3 Course Meal Training Diet

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I think many people misunderstand the term training diet and hurt their training success as a result of this. While Chet’s method of figure out how much your bird eats, weigh it, reduce by ten percent, etc method is probably the best way of doing it, I want to explain the next best thing which is very easy to apply and anyone who wants to train their bird can begin applying right away.

The fact is, you have to train your bird when it is hungry. You should feed your bird it’s main food twice a day and take it away in between. Ideally it should be pellets but even if you are still feeding seed (working on transitioning to pellet of course) the same method still applies. If you are feeding seed, you will have to figure out the bird’s favorite seeds and pick every single one of that kind out by hand and save them exclusively as treats.

The way it works with my bird is that she does not get one morsel of food unless it’s a reward for doing something right. This may seem brutal but since this is the way I have always been doing it, she doesn’t know otherwise. And it makes for a well behaved and well trained parrot.

The way I do it is uncover my bird’s cage at 10AM. I usually don’t train her until 12PM because it takes her a little time after waking up get hungry. I train her for about 10 minutes using miscellaneous nuts and seeds as treats. Think of this as an appetizer. After training I prepare fresh vegetables and carry the bird in one hand and food dish in the other hand over to the cage. This gets her excited about the main course yet to be served.  When I return the bird to the cage  she is still hungry for food because she underate during training. I put her on the outside area of her cage and let her watch as I am putting the food inside the cage so that she voluntarily climbs into her cage. In this way I am using food as a reward for going back in the cage without causing any fuss. Returning to the cage is always a positive experience because there is food waiting (obviously not every time, but this is like random rewarding where she has to wonder which times she will get cage food). Normally I serve a side of pellets with the garden salad. I leave the food in for about an hour and then proceed to remove the dishes.

Midday I might allow my bird to play with foraging toys on the climbing tree and earn some bonus treats for dessert. I still see this as a forming of training and reward where the bird is being trained how to keep busy on her own and rewarding herself. If I am eating something that I want to give my bird to eat, I will always ask her to perform a trick before giving her a piece of bread, pasta, apple, etc. Even though this is food that I am gladly sharing with my bird, I will have her do a nominal trick or two to earn it. While this is not a formal training session and I am not as critical, I will still make her know that she has to do something to get what she wants. This is a very effective way to get my bird to practice a trick because she is really excited for the out of the ordinary food she smells and really wants. Usually she will perform any trick I ask flawlessly for these kinds of rewards. Dinner is a repeat of the morning procedure at 9:30 training, 9:45 cage food, 10PM cover cage to sleep.

Don’t make the mistake of giving your bird a free lunch. There’s no free lunch in the wild and neither should there be in your house hold. Make your bird have to earn all of its food and it will quickly catch on to the whole trick training routine. You will have a better and more enjoyable relationship with your bird from it.

Kili earned a carrot for doing tricks.