and skittish suddenly. He runs from me when I try to pick him up and bites every time I try to touch him. It happened pretty quick. And started around the time he was weaning. No traumatic events occurred and I’ve never been mean to him. If I pick him up anyway and and continue petting him gently he’ll stop and seems to enjoy the affection but if stop and try again in a few seconds the process starts again. He also has major food aggression and fully attacked me when I tried to clean up his food area(wing slapping and biting and holding on). I’m working on that by feeding him by hand now and it’s getting better. I just don’t understand this behavior change, he’s too young to be maturing. One of my theories is that he’s trying to be dominant but he still seems too young. I just want to get to the bottom of the behavior so I can fix it and we can get along. For some reason he seems to dislike me right now. Is this a normal phase? Does he just have to grow out of it? I adopted him and raised him so we could have a strong bond and be companions.


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## Marina B (May 5, 2011)

It's normal behaviour. He is probably a male pigeon, they do get more aggressive as they mature. By wingslapping you, he is only defending his territory. Especially if you put your hand inside his cage for cleaning. Rather let him come out, and then do the cleaning.

You can also offer him chopped up raw unsalted peanuts. Pigeons just love them. First you will need to add some to his food for him to get used to it and then start offering them from your hand.


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