I wanted to see if anyone else has this problem.... Mollie is very territorial about her cage and I have to let her come out first before she will step up. However there are some days she does not want to come out but I can manage to feed her and change her happy hut liner. Then other days she comes out and steps up and takes her shower, plays etc... She is a bit nippy at times and I am working on it with pushing into her bite and telling her no bite. Today she came right up to the door I tried to get her to step up and she did bite but not hard as I pushed into it. She is molting right now, but it seems her moods can be like the weather always changing, does anyone else have fids that have unpredictable behaviors?

Have you considered moving her cage to a different room and setting up a play stand for her to hang out on when you're in the same room as her? This works for a lot of people who have cage territorial birds.

Also, you may want to consider perch/stick training her so that when she is inside her cage and you want her out, you hold a perch/stick in front of her and make her step up onto it. This saves your fingers If you use a perch that is already in her cage, she'll be used to it and won't get overly upset when you present it to her.

I actually use those long wooden ladders for this purpose. I train all my birds to step up onto the ladder when asked. This works great for those few times they refuse to step up for me What I did was just put the ladder in their cage for a few weeks so they were used to the sight of it, then I'd take it out and when I had the bird with me, I would have the bird step up onto the ladder and give lots of praise when s/he did it. I'd do a few of those training sessions through out the day and after a week or so, the birds were quite used to stepping up on it.

Anyways, just a thought

Clyde was really territorial about his cage at first, but he got over it and I can reach right in and do anything, including getting him to step onto my hand, though he's nervous about riding my hand out of the cage and will usually grab onto the side and come out on his own. And he does have moods where he's nippy and other moods where he's all snuggly and saying "awwww" and kissing. If she's molting, that's probably at least part of why she's crabby some days. It's gotta be miserable and uncomfortable, so it's not you she's crabby about, she's just crabby and you're handy to take it out on. This too shall pass.

my qp will yell unstop in the morning until my parents go to work. i guess bird can just moody sometimes.