The parrot toys you see below are examples of how you can use the natural toy line that we provide to our clients as Food Finding Toys to increase your parrots “Confrontational Bravery”. Which I believe is quietly ruining every parrot who gets all his food from food bowls, instead of having to search for it.

Here’s what I want you to notice in the pictures below:

1) Look how I’ve wedged pellet food into the first two toys shown, be prepared to squint, they’re kinda of hidden.

2) The 3rd toy I’m showing Is an example of what the 2nd toy looks like after my African Grey Parrot has tried to tear the food out of it while it was new.

And the great thing about these toys, is that the more destroyed they are, the MORE hiding places you can find to put food… and if you’ll look closely, you’ll see that I’ve been able to hide the food even deeper and more cleverly in the torn up toy.

It’s this process of forcing the parrot to scavenge through the toy, at more than just a surface level, that really seems to work.

Continuing to stuff pellets into chewed up folds of toy

To purchase the toys we’re showing hear, and others like them please visit our store by following this link:

http://www.birdtricks.com/store

Do you have the type of bird who doesn’t want to take food as a reward?

During training sessions with your parrot do you try to get him to walk closer for a seed or nut, step up, or do tricks for a treat… only to have him completely ignore the treat?

I really became aware of how many people have birds with this problem while meeting and getting to know several of the guests who attended our 1st Live training seminar in Orlando, Florida last month.

I would step off the stage after giving a lesson to answer people’s questions and every time I would have at least one person say, “Chet, I loved your presentation, but it won’t work for me because my bird won’t take treats!”

So today I want to talk about how you can do a better job of managing your parrots motivation.

Because without being able to reward your parrot with SOMETHING, you’re going to have a tough time training him.

In my opinion there are two things people do to that cause this problem, and I call them:

Idealistic Mothering & Motivation Saturation

Let’s talk about Idealistic Mothering first…

This is one of those concepts that’s not always fun to hear, but that many bird owners NEED to hear if they have a bird who’s got problems, and they aren’t having success at fixing them.

Let me put this in perspective:

Have you ever known a mother who felt guilty disciplining her kids? And I don’t mean feeling guilty about spanking her kids, I just mean guilty in general about ALL forms of discipline that would make her kids cry or feel sad?

Have you seen that TV show called SuperNanny… where almost every episode they show parents who’s 4 and 5 year olds still sleep in their parents bed?

Usually the parents have “tried” to get their kids to sleep in their own beds, but there’s always so much crying and fit throwing that the parents end up caving in emotionally and allow their kids to climb back into bed with them.

I don’t want to be a hard ass here, and I realize that a LOT of families out there in the world have this problem, and maybe several people reading this post have this problem.

But for the KIDS sake, you have to let your kid go through emotional pains if they’re ever going to grow emotionally.

In the SuperNanny TV show the nanny is ALWAYS able to get the kid to sleep in his own bed in one or two nights by just being disciplined.

The kid NEVER ends up hating her parents the next morning, and even becomes more confident knowing that they can now sleep in their own bed like a big person.

And this always blows the parents minds! They all have themselves convinced that caving in to their child’s emotional needs was NECESSARY!

And they’re ALWAYS wrong.

I think this same type of mentality is running rampant in the parrot owning community and I think it’s ruining a lot of birds.

When parrot parents are completely unwilling to make their parrots’ experience ANY kind of discomfort or stress, and don’t show their bird any boundaries, you end up with birds like the toddlers on the SuperNanny who throw fits when its time to go to bed.

The birds realize that all they have to do is throw a fit, whether that’s by screaming, or by biting and their owners will cave in to their will… they’re VERY good at it.

They prey on a Mother’s idealistic wishes that every problem can be solved with more love.

I admit, it sounds wonderful to think that we can just open up our hearts and love our parrots more and they’ll eventually come around… but it’s simply not true. Structure, rules, and discipline are ALSO needed.

They’re needed to raise good children, and their needed to raise good animals.

So for those of you reading this who do have a problem motivating your parrot, this Idealistic Mothering is one of the common reasons you might be having trouble.

Because Idealistic Mother’s seem to have a hard time doing things like feeding your parrot on a feeding schedule; as if, God forbid he didn’t have access to a buffet 24 hours a day to gorge himself on.

A feeding schedule is the MOST important part of creating motivation with food, and simply giving your bird as little as a 2 hour break between feedings is sometimes all it takes to motivate your parrot to take a few treats from your hand.

But whenever I bring this up to an audience I see people cringe at the thought of their little baby going without food for a few hours. It’s that mothering instinct that’s keeping these people from finally having breakthroughs with their parrots.

If you have that feeling of guilt over putting your bird on a feeding schedule, I urge you to work past it and realize that it’s these feelings inside you that are blocking you from success.

But let’s say you’re reading this, and you DO put your bird on a feeding schedule and he still doesn’t take treats from you?

What can you do then?

That my friend, is a great question, and one I’ll answer in tomorrow’s blog post

I’ll see you back here tomorrow,

Chet

Thought I’d give you an update on the progress I’ve made caring for and rehabbing my African Grey parrot Bean, and teach you one of the techniques I used to train him to step up for the first time.

If you don’t remember this bird’s story, I adopted him from a rescue facility specifically to test my skills at training birds who were more ‘down and out’ then normal birds. And it’s been an interesting journey that I learned a lot from.

Bean forced me to change the way I teach a few concepts and go into more detail as I teach other people how to fix their parrots problems.

And to be honest, Bean was the REAL motivation behind the live, SOLD OUT, parrot transformation seminar we just held in Orlando, Florida.

If you missed that event, you really missed out, as we’ve been getting tons of emails about how much people learned. And one of the highlights from this event was the presentation I gave on the combination of techniques I used to finally get bean to step up onto my bare hand for the first time in his life.

If you weren’t able to see this presentation live, or attend our event, I will be releasing some footage from the event on DVD over the next 60 days.

So stay tuned…

But back to Bean’s breakthrough…

One thing that hit me as I was speaking on stage about how I trained this African Grey parrot to step up for the first time, is that most people don’t realize how to get fast training results.

And most people RUSH the training process.

And by rushing it I mean they ask their parrots to do things that are WAY out of that bird’s comfort zone.

Instead I recommend parrot owners think about the end result they want their parrot to perform, like stepping up onto a bare hand. And breakdown that behavior into a list of smaller, necessary behaviors that HAVE to be learned first.

Here’s a quick list of things my African Grey needed to learn BEFORE step up:

- To take one step towards my hand

- To take two steps towards my hand

- To get close enough to touch me

- Getting close to me without reaching for me hand with his beak

- Putting one foot on my hand

- Putting one foot on my hand and some body weight on the hand

- Putting one foot on my and and 90% of body weight

- Putting one foot on my hand and lifting the second foot of his perch for a split second

… I think you get the idea.

And I’m not making this up, or overdoing this to prove a point.

All these steps I’ve listed above ACTUALLY had to be trained, and each took at least a day or two to train my African Grey.

Here’s some photos of the actual training to give you an idea:

Here bean is with only 20% weight on one foot

Here's Bean with only 10% of weight on my glove hand, as I ask him to start stepping UP, and not just ON.

Here he is with almost all his weight on that front foot while on my bare hand and NO glove

And here he finally is with BOTH feet on my hand.

So the main point I want you to take away from this is that with this particular African Grey, the ONLY way I was able to have success, is by breaking the process of stepping up into 20 or 30 “Super Small Steps” and every day I only focused on conquering ONE of those steps.

Every time I tried to push it, and push Bean past 2 or 3 steps in a training session, his fearful little personality just couldn’t handle it and it ALWAYS set back his progress. But by sticking to it for 30 days I was able to have complete success!

So what do you want your parrot to do, or to overcome in the next 30 days?

Do you want him to be less jealous of someone? Do you want him to let you pet him somewhere he currently doesn’t like?

Spend a few minutes thinking about how you can break down what you want your parrot to do into smaller, more manageable behaviors, and set a daily goal of helping your bird conquer each of those steps every day.

30 days from now you’ll bird will be so much better off, you won’t eve recognize him.

Until Next Time…

Happy Training!

Chet

Chet Womach presenting on stage during training seminar

This post may seem a bit odd to you if you weren’t in attendance at our live parrot training event last weekend, where we had nearly 120 VERY excited and willing to learn parrot owners in attendance.

If you were at that event, I just wanted to let you know how much fun my brother Dave and I had with you guys, whether it was over drinks before the event kicked off, or a quick question in between sessions. And if you couldn’t make it, hopefully you can make the next one if we decide to hold one.

Judging by the comments we got from you at the event, as well as the many emails we’ve received from the attendees saying how much they learned and how great a time they had… it looks like the event was a MAJOR success.

But the real reason I’m writing this blog post today is because of something I talked about for a few minutes during our live event that a FEW people wanted me to hold them accountable to.

You see, parrot training advice, no matter how amazing it is, is only effective if it’s actually used consistently. And I challenged people to do something to help create a habit that would help them stick to the training techniques they were learning at the event.

I challenged them to pick a training technique that they learned while at the event and commit to using it at least once a day for 15 minutes. But that’s just the first part…

I then asked them to find an accountability partner that they had to check in with EVERY day, to tell them how the training was working. But the tough part about what I asked these people to do was to pick a $ amount that they would have to write their accountability partner BEFORE the training started. For some it may be $5 and for others it may be $250.

And they were to write that person the check with instructions to immediately run to the bank and cash it if they failed to check in and say that they stuck to their training commitment that day… and to do this for 30 days.

This may sound a bit crazy to you, but the theory behind it is to use whatever motivation possible on yourself to help you commit to a new training habit every day. Because it is a known principle that if you can stick to something every day for 30 days, you can create a new habit.

And since so many people have a problem sticking to habits, I taught them this technique as a way to help them stick to the training habits that will change their parrots lives if implemented regularly.

So I’ve held up my end of the bargain for those who asked me to by creating this blog post. And now it’s up to YOU, the attendees of my seminar who are SERIOUS about creating a new training habit, to use this blog to check in with your accountability partners as you successfully complete each day of training.

Feel free to share your revelations with eachother, myself and the world so that all can be more motivated to create successful training habits.

Cheers!

Chet