Benefits and Approaches to Training
Parrots are very intelligent animals. Each time you interact with your bird, either you are training your bird or your bird is training you!
These creatures are just two generations from their wild ancestors so they are unlike dogs and cats who are domesticated. Until they are trained and socialized, they will make no attempt to please their companion or their families. I strongly urge you to look into training techniques as early as possible. That is not to say that an older parrot can’t be trained, however, younger birds are easier to train.
Parrot behavior training is as important for your bird as it is for any of your pets. A trained parrot will be a happier parrot. Plus, it will interact with family and friends in a nicer way thereby encouraging interaction on a regular basis.
Without realizing it, you can modify parrot behavior if you are tired or impatient, so make sure you are well rested and calm before you begin any type of training. This will ensure a good and happy experience for both of you.
Training a parrot with positive reinforcement techniques focuses on using rewards to strengthen or increase the frequency of a behavior. Positive reinforcement is a trust-building training technique.
Examples of positive reinforcement training with a companion parrot are to take a parrot who is afraid of stepping up onto its owners hand, and rewarding it with a desired treat when it shows relaxed behavior next to the owner’s hand. The parrot would then be rewarded for allowing the hand closer and closer, and finally, would be rewarded for stepping up. Another example would be for an owner to wait until a screaming parrot is quiet for a very short time, and then immediately reward it with praise and attention. The owner would then gradually increase the amount of time the parrot must be quiet to receive the extra attention.
With this type of positive reinforcement approach to training, the parrot is only rewarded for behaviors that bring it closer to the final desired outcome (stepping onto its owner’s hand or being quiet). For this technique to work effectively, it is common to have to reward a parrot several times for making very small amounts of progress; like rewarding the parrot ten times in a row, just for taking one step closer to its owner’s hand.
Clicker training is a particularly popular form of positive reinforcement training. In clicker training, a parrot is taught to associate a click with receiving a reward. The click noise can be used to mark the instant a parrot does the desired behavior, making for more efficient training.
Parrots in general do not respond well to physical punishment. It is sometimes recommended to punish a misbehaving parrot by spraying it with water or flicking its beak with one’s finger. However, such techniques are more likely to cause confusion and occasionally fear, and are not considered good training methods.
The STEP-UP Command
One of the most important tricks you can teach your bird is the Step-up command. Practice this trick until your bird reliably steps onto your finger, wrist or onto a hand-held perch. Your bird should automatically offer a foot when you say “Step up”. This also acts as a safety measure should you need to retrieve your bird dangerous situation. Since this is a universally know command in the companion circles, this also enables easy socialization with others.
Shake Hands
This is a simple and easy trick. With the bird on the T-stand, offer your right hand across its body to in front of its right foot. The bird will undoubtedly try to step up onto your hand with its left foot. Don’t let it. Instead, insist that the bird raise its right foot and try to step onto your hand with that foot. Be persistent, it finally will. Then follow with lots of praise and the reward. Just let it touch your hand with the right foot, don’t let it transfer weight and try to step onto your hand.
Turn Around
With the bird on a T-stand or similar perch in front of you, feed it a treat and talk to it quietly. Using the “step up” command, have the bird step onto your hand, and then back to the perch with the “step down” command Even though these are behaviors the bird should already know, do them a few times, saying “good bird” each time he performs them correctly and offer a treat as the reward.
Next, holding the treat in the right hand at about the bird’s eye level, let the bird see the treat. Tell it “turn around”. As the bird reaches for the treat, move your hand around the bird to the back so that the bird must first turn its head and next, hopefully, its whole body, to follow and reach for the seed. If the bird turns half way around to face the back, tell it “good bird ” and reward it at once. Then coax it to turn the rest of the way around by following the seed in your right hand. Use the simple command “turn around” each time you ask it to turn. . Once the bird turns from front to back and then back to front readily, insist it turn all the way around before it gets its reward.
Training Systems
We’ve done a ton of investigation into the masses of parrot training materials there are on the market today. There are books, tapes, videos, and internet sites dedicated to training. What we’ve found is that not all are equal. Lets take the videos we have reviewed; most show you training and tricks using pre-trained birds. So it looks very easy, but it’s not really practical. The system that undoubtedly is the best on the market is from two brothers; Chet and Dave Womach from www.Birdtricks.com who show you how they take two family parrots (A Macaw and Cockatoo, who by the way are untamed and actually hate these guys), and using their unique techniques, turn them into trained, loving pets.
By the way, they also have an excellent training method for teaching your bird to talk too.
