first things to train a baby grey?

[Girliebird]

Hello , I have a ten week female CAG, i am finishing the handrearing and have eight weeks off work to spend with my new baby. Everything is going great and she is growing in confidence daily. I already have a harness trained tiel who will step up but have had little success with any other training. I am working on a daily basis with trust building, play, going out in a back pack for walks, bathing trying any new food, accepting new people, toys and my grey is only caged overnight. (my tiel never caged, although she has one always open) My grey has not fledged and cannot perch confidently so i have got her more confident on my hand but she cant step up as she uses her beak to balance, still we try. I have taught her stay with a hand command and to touch a target stick whilst on the parrot training perch using a clicker and we practice daily. she picked it up straight away. I am going to start harness training next week, i have had her one week. what else can i teach at this stage. She is not fully balanced so will not use her feet independantly yet but i want to keep stretching her mentally. is there anything else i can work on at this stage? i thought about 'wings' and use the word at every opportunity so tried today to ask for it whilst she was on the training perch. what else can i do at this stage ? can i put any other basics in now ? she is so cooperative it seems a great chance to shape her behaviour . Any advice ? help or ideas much appreciated !!!!!!!!

[Pajarita]

My dear, you have a very young baby in your hands and need to keep stress to a minimum because studies have shown that birds that are stressed out when very young remain high strung all their lives and, when you are talking about a gray, which is already VERY sensitive to emotional upsets and high strung naturally, you do not want to train, take out for walks, introduce to strangers, etc. You want to keep the stress to a minimum or she could end up been a plucker and, God forbid!, even a self-mutilator when she matures.

At 8 weeks of age, a baby gray would still be inside a dark nest seeing only siblings and parents so, please, reconsider what all these different exercises you are now doing. Nature knows best, not man. People talk about 'socializing' a baby bird but, in reality, baby birds do not socialize with even other members of their own flock until after they come out of the nest and, even then, it's nothing more than visual because the parents are the only ones that interact with it until the bird becomes a juvenile and starts foraging with the flock. Grays are very fragile birds when it comes to their emotions and easily get upset even when they are fully grown and secure in their home and love of their human and a baby is 200 times more.

The first months of a baby bird with a new human need to be only about establishing a deep bond of love and trust between the bird and its human. You can do step up and down because these are things that don't really need training as the baby will always want to be on you but I really would not do anything else than get it used to a good diet and routines, cuddle and love her.