Cockatiel

There are so many aspects to the training experience for both the trainer and the parrot. It’s about bond building and mutual trust. It’s wonderful enrichment for a caged bird. It’s about cooperation. Mostly, though, it’s about communication. It provides a common language through which a human and a parrot can begin to converse and understand one another. It is exciting and deeply rewarding for everyone.

That I would suggest that someone NOT train their bird is troubling to me, especially when it is such a positive thing. But there are circumstances when the time is not right – more troubling is the idea of someone failing so miserably at training that they will hesitate to ever pick up the target training stick again, or that a bird would be so put off by the experience that is unreceptive to the experience in future attempts. When all the proper elements are in place, it is difficult to fail.

Sulphur crested cockatoo

The following are four scenarios that will tell you that you are not in the right place to consider training. Instead of attempting a start knowing that there are hurdles blocking your path to success, place your efforts today on correcting those problems for when you DO begin:

YOUR BIRD IS ON A SEEDED DIET: The reward your bird receives for performing a requested task is crucial to successful training. Most birds are motivated by a food reward. The bird performs to your approval, you click, and it receives a favorite treat.
It just so happens that seed is a preferred food for most birds. If your bird receives seed regularly and that is its expectaion, the motivation to “earn” treats is greatly diminished and the training process falls apart. Please read this article on how to convert from a seeded diet.

YOUR BIRD IS NOT IN GOOD HEALTH: This is particularly true of birds on a seeded diet. They often suffer from serious vitamin deficiencies without their owner’s awareness that can affect their general mood and willingness to train. Birds with known illnesses might be difficult to train as they are sometimes unable to complete tasks because of ill health.

Additionally, a bird whose mood is altered by surges of seasonal hormones is not a good candidate for training. They can be temperamental and aggressive during this time and it serves everyone to wait until the breeding season passes.
The plan is to always set your bird up for success and an ill or moody bird might not succeed. It would be a frustrating experince for you both.

NOTE: This does not apply to birds that are handicapped but are in otherwise good health. You would simply tailor your training expectations so that they don’t exceed physical limitations.

YOU ARE UNWILLING TO USE FOOD MANAGEMENT: As stated above, birds are food motivated. Food management is simply an adaptation of your feeding schedule that ensures your bird is hungry enough to to be willing to work for food during a training session. When done properly, hunger is not excessive (overly hungry birds do not train well) and there is the perfect window of opportunity for you to train your bird and for your bird to get a full tummy. Win/win.

YOU ARE NOT MOTIVATED OR IN THE RIGHT FRAME OF MIND: Sometimes we are our own biggest obstacle in training. There are times when we are not at our best, perhaps grouchy and impatient. Our birds are highly receptive to our emotions and will surely recognize that you are feeling aggitated or pressed for time. Their reaction to this will be skittishness and it will interfere with their ability to focus on the task at hand.

If you are in the midst of a stressful time in your life and are unable to decompress before a training session, it is better not to train at all. (That said, some people find that disconnecting from life and concentrating on their bird is the ideal release from daily pressures.)

Rosebreasted cockatoo

Each of these scenarios have one thing in common: they all lead to potential failure in training. I have included links in each section to offer further explanation and guidance on how to move past these road blocks. Please take the time to read them so that you can begin training with all the tools you need to succeed.

Military macaw

When my daughter was young, it was a seldom that she was allowed to eat candy, chips, cake or ice cream. These were rare treats that were reserved for holidays, birthdays or other special occasions. In fact, it wasn’t until she entered grade school that she even realized that this was not the norm in other households. When she was in school, and away from my direct supervision, she started to be influenced by the other children in her class.

I knew, of course, that I couldn’t shelter her forever, but it was always a source of frustration to me. Until that time, fruit was a snack to her and she was satisfied with that. She would come home from school and ask for an apple. I was very proud of that – it wasn’t easy to keep a child eating well in a world overflowing with Big Macs and Twinkies. She was blissfully unaware, for a while.

Congo African grey

Snacks are a part of any child’s life and they should be part of your bird’s life. They are that extra bonus that makes life feel good. But the word snack is a relative term in today’s world. Where one person looks forward to carrot sticks, another will accept nothing less than a Snicker’s bar. It depends on a person’s upbringing.

This holds especially true for our parrots. Wild parrots know nothing of candy. They don’t know about Fritos or cookies. They don’t hold out for butter on their daily veggies. Unfortunately, many companion parrots have been made familiar with all of these things and for the majority of those, the more nutritious choices become unacceptible. Foods without sugar, salt or butter no longer satisfy. Once your bird has developed a taste for junk food, it is a slow road back to a healthy diet.

The very best way to avoid the development of bad snacking habits is to never let your bird try human snack foods in the first place. Be more conscientious with your choices and remember that parrots do not need to experience the tastes that we humans so relish.

If you have a bird that is already stuck on human snack foods, try offering more healthy versions of the foods as an alternative:

• Plain popcorn (preferably made in an air popper) with no butter or salt is a healthy parrot snack.
• Homemade oven baked potato slices or wedges can be replacements for chips or fries. (You can also use sweet potatoes.)
• Oven baked corn tortilla strips will appease the corn chip munchies.

Some other snacks that are okay to offer daily:

• Whole grain cereal pieces
• Nutriberries
• Veggie chips. Baked NOT deep fried and, of course, no salt!  These are easy to make yourself.
• Birdie Breads. You get a lot of bang for your buck with birdie breads or muffins because you can load it up with healthy foods and your bird will still regard it as a treat.

Occasional snacks:

• Dried fruits or banana chips. (These are healthy, but the sugar content is concentrated during dehydration.)
• Millet. Millet is a very healthy grain and something that all birds should have access to either cooked or on the stalks, but it contains fats and feeding should be moderated.
• Nuts. For some species of birds, nuts are a dietary requirement. But for most, they are a snack food. They are a great source of protein and EFAs, but they are high in fat and should be offered in moderation.

I learned from raising my daughter that if you don’t introduce foods that are unhealthy, they will not be missed.

Being a magician, it’s kind of a must to have a dove and such is with us. Dave creates many bird related products for magicians and doves are the most affordable for people across the board to use in their shows and they are very easy to return flight train as well. You’ll see them in many magic shows appearing from nowhere and being thrown towards the audience only to circle back to the magician and land on a designated prop or back on his hand.

We acquired a single dove whom we called Mr. Dove until our facebook fans renamed him Ari, from a local magician. As we brought him home for his quarantine in the garage, away from the other birds, for the 30 days, we realized pretty fast he had what we thought and assumed were mites – which turned out to be feather lice (we’ve not had much experience with either). Thank goodness we abided by the quarantine period so that the lice didn’t spread to the other birds.

Shown: Feather lice on the inside of the wing of the dove

In order to get rid of the lice we grabbed a mite/lice spray from PetSmart and did 3 different ‘doses’ of it on Ari. Dave would hold him and spread one wing out at a time and I would spray wherever I saw the mites on his wing and tail. We made sure to spray more towards the wing bone where the feathers are small and cover the bone because often times lice nest in there and hide. Although a lot of the time when you first open the wing up they are obviously visible on the feathers.

After doing this on 3 different days/occasions, the lice were gone. The spray was probably $9 and we made sure it keep it away from his head/eyes/etc. We did spray his neck just barely a bit to be sure no lice had made their way up there, as well.

For the difference of mites vs lice check out this image.

Have you ever dealt with mites or lice on your bird(s)? Did you find a better way to treat it? Leave your advice in a comment and if your bird shows signs you can always rule on the side of caution and take your bird to your certified avian vet.

PS… writing “mites” and “lice” is hard without writing “mice” and “live”. So if you see those anywhere from me, just translate them appropriately I tried to find them!

Hyacinth macaw

If I’m going to be honest, I have to admit that I used to have a real problem with the idea of a training diet. It seemed unthinkable that a bird, virtually a wild animal in terms of its lack of domestication, should be locked in a cage and then denied food, something it would be free to acquire in the wild. It is psychologically damaging for any sentient being to be kept at another’s mercy, how could this ever be considered a good thing?

Training bridges a gap, fills in the blanks in the relationship between a human and a parrot. Where there was an inability to communicate, there is now established a “language” that both could understand and build a relationship around. Instead of looking at each other like aliens, you and your bird are comrades, teammates. It changes everything.

Blue and Gold Macaw

Of course, I wanted this for me and my bird, but I didn’t want to have to starve him to get there. I was afraid that while I was laying the groundwork for communication, that I would be violating the very basic understanding and trust that I would care for him and see to his needs. One step forward and two steps back – it didn’t seem worth it.

It took me a while to come around to the notion that food management did not equal suffering, but I had to let go of some of my “old” thinking to reach that conclusion.

Budgie

My first hint came when I began studying the habits of wild birds – looking at the ways they spent their time and realizing the difficulties they face everyday. Life in the wild isn’t easy. There are times when food sources are not abundant and birds may go to roost at night having had barely enough food to get by.

With the best intentions at heart, we have the tendency to feel that we owe our birds the ultimate in comfort in our homes. There are likely many different reasons for that thinking, but this is not necessarily what is best for our birds. It is unnatural for birds NOT to work for their food, which never, ever appears to them in the wild by way of a hand out.

When done properly, food management will teach your bird to see his empty food dish as an opportunity to train – something he will anticipate as the bonding and learning experience it is, but also as a way to earn his food.

Congo african grey

Trainers will refer to “motivation” in the training diet. This speaks to the level of hunger your bird is experiencing. A properly motivated bird is hungry enough to want to train and be eager to go through the steps. A bird that is too hungry will be uncoopereative and unwilling to “earn” food. Letting your bird get to that point is not only unproductive from a training standpoint, but it will damage your relationship with your bird.

If you are doing it right, your bird should never even be aware that you are managing his food. Using measurement, and through trial and error, you can get a fairly accurate idea of how much your bird eats and limit his portions to only that amount.

You never want to take your bird’s food away, instead, you want it to run out. There is different psychology involved between the two actions. When you remove a dish from your bird’s cage containing food, you might be presumed to be the cause of your bird’s hunger. If the food runs out, there is simply no food, just an empty bowl. Once you begin training, your bird will see the empty bowl as an opportunity, as I said before.

Blue throated macaw

Another advantage, two actually, in using a training diet and feeding your bird at a later time in the day is that: 1) your bird loses his expectation for timely feeding, something else that rarely happens in the wild. He will no longer call out demanding to be fed when he sees the first rays of dawn or at another time of his choosing, and 2) if you feed him just before he normally starts his sundown calls, it can eliminate a potentially loud and unnerving part of the day for your neighborhood.

I promise you that your bird will not starve to death if you don’t place a bowl of food in the cage at the crack of dawn, or even at the crack of noon. After observing how food management lends itself to the training experience, I now know that it does not cause hardship, but helps to set the stage for success in what is one of the most rewarding parts of your bird’s life.

female eclectus

I try to cover this topic at least twice a year because it’s so important. I never have to look hard to find an event to inspire one of these posts.

I needed some supplies the other day and went to the local bird store where they have a few parrots for sale, among them a female eclectus and a cherry headed conure. Both of the birds had been in the store for several months awaiting purchase. They were, by this time, well adjusted to strangers gathering by their cages for a closer look, and sometimes little fingers would poke through the bars. They always handled the intrusions without a fuss.
This day, there were two women admiring the birds. One was a young woman, probably in her early 20′s looking at the conure. She was set back about three feet from the cage, kneeling. The other woman was older, perhaps in her 40′s, and had a toddler in a stroller with her. She had her hands resting on the cage bars as she spoke boisterously to the eclectus.

photo of cherry headed conure by sfcitizen.com/blog

I stood back and observed the two women interacting with the parrots, and watched each parrot’s response. I remember feeling very impressed with the young woman. She had positioned herself so that she and the bird had level eye contact and she stayed at a non-threatening and respectful distance.

It seemed that she was intuitively aware the the dynamic between herself, a much larger predatory animal, and the bird, a small, caged prey animal. She spoke quietly, but engagingly, to the bird, who was clearly taken with her. It moved to the side of the cage closest to her and turned its head to the side to get a better look. The bird’s body language said comfort.

camelot macaw

The older woman, the one with the apparent child rearing experience, was far less impressive. She was forceful and discourteous. She made no attempt to connect with the bird and it sat tensely at the point furthest from her in its cage.

She talked with the man accompanying her about how important it is for a child to have the responsibility of a pet and that this one would be a perfect choice. I hoped that the child she referred to wasn’t the toddler. When the man protested about owning a bird, she reminded him that “birds live in cages. What could be easier than that?” He didn’t disagree.
I was suddenly nervous for the future of this bird and felt inclined to say something, so I joked that birds no more “live” in cages than people do in bedrooms. I mentioned their need for out of cage time and human interaction and exaggerated the behavioral issues that result from inadequate care as best I could.
She smiled at me politely and then excitedly turned to the man and anounced that the red on the ecletus was a perfect match for the drapes – now they HAD to get it. I think that’s when the gloves came off for me. Imagine the deciding factor being compatibility with the home decor! At that time, I MIGHT have made up a horrible story about someone’s extensive plastic surgery nightmare following the bite of an angry parrot. I’m not admitting to anything, but if I DID fabricate that story, I’m not at all ashamed.

female eclectus

I am pleased to announce that they left empty handed! That lady, who I don’t fault for her ignorance about parrots, is not someone who should own one, at least not at this point in her life. Her energy level and body language were stressful to the bird, and she never even noticed. She was clueless about the needs of a parrot. She was ready to make an impulse purchase that might have had horrible consequences for this very sweet bird.

By contrast, the younger, much wiser, woman looking at the conure would have made an ideal home for a parrot. She was, by nature, exactly what a bird needs in a human: she was thoughtful, and deliberate and had clearly taken the time to check out parrot ownership. I had a chance to talk with her for a moment. Her reason for not getting the conure was the best one there is: she wasnt ready for the commitment.

Blue and gold macaw

We are parrot owners. And we are GOOD ones, I will venture to say, since I am taking the time to write this and you are caring enough to read it. We love our birds, and, in fact, everyone else’s too. It’s who we are.

But, we have a responsibility. While we are singing the praises of our beloved companions, we must be certain to avoid “selling” parrot ownership to the wrong people. Parrots do not make good pets for all people. Whenever we are faced with the opportunity, we must let prospective new owners know the real truths: while parrots are beautiful, intelligent and fun – they are also loud, messy and destructive. Their basic care is costly and very time consuming.
If you are able to get across only a single idea, let it be that, aside from providing the aspects of care that are necessary to maintain life, failure to provide the care necessary to promote good mental health can result in emotional issues ranging from biting and screaming to feather destruction and self mutilation. Hopefully that will give some people pause.

Mitred conure

Try to remember that every time you let someone walk away with the notion that a bird makes the perfect pet, that person might just go out and get one. If you don’t inspire caution, some pet store parrot could begin a life of constant rehoming as one owner after another fails.

With the right education, even the lady who wanted a bird to match her drapes might be taught to be a good owner, but first we have to guide her. Let’s make that our mission in 2012. Let’s help birds by helping people understand their needs – or understand that they are unable to provide them.

photo by theheadnut.com

Peanuts are not, in fact, a nut. They are a legume – in the same family as beans and peas. They are seeds, enclosed in pods, that grow underground.

Peanuts are a great source of protein and because the protein is plant based, they don’t contain cholesterol and are low in saturated fats. They are an antioxidant.
They are popular in cooking in many parts of the world, especially China, where they are used much in the same ways as nuts traditionaly are. It’s no wonder that nut loving parrots also love peanuts.
Unfortunately, peanuts have a dark side. About 2% of the US (human) population have an allergic reaction to peanuts ranging from mild (hives) to severe (anaphylactic shock). There are reports of parrots suffering from peanut allergies as well, although this and other allergies in general are a rare occurance in parrots.

photo by bhg.com

A more relevant concern is something called an aflatoxin. Simply put, an aflatoxin is a naturally occuring carcengenic toxin produced by a species of mold. Its preferred habitat is soil and decaying grains and vegetation. That means it is often present where crops grow. It thrives in moist and warm conditions and often contaminates feed and storage bins.
Aflatoxins are most commonly a problem in seed and other feed for animals, nuts, wheat, and concerningly, corn which is a staple food in almost all cultures. Peanuts, which grow in soil and have very porous outer shells are perfect recepticles for the molds which produce aflatoxins. Unfortunately, parrots are great recepticles for peanuts and many cherish them as treats.
In the US, the FDA tests each truckload of peanuts for aflatoxins in order to keep the risks to a minimum. Each load must not exceed the recommended safe level. Animals have a more severe reaction to aflatoxins than do humans and your bird’s susceptibility depends largely on its age, diet and overall health.

photo by howstuffworks.com

Should you buy peanuts for yourself or your parrots, buy them roasted in the shell because the roasting processes reduces aflatoxins by 70%. Peanut butters also contain traces but falls within acceptible levels according to the FDA. It is one of the rare cases where I will recommend to you that you purchase the MORE processed version of the food. The more processed the peanut butter, the lower it tests for aflatoxins.

It is an individual’s choice as to whether or not you allow your birds to have peanuts. Many people fear the possibilities and many feel the risk is worth taking because their parrots so enjoy them. Your parrot, your rules. However, now you can make an educated choice.