Trick Training Assumptions [Appendix A]
In order to teach a parrot any type of tricks, you must have first developed a bonded relationship with your parrot. Your parrot must be tame and generally socialized. This doesn’t mean your bird has to have absolutely perfect behavior in every respect, in fact some of this training is directed to helping you develop better behavior in your bird and better control because you will be able to consistently obtain a known response from your bird when he or she is asked to perform a behavior. By teaching your bird that you will respond positively to its positive behavior and responses, it becomes easy to teach new behaviors and responses as well as basic manners commands.
Socialization and Tameness
Your parrot should already have developed tameness and willingness to sit with you. If a parrot is not tame and does not want human contact, it will have no desire to perform any behaviors. If that is the case, you need to first tame your parrot and develop a social bond with it.
Ideally, your parrot will be so tame that it will love to receive scratches and pets from you. It must be at least tame enough to accept food from your fingers in order to provide a reward on which to base the training.
Consistency in Training, Requests, Bridges and Rewards
The training must be performed in a consistent manner. So, you will need to teach your parrot during some time every day. Spending time teaching a behavior for a few minutes one day and then waiting until the next week to again perform any training will not allow you to teach your parrot quickly and get the responses you desire. In fact, it may well confuse your bird.
You must also be consistent with the use of words you choose for commands and for the praise bridge word. There is no hard and fast rule about which words you will want to use as the command. For example, I use “step up” for the “UP” command words and “good bird” said with lots of love and enthusiasm as the bridge words (more about bridge words later in this report) to let the bird know it has done well.
However, you might choose to say “step” or “up” or some other logical phrase for the “UP” command and might choose “great” or “good” for a bridge word. Whatever words you choose to requests behaviors and to offer praise in the form of the bridge word, it must be the exact same every single time in order to allow the parrot to know what you desire. You can’t say “get on my finger” once time and “step up here” another time and expect your parrot to know what you want, certainly not at first. Be consistent with requests and bridge words as well as rewards.
Rewards
Now you may be wondering how you will know what the best reward is to provide to your parrot during early trick training and later during further training. After all, you want to teach your parrot tricks as easily as possible. Well, I can help you determine the best reward for your particular parrot.
Treats
When you first begin training your parrot, it is likely you will get the best response by offering a treat as a reward. Here is where it becomes a problem to select the very best item to offer. After all, your parrot has to WANT the reward in order to associate the command/behavior response with the pleasure of a treat, making the bird really want to do what you ask.
Here’s how to choose the best treat for your own parrot. It will not be the same treat for each parrot, possibly not even each parrot in your own home if you have multiple birds, and not even parrots of the same species. Each parrot has its own preferences and one bird may love peanuts while another could absolutely care less if it ever eats another peanut in its entire life but goes nuts for a bit of walnut or a sunflower seed.
Perform the following experiment process before you begin training your parrot so you start the training with the best choice of rewards. Here are the steps to learn your parrot’s best treat reward:
Select a day when you can be with your parrot for a little time in the morning. The evening before, remove all food from your parrot’s cage when you put it to bed for the night. This way your bird will not wake up and eat before you awaken.
Because parrots are hungry in the morning upon wakening, you must perform this little test the very first thing. Prepare a food dish which contains four or five treats that you believe your parrot really enjoys. These might include half a peanut or other type of nut, a sunflower seed, a bit of peanut butter on a cracker corner, a bit of apple or other fruit, or a kernel of fresh raw corn or other vegetable.
Place the dish of treats inside your parrot’s cage. The parrot will likely come right over to grab some food. Note which item it chooses first. Immediately afterwards, place your parrot’s normal daily diet in its cage so it can eat until it is no longer hungry. Of course, you can include the treats not chosen first in its regular food.
Repeat this process several different days and you will notice your bird picks one treat first most of the time. Three to five tests should be enough to reveal a clear preference. Then you can be absolutely sure that the item chosen most often is your parrot’s best loved treat.
You will almost certainly find that the treat your companion parrot loves best is one of the high fat items offered. Parrots love foods that are high in fat, but remember, fat must be limited in their diets in order to ensure good health.
We’ll delve into the process of how exactly to work with the treat reward as we get into the steps of trick training.
Praise, Scratches, Love, Cuddles and Non-Food Rewards
Parrots which are human-bonded and have learned already that human praise and other non-food rewards are just as wonderful as for doing the right behavior as a food reward. If your parrot was hand reared, it may even be so bonded to humans that it will willingly accept this type of reward from the very beginning. Many hand reared parrots do. The rest of the companion parrots will need a little time working with food treats before switching over to non-food treats.
Food is a great motivator when training parrots. If your parrot is not hand reared or has not developed a firm bond with humans and you as its specific human, then it is best to begin working with food rewards. After the parrot learns the behavior completely and realized that it will gain a lot of praise and attention, many parrots will then willingly perform the behavior when asked whether food is offered or not. This is the end-goal of training.
Even if your parrot demands that a food treat be provided, you can still teach the bird tricks. So, don’t think that you must remove that form of reward if it works best for you and your particular parrot.
Review of Training Assumptions
So, let’s review the training assumptions:
- Parrot is friendly and tame
- Parrot is socially bonded to human that will be performing the training
- Parrot must have a desire to please their human
- Human must be consistent with training program
- Human must know what the parrot desires as a reward for correct behavior
- Human must also be consistent with words to request behaviors and bridge phrases and rewards.
In the next post I will show you how to teach parrot training tricks like perfecting the ‘up command’ of bird training.
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About the Author: Nora Caterino, known as the Mississippi Bird Lady, or just Bird Lady for short, has trained, raised, and lived with birds for over 30 years. You can subscribe to access news, articles, videos, forums, and receive unlimited one-on-one advice and coaching for one full year. For one-on-one coaching and advice, simply join the Elite Parrots Club athttp://www.eliteparrotsclub.com/talking.php
