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.

If you happen to live in Florida pay CLOSE Attention!

I wanted to let you know that my brother and I have decided that we’d like to do a better job of getting out to meet some of our customers face to face, and doing some more hands on training with people in their own homes to help them solve their bird’s problems. So we’ve decided to open up our schedules to 3 Florida residing bird owners who would love some one on one, in home parrot training help from my brother and I.

Would you like to be one of just 3 lucky people to receive live, one on one training from us on the best way to overcome your bird’s problems… for free… where you can learn some of our newest training techniques first hand?

If that interests you, here’s how to be one of the lucky three we select to coach personally… Don’t worry, it’s a simple process.

Step #1 - Leave a comment on our blog about why we should select you as one of the lucky people to receive our personal coaching for free.

Tell us about your bird’s history, problems it has, and what you’ve tried to solve them in the past. Try to keep it short (5 paragraphs max) and please be specific ie. species of bird, exact problems you want fixed etc. If we have more questions, we’ll call you personally to get the nitty gritty details.

Step #2 - Put your contact information in your blog comment (We won’t publish your blog comment, so nobody but me will see your information… I PROMISE!)

Make sure to give you full name, home address and a good contact phone number so we can get a hold of you to let you know if you are one of the lucky winners!

I’m looking forward to meeting some of you face to face

Chet

P.S. I need you to make sure and reply to this blog comment before midnight this Friday. All applicants who apply after Friday will not qualify for this VERY special, never before offered service.

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

I’ve finally gotten around to adding a new content section to our website on Lovebirds. These little guys pack a lot of punch and I’m excited to announce that we’ll be releasing and update the new Lovebird Section of our website over the next several weeks. If you’re a Lovebird owner, or thinking about becoming one, you might want to swing by and check it out.

I’m only half kidding

My Brother has been focusing really hard for the last few weeks on learning how to ‘outdoor free flight’ parrots. Outdoor free flying parrots is something neither of us has tried before and we wanted to take our training to that next level… beyond just fixing behavior problems.

So we’ve put together what I think is one of the most entertaining web pages we’ve put together in a long time that documents the training process we went through with Cressi, our Congo African Grey (Dave’s Congo African Grey)… and my brother’s first attempts at free flying parrots outside.

Click here to let us share our experience with you!

Enjoy!

Chet Womach

Oh… and one more thing. I happen to think the page you are about to see is one of the most intriguing pages anyone’s put up on the internet about parrots in a long time. I honestly believe what my brother has trained his bird to do is one of the most beneficial things you can do for a bird’s mental and physical health.

So if you happen to own a animal website that could help promote the awareness of this type of training, even with a small link, it would be greatly appreciated.