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.

My three macaws were bickering a lot in their aviary they sometimes share outside and they had just spent 10 days apart in their own private aviaries so I thought they could use some quality time with me, some flight time to get excess energy out and a larger space to socialize together.

My camelot macaw Tusa immediately put himself alone in the den and stayed there the entire time, letting everyone know he wanted his space. So there he stayed.

Comet and Jinx, my two other macaws, however, were more interested in hanging out with me but were showing a bit of nippyness and lashing out aggression at one another and me. So I decided to bring out the clicker, the treats and a bowl with some coins in it. I also brought in my rose breasted cockatoo, Bondi, who already knows the retrieve from our Taming Training and Tricks series.

Up to this point of bringing Bondi into the scenario – Jinx and Comet understood they were supposed to “drop” the coins but that was it. As Jinx was stuck at figuring out the next step, Bondi began retrieving coin after coin into the bowl and happily receiving a treat for her perfect efforts. Jinx got so fed up with her earning all the clicks and treats that he would run her off every now and then.

However, the cool part was that at first he watched her and tried to copy her. He got REALLY close, and grabbed a coin off the ground and tried to put it in the bowl and missed. But that was just off WATCHING Bondi do it. I thought it was purely amazing. But then there was a point where he got unfocused and frustrated with Bondi being there because it didn’t give him much of a chance to succeed on his own with her stealing all the glory.

As you can see, Comet gave up early and decided just to take the best seat in the house and watch the action instead!