by Pajarita » Fri May 05, 2017 10:35 am
The 'hand in cage' is an old-fashioned technique that is no longer used because it's flooding (it's terribly stressful to the bird, it backfires in the long term and it gives the bird the wrong idea about your relationship with it). And ALL birds come out of the cage. ALL of them without exception. Some will do it as soon as you open the door and some may take months but they all do it.
I don't train any of my birds. I don't find it necessary as they all learn without any sessions and end up very obedient. But, if I wanted to tame a parent-raised bird, first I would make it so he is not scared of me by sitting next to the cage (but not looking at him directly, only out of the corner of my eye) and talking, singing, whistling, offering a treat every now and then and just doing my thing (studying, reading, watching TV, playing video games, whatever) to get him used to my presence. When I see that he is perfectly calm when I approach the cage and when I am near it and see that he takes treats from my hand (between the bars of the cage), I would start target training him. Once he is target trained, I would allow him to come out of his cage about one hour before sunset (this will ensure that, when you put his dinner -seeds- in the cage, he will fly to it). Of course, for this method to work, you can't free-feed high protein food because you need it for rewards AND bait for him to go back into his cage.