Training Your Bird to “Drop it”

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Photo by Dave
Location: Orlando, FL
Pictured: African Grey “Cressi”

 

Betcha Haven’t Trained Your Bird THIS! 

 

Not only dogs and elephants get trained the “drop it” command. How would you like to be able to cue your bird to “drop it” and actually have it listen – and drop whatever is in its mouth at that time? I think this command is AMAZING and every bird companion person should train it for safety purposes alone!

 

If your bird gets ahold of something it shouldn’t have, or that is toxic or dangerous, you need a way to be able to get your bird to drop it immediately without causing harm to your bird. I can’t count how many times I’ve tried ripping chapstick from the death grip of what is my African Grey’s feet! Cressi just loves the stuff, and I do too, but I actually like to use it on my lips and not destroy the entire thing piece by piece until it’s unusable. Know what I mean?

 

So!

 

How does one go about training their bird to “drop it” (it being any object) on cue?

 

So glad you asked…

 

First, YOU, as a trainer, need to understand training. Even if it’s just a little bit. Know what the heck a clicker is and how to use it, know about timing and capturing behaviors and know your bird’s favorite treats and when to train. If you don’t know any of that stuff… hop on over to this parrot store and get the basic trick training course (learn the retrieve). Once you’ve got a feel of that course you will be well on your way to training anything you can possibly think of! But you gotta understand that stuff to understand the rest of this post.

 

Moving on…

 

If your bird has been trained before, touch trained or whatever, this will go much faster. Birds that have already learned something learn the next things much, much faster. If your bird has never learned anything before, I recommend teaching easy tricks like the “wave”, the “shake” or basic touch training FIRST. Just so that your bird has a basic understanding of training.

 

In order to train your parrot to drop any object, you need to start the training with an object they don’t necessarily want to hang onto for long. For me, that would NOT be chapstick… but more like a small cap of some sort, something your bird isn’t going to want to play with as a foot toy for long hours. And, make sure your bird actually WANTS the treats you’re giving (remember knowing when to train?) or training is overall… pointless and unsuccessful.

 

Anyway, take the object and do this on a flat surface like a counter top where the object can fall but you won’t be spending all your time picking it back up to start again. Hand the object to your parrot (OR let your bird pick it up from the counter itself) and wait for your bird to drop the object and click and reward. If your bird isn’t losing interest in the object you may have picked the wrong thing… if needed offer a treat so that the bird drops the object and takes the treat instead and start over with a less powerful object. Right as your bird changes focus to drop the object, try to be quick enough to say “drop it” or whatever you want the verbal cue to be. It could just be “drop” if that’s all you have time to say, or “put it down” if your bird moves a bit slower. You do this verbal cue so that eventually you only reward when your bird does it on cue, but you’re not ready for that quite yet.

 

The idea is to pair the verbal command with the moment your bird drops it, or just barely before so it appears like it’s doing it on your cue. You’ve gotta do this with the cue until your bird learns the behavior completely.

 

The keys to training the “drop it” command are:

 

1. Use an object your bird IS NOT crazy about playing with for long periods of time or as a foot toy.
2. Know your bird’s favorite treat and all the basics about training behaviors and tricks (if you don’t, get a basic training course here)