Hey all! I recently (two and a half weeks ago) got my first bird ever! She (I think it's a she at least) is a very young (< 4 months, hasn't had first molt), super energetic fully-flighted bird I got from a family pet store. I named it Toodles.
So here's the scoop.
She's SUPER energetic and doesn't afraid of anything. Really, from day 1, she didn't mind my hand in the cage, and now every day when I come home from work, she's all over the walls of the cage waiting for me to open it up. I do, and without hesitation, she's on my arm, my shoulder, my head, the dining table, the bookshelf, exploring anything and everything, getting her exercise. She doesn't listen when I tell her to "step up," but it doesn't seem like that matters since any time I hold out my finger to her she'll immediately jump to it anyway and proceed to walk all over me, and I'll carry her around the house and eventually over to the training stand.
My problem is two-fold, and the first problem makes the second even harder.
1. I have no idea what she wants for treats. None. She ignores millet, carrots, lettuce (used to eat it, now doesn't care about it), broccoli, bell peppers so far. If she's hungry she'll go for it, but there's definitely no "OMGTREAT" factor going on. Any help/ideas? This directly leads into...
2. I can't get her to sit still in one place to even start training her. At first, she'd just ignore me because she had a full tummy. Then, I started trying to take the food away before I went to the gym, hoping that when I came back and showered (about an hour or so later) that she'd be hungry and take treats. But nope, instead, she goes on a hunt for the food, and nothing but the food. I'll put her on the training stand and she'll fly right back to the cage, just chirping away as she circles it over and over, walks out, and walks around the outside trying to find the mysteriously missing food bowl.
I obviously can't train her to do anything while she's distracted trying to find the food and not amazingly enticed by typical treats, so I'm about at wit's end trying to figure out how to even begin doing basic training like target training. She's so in love with her everyday food that it seems to be the only thing I COULD use as a treat, but it's a little hard to use itty bitty pellets and seeds as treats because she'll just spill them everywhere and hop off her perch and munch on them on the table.
Any tips?