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.

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.

As soon as I read this question about how to properly end a training session with your bird I thought it was a GREAT question.

The best thing you can do for yourself and your bird is video tape your training sessions. I don’t care if you are camera shy or training in your pajamas… no one has to see the videos, I’m not asking you to put it up on youtube for the world to bock at… just video tape them for yourself.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen or noticed things I did right or wrong in a session when I go back and watch it over and over again. An outside eye is always a good thing, even if it’s your own!

If your bird is ending the sessions for you, and you don’t see it coming over and over again, you have to watch what you’re doing. Have someone sit in on your training session, maybe they will notice something you didn’t. Your bird is letting you know, there are signs, you are just missing them or not recognizing them as signs.

Watch for change of focus, lack of interest, slow response from your bird… a change in body language, a start of pacing, kind of like when a boyfriend or husband is losing interest in your story you’re telling. You have to notice the bird lose interest. You have to learn to recognize the signals your bird shows you to indicate that it is getting tired or frustrated.

If you are teaching something brand new, end on a success from the bird and if the bird is really struggling, end the session by cueing it something it likes doing that’s easy. For my birds it’s something as simple as the wave. I can end any session on the wave; it’s so easy for the bird to do and it’s an easy treat in their eyes, it’s also a win for them. They did something right and they’re confident doing something they already have mastered.

Remember:

• Keep your training sessions short.
• End on a high note, a win, a positive success that your bird had, not you.
• Keep your mood positive, a bird is like a mirror to your moods and frustrations.
• The point of training is building confidence, that should be your goal.
• Always end the session before your bird can end it for you.
• Video tape your sessions so you can see both you and the bird, I promise it will be like looking at it from a whole new perspective and you will notice and learn something you hadn’t of otherwise.

Yes! We do have a potty training course! Get it here.

We get asked this at least once a day. And pretty much on every video featuring our house. So here’s our secret…

First off, someone in our home is a clean freak… it might be me.

Secret #2: My mom is ALSO a clean freak, and an interior designer. 

She helped us select fabrics for our rugs, bedding and furniture that would easily allow bird poop to come off and out of it. This was especially important to me in our den area where our red chase and love seat are… because of the fabric, we’re able to clean up easily when the birds lose themselves on our furniture.

Secret #3: The least amount of carpet possible.

We tore out all the carpet in our house when we moved in. All our bedrooms upstairs and our master bedroom downstairs originally had carpet in them. We tore it out and put in wood flooring. You can clean up wood much easier than carpet.

The only reason our stairs and upstairs hallway have carpet is because when we went to pull it up, we found the stairs were not build perfectly and will actually have to be rebuilt when they are done in wood because of that. It was too expensive last time we checked so we use the heck out of the carpet instead.

The owners before us had big great dane dogs that used the heck out of the carpets and so the carpet is pretty gross (in our opinion) so we don’t really care if it gets pooped on because we know we will be tearing it up as soon as we can afford to put our house in that kind of construction.

For now, we prefer tile and wood floors!

Secret #4: Paper towel supply. 

We are always stocked on paper towels. A half wet paper towel goes a long way. We also use wet wipes and Clorox wipes to clean up after our birds. They work like charms. You’d never know!

Secret #5: Bringing in the foraging tree.

We have half heartedly taught our birds to poop on their foraging trees so when we bring them inside the house they will mostly fly back to the tree to dump their loads. We usually function on random so much that that rarely happens…

Hence why it is considered half-heartedly trained

Secret #6: Potty training over faucets.

We have reinforced our birds to poop over sink faucets so a lot of the time they find a faucet to go over which is great, because it washes right down!

Secret #7: Knowing your bird’s habits.

We know when our birds are likely to go and where they like to go, and how long before they will go again so we often prepare for it. If we bring them up to the office with us, we perch them between our desks and lay a blank piece of paper under them. Preparation is key!

Secret #8: The cleaning authority.

Yes, we hire the cleaning authority to come and clean our house professionally every week. Ahhh… guaranteed one day of perfection.

So now you all know our secrets. Shhh…

Two years… 730 Days… 17,520 hours… Countless Miles… No matter how you look at it, two years on the road is a long time!  Especially when you travel the country by truck and RV… correction; make that two trucks, and two RV’s, a flock of birds, magic props, motorcycle, and a house cat.  Driving separately from Jamie can be painstaking, but it does give me some time to reflect.  Not only on shows and future plans, but on training, and what I can do to become a better trainer.

Image Copyright Feld Entertainment 2010

I’m one of those people who is constantly in the pursuit of perfection.  Always trying to learn more, and always trying to become a better person and professional.  At many times, it’s to a fault.  These past two years have really given me the chance to realize how important it is to live in the moment.  It has also given me phycological insight on how to get my birds to reach perfection on and off stage.  After all, I’m hired to perform a 1st-class production with professionally trained parrots – and likewise, my birds are expected to be “1st Class Performers” as well. It would be hard to be “the best” if my birds would land in the rafters, or fly out the backdoor and disappear into the Vegas desert, only to be found a week later by strangers.  In my industry, there’s no room for errors.  Sometimes that can translate to a lot of pressure for my birds, after all they didn’t sign the contract, I did.  So I always do my best to reward their every moment.

October 30, 2011 finally arrived, and we performed our last show in Wilkes Barre, PA.  I had performed for five different Ringling Shows over that two year tour, and it was all coming to an end.  Aside from a huge sense of accomplishment, there was a strange calmness that suddenly overwhelmed me backstage shortly after performing Catapoultry with Bondi.  I looked around and realized… 5,000 people in an arena, sold out shows, TV, Radio, Print… it was all coming to an end in 73 minutes from that exact moment.  Surrounded by black curtains and 7-sets of birdie eyes staring at me through the dimly lit backstage, as if they could tell I was finally processing it all; I took each bird out, kissed them on the head, held them for a moment and thanked them out-loud for being there for me for the entire tour. The ups and downs, the tornados and snow storms, 20 degrees to 120 degrees – it didn’t matter, they had achieved perfection in nearly every show, night after night, mile after mile, audience after audience.

Fiji’s Last Show – Photo Mishelle Statford

It was when I picked up Bondi, who had been looking at me concerned the whole time, that a single tear made it’s way past my right eye, and was now slowly passing my lips.   I kissed her on the head, thanked her for giving her all, even on days that she wasn’t feeling well.  It was as if she and I connected more than ever.  She mirrored my mood through every phase of the tour, from being a rock star on stage, to the tender moments offstage that an audience and cameras never see.  When we lost Fiji, she completely shut down with me, as if she was mourning her loss through me.  And on October 30, 2011 she once again  understood my feelings and that this was her last show, and we could both go home and relax until our next journey begins.

Bondi Performing Catapoultry

I learned many things on this tour about life & training.  From the highest highs to the lowest lows, and yet one lesson stands out miles ahead of anything else I could ever possibly write.  A lesson that we should all live by, a lesson that keeps you moving when your down and constantly elevates you while you’re up.

“Always love your birds like it’s the last day you’ll see them, for they provide more to us than could ever be transcribed into any human language.”

I’m so grateful for everything they’ve given me.  Those of you who can truly relate know the exact feeling I’m conjuring when I say these words.  And those of you who are just now paving that path with your birds will soon understand the feelings that are impossible to put onto paper.

Photo by Dave
Location: Waynesboro, VA
Pictured: Camelot macaws “Tusa” & “Comet”, blue throated macaw “Jinx”

I really like wearing jewelry. I wear two rings, my wedding ring and my one year anniversary ring… almost all the time. I have some favorite bracelets, toe rings, my ears are pierced a ton of times, and so on.

Jewelry tends to make us feel done up, or sometimes we have something sacred that we just always want to keep on us. It can be hard when you constantly have a beak looking around for something to break.

This is why I usually wear earrings that pop out fast and won’t take my ear along with them if they get pulled on. Rings on my ears that barely click into place and when pulled on pop right out. That’s a safety thing for me so I can keep them in all the time. The birds never expect it to pop out so fast and always end up dropping them so I’ve been through a lot of those. Necklaces can be hard to wear around birds even moreso because a bird on your shoulder can grab it from anywhere on the back of your neck. And if it dangles down, any bird on an arm can walk in and reach for it.

You can either wear bird proof jewelry, get lucky and have a bird that isn’t interested in the things you wear, carry around toys to occupy your bird and treats to trade your bird for when he DOES get ahold of that something special… or train your bird to “drop it” but sometimes it’s too late with just the mere grab of a bird’s beak.

Training the “drop it” is much like training the “retrieve” which is taught in the Taming, Training and Tricks courses. Only you need to start with items you bird isn’t crazy about and slowly work your way up to things your bird is crazy about to be able to test how effective your training really is.