Training Two Parrots at the Same Time

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Photo by Dave
Location: Waynesboro, VA
Shown: Blue throated macaws “Jinx” & “Bonnie”

On our facebook this month someone posted about trying to train their two birds that share a cage. One is more dominant and aggressive over the other, even though they’re both males. The birds like each other, but when it comes around to training time one tends to beat up the other and demand a treat for throwing a fit instead of training. One does everything right and earns the reward, the other throws a tizzy fit until it gets the treat too.

 

Is this type of environment benefiting anyone?

 

I mean, really? I feel awful for the bird who is actually interested training and earning the reward but how frustrating it must be for him to see his buddy get rewarded for bad behavior of beating him up, yelling, biting and just all around fit-throwing to get a reward for himself as well.

 

Think about this, really think about this.

 

If you had two kids and they both wanted ice cream and you said, “If you do the dishes you can have ice cream.” so one does the dishes and you give it ice cream while the other throws himself on the ground kicking and screaming, trying to pull away the other kid’s ice cream until you then decide to give him an ice cream too thinking he’s right – this just isn’t fair – so they both get ice cream. Is anyone benefitting from this situation? Who is training who I’d like to know?

 

The ONLY times I have trained more than one bird at a time have been:

 

1. When I can use observational learning to teach the second bird (ie: touch training, flight training – both of which were done OUTSIDE a cage with fully flighted birds)
2. To demonstrate how it is distracting and frustrating to trainer and trainee in a video.

 

In a situation like this, these birds have to be worked with one on one in their training environments. You need to be focused on what you’re asking of the bird, and the bird needs to be focused on the training session otherwise it’s a waste of time.

 

The last thing you want to do is provoke two birds to fight, or one bird to pick on another.

 

In our house we designate an entire room to training and will take one bird up there at a time to work with it so it’s far away from distraction. This needs to be highly considered. If your current environment for training isn’t working – change it!