It’s amazing how much momentum you loose when you take a week of of training an African Grey rescue like Bean.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a choice, as my travels took me to sunny southern California for business… oh well. So after spending a week and a half building up my Grey’s confidence to be strong enough to target over my hand, and up the side of his cage… I spent the last few days since i got back from California just getting him back to where he was when I left.

I have been trying very hard to get bean to target onto my hand… but his phobias are keeping him from being willing to do so… even after 3 days.

I’ve got him to put weight on my hand with one foot, and that was a fun experience. It involved really trying to make the training fun for him. He goes into an ‘OVER EXITED’ mode where his phobias seem to vanish after several minutes of training. He looses focus during this time, but he soaks up the attention as well. Figuring out how to make these happen more often might be key for him.

I’m also noticing that I have to watch my temperament and not push for too much progress in each training session — an African Grey can burn out on training if it’s too much work, and not enough play.

Which brings me to another problem I’m running into…

I can get Bean, with a 95% success rate to reach far across my hand to target an object. (this is HUGE since he’s afraid of the hand) But it’s causing problems as he’d really rather reach than step up onto the hand. So I’m thinking about retraining a targeting behavior, but this time train it to Bean’s foot, so he’s trained to target objects by touching them with his foot. This will require a separate object for him to target so as not to confuse him, but might be much more helpful in getting him to overcome his fear of the hand.

I plan on starting some training today where I get him to touch objects with his foot… but it might take a few days, or up to a week to train, depending on how scared of the object he is… and will probably have to resort to finding the least possible scary object to target — maybe even stickers placed on his perches, as wooden dowels seem to scare him right now, and he’s not willing to step up onto them.

Training this type of behavior is sort of an incompatible replacement behavior as it makes it impossible for him to resort to reaching for an object, because we take his beak OUT of the situation.

If that doesn’t work than I’m going to have to resort to possibly teaching some natural behaviors on cue, like wing flapping, or head bobbing etc. This often gets birds to start to enjoy training a LOT more, and can lead to easier progress when behavior training is resumed.

That’s the update for now.

Cheers!

Chet Womach

As promised, here’s a quick update on how my CAG’s training went today.

African greys sure do develop phobias for things more than other birds I work with, but even so, today I was able to get Bean to consistently take two steps off of his perch, and up the side of his cage to touch a target stick.

He’s still nervous if I try to feed him his treat while he’s on the side of the cage, so I have to let him back down to reward him, which makes the rate of reinforcement hard to work to my advantage, as every rep takes longer than I would like it to, when he has to climb all the way down to get his treat… it’s a big delay, and it’s hurting the speed of his progress.

But none the less… it was a BIG improvement over his earlier training session today where he didn’t want to put both feet on the cage at the same time and climb towards that scary evil person holding the club (aka ME).

I noticed that I’m running into an issue of him not wanting to climb to target because of a fear of things in his cage… mostly a large swing that’s getting in the way of his targeting. I’ll probably take that out of his cage tomorrow.

He trained for a good half hour without showing any signs of fatigue which I thought was pretty good for his first week of training.

And it was going so well that I was even able to add a second target training drill at the end of the session where I got bean to touch a target stick as it was positioned over my hand… trying to desensitize him to the fear of my hands and finally get him to step up.

I have my fingers crossed that by tomorrow, he’ll willing put his foot on my hand. I doubt I’ll be able to pick him up, or have him be comfortable with being picked up, but I think he’ll at least get to the point where one of his toes will unknowingly be set on top of my hand.

I’ll keep you posted!

Chet

Got another quick update for you on my Congo African Grey, Bean.

I’m really enjoying the challenge of rehabbing this guy. He presents interesting problems that you just don’t get to face when dealing with a bird that hasn’t been abused before.

I have now got bean to ‘target’ all the way across his cage. Meaning he could be on his perch at the far end of the cage, and be willing to traverse the entire percht, which is probably 4-5 feet long, to come touch the target stick.

African Greys are pretty phobic creatures, so after I had him master the targeting while on a perch, I needed to find a way to stretch his comfort zone. So I started training him to climb the side of his cage to touch the target stick. That part of the training has been much slower.

Something about the side of the cage causes a fear in Bean. He acts like a totally different bird when on the cage. So overcoming his fears would be a huge step towards rebuilding his self esteem.

But so far the efforts have been slow, but I have got him to the point where he’ll put one foot up on the side of his cage and reach as far as he can to touch the target stick. But have only twice gotten him to put his other foot up there.

For example, he will touch the stick with 98% reliability if it’s only 8 inches up the side of the cage (which is as high as he can reach with one foot on the side of cage)… but if I move the stick up to 9 inches he rarely does it.

This is most likely a frequency of reward issue that I need to fix at a lower height. So today I’m going to try to see how many repetitions we can do at 8 inches of height to get that into a rhythmic state that’s 3-5 times faster than he’s currently going. I want him touching the stick and eating his treat SUPER fast.

I’ve had success using this type of training technique in the past while trick training (thus the reason why I preach so heavily that you need to trick train… It provides TONS of insight you can’t get otherwise).

It basically gets the bird to do the repetition and eat the treat so fast that he doesn’t even think about what he has to do anymore, he just goes ahead and repeats the behavior.

It’s like building up momentum before you get ready to raise the criteria.

You do 20 repetitions at super fast speed at a lower easier level, get your bird to the point that he’s doing the behavior on auto pilot, and then raise the criteria on him slightly.

I’m hoping this will help him be more successful in getting him to reach up to the 9 inch level today. I’ll keep you posted

If increasing the rate of reinforcement does NOT work, and my Grey still has trouble reaching up to 9 inches today, I will probably try a different, less scary behavior for him and build up his confidence that way… possibly by walking over objects as he targets (like a wooden dowel).

I’ll post again later tonight to let you know how it goes… and hopefully have some more pics for you.

Chet

P.S. On a side note, Bean’s feather destruction habit has drastically reduced, and I don’t think he’s chewed off a feather in 2 days now!

And at the end of last nights training session he also went into a funny state of mind and willingly let me touch his belly and pet him… can’t be upset about that

Well I promised you I’d keep you posted on how the training of my abused African Grey Bean was going. So here’s the first update on his progress…

We had Bean in a smaller cage in a room away from the rest of our flock… and so on Monday we ended Bean’s quarantine and put him into a new large CagesByDesign cage where he has more room. The cage has full spectrum lighting installed onto the cage, and I’m hoping that will help his feather plucking.

For the first 24 hours Bean ate ZERO food, and I was actually worried about running into starvation problems if he didn’t start eating… even though he had full food bowls in his cage the whole time.

On the morning of day 2, he still had not eaten, so I made sure to put some of his favorite fruits in his cage to try and bribe him into eating. Note that I did zero training during this stage as it’s next to worthless to try and train a bird who isn’t even comfortable siting in his own cage by himself.

At this point Bean had not even moved one inch from the spot that he was originally in when I put him into the cage. He just sat at the bottom of his cage quivering, and chewing his feathers off

On day 3 I noticed Bean had mustered up enough courage to come up off the bottom of his cage and sit on a perch near his food bowls, and even started eating out of his food dishes.

Day four and five consisted of nothing but making sure our little Grey continued to eat more… which he did.

It’s common for African Greys to be overweight, and his vet check during his quarantine verified that indeed he was overweight, so I wasn’t too concerned that he’d not eaten during his first day in his new cage… but I did keep a close eye on him after that first day, as all birds need food after a day.

Once he’d gone two days in his new cage of eating his full regular amount of daily food, overcame his fear of his cage, and of his new perches, food bowls and surroundings, I was then ready to start his training.

First Day of Training Bean:

During the first day we needed to ‘clicker condition’ Bean.

Since bean is totally phobic, and has no concept of how to step up, or enjoy being pet (except a quick scratch or two on his head by females only) my goal was to first target train him so that I could get him to move in and out of his cage, and eventually use target training to target him onto my hand so I could train him to step up in a way that wouldn’t scare him.

The results after the first day…

Bean received several rewards of a sunflower seed after hearing the ‘click’ of the clicker… thus training him that every time he hears a ‘click’ he gets rewarded with a treat. At first Bean wouldn’t take a treat from my hand after hearing a ‘click’ so I adjusted my strategy to only train him after a training diet had been implemented. His slightly elevated hunger was enough to overcome his fear of taking treats from my hand, and got him to take up to 15 treats from my hand in a session.

After 15 repetitions I presented a target training stick to the bird, and started ‘clicking’ for him touching it. You can learn more about this process in our parrot training course.

Bean was curious enough about the stick when I presented it to him that he touched it simply out of curiosity. I of course ‘clicked’ him for the behavior to mark the event and let him know he’d just done something to earn a treat. He quickly caught on that touching the stick earned him treats.

We didn’t want the session to go too long and stress him out so we let the session go about 7 minutes, and then left Bean alone, and gave him a mix of cooked beans and veggies which he REALLY enjoys to let him know that good training sessions always end with really yummy treats.

Afterall, we want him to look forward to the training.

Tomorrow I will take his targeting a step further and try to get him to start to chase the target stick around his cage, maybe even do some climbing up the cage bards, or negotiating around scary toys to help build his confidence.

I’ll be in touch with how it goes soon!

Chet

P.S. I’m sorry I don’t have any footage for you yet… and I hate to admit this… but I fell down the stairs and sprained my hip a few weeks ago. Heck, I didn’t even know a person could sprain their hip So it pretty much hurts like hell to sit at the computer and edit video footage for you to see online.

But rest assured that I did shoot the training footage, and will put it up online for you guys after I can actually sit down for a long enough period of time to work on it.

Thought I’d let you guys see some pics of the newest edition to my flock. He’s an 11 year old, abused, feather plucking Congo African Grey parrot named ‘Bean’.

Notice how he picks his upper chest feathers, and chews his lower chest feathers in half. He’s not the worst feather plucking parrot in the world, but I decided to adopt him specifically so you could watch me rehabilitate him here on this blog… with free tip filled videos.

So don’t expect Bean to look this plucked for long… today was his first day of training, and it won’t be long before I have him in top top shape, and hopefully fully feathered again.

He’s super fearful of people, and refuses to step up for ANYONE as of right now.

Make sure you subscribe to the rss feed on this blog, or check back often so you can see his progress as I train him live.

I’ll post again in a few days when I have some more progress on how his training has progressed.

Chet

Notice the mangled feather destruction and plucking