stopping a budgie from biting in 2 training lessons

[TheNzJessie]

ok i have been doing this project to effectively stop budgies from biting in the smallest amount of time possible with only positive reinforcement (no grabbing yelling banging loud noises and negative flooding)

my budgie developed a bad biting habit about 2 months ago and all the technique i tried off the internet did not work but i found a solution that has worked for me and 13 biting budgies the pet shop i work at. this is how i stopped 14 out of 16 budgies from biting in 2 training lessons.

first one is budgies DO NOT bite hard, if u have owned larger birds (Like me) a budgies bite it not hard. the first thing to do it put your finger put against the budgie if he bites dont take your hand away just get him to step up but he gets nothing for it. no facial expressions no movement no treat no voice praise just put him down again, take you hand out for 5-10 seconds and put it back in and get him to step up if he bites again just repeat what you did last time. if he does not bite flood him with all positive reinforcement praise him in a high voice (use the same words each time) i use good boy! and if they do eat treats from your hand give them a bit of millet and place him back on the perch. repeat again if he bites do nothing say nothing no treats no movement and place him back down if he does not bite flood him with the positive reinforcement. i found the budgies i worked with responded to vocal praise and treats if i was not talking to them if they bit me. the 2 budgies it did not work on were both females and were both over 10 years old and had no contact through there life. the other budgies were between 6 months and 5 years. my budgie is 6 months old

this technique is different to the ones on parrot forum so i thought i would share my findings and if you try it please reply to here with how your training sessions went

i would recommend this for other birds but i have not tried it on other birds. i am only recommending it for budgies because of the biting factor and ignoring it....its very hard to ignore a bite from a larger bird

P.S this will only work if your budgie is not afraid of you and stays put to defend and bite you (In other words it thinks its the boss)

[Michael]

This is basically negative and positive reinforcement technique. I'd usually throw some mild flooding in to accelerate the case. Don't forget, the budgie could be running away from your hand rather than biting so then no amount of positive reinforcement will bring it out of the cage. You have to grab it (flooding) and can only reward it for stop biting (positive and/or negative reinforcement).

This is not the best technique but it really is the easiest and most effective. It's not the best because clearly it doesn't scale to larger/more aggressive birds too well. Clearly the target method is superior because it works universally and helps ease a bird's fear better. But since you can so easily overpower and ignore budgie bites, you may just as well use these techniques. Just be careful not to hurt the bird in the process, that's all.

[TheNzJessie]

if you read the bottom of the post i said it would not work on birds that a frightened only budgies that are biters and but there ground which is what is a situation a lot people people are in. and in 2 training lesson are you saying you could cut it down to one with the budgie never biting again?

and i did state its for budgies only and not implying that its the best target training is the best but found this to be extremely fast and with people with not a lot of patients who get frustrated easily as depending of the bird target training does take more that 2 lessons (in my experience)

[Titanius]

Sounds interesting. Jasper is afraid of the pointer so I'm not sure how far he'll get with target training.

[alight15]

One thing I want to point out...NEVER show any reaction to biting.

Budgies dont bite hard,that's true,and my skin is thick enough to not even really get hurt by them. But, a friend of my sisters friends wanted a parakeet and we gave her one of the budgies we had because my sister and I had bonded with 1 bird each out of 3 and while we played a lot with the last one we felt bad that it didnt have anyone fussing over it all the time.

This bird was flighted,so they didnt let him out as much and being a little girl his new owner got hurt when it pecked her,so she pulled away. Once while picking my sister up from her house, our parents started talking I got bored and decided to take the budgie out, my sister and her friend warned me he bites.I thought it was because they had soft fingers,but when I reached in, the parakeet bit down,and gripped then rocked his head sideways,I didnt pull away but he managed to make even my finger sore.

They can learn from your behaviors, if they notice that they get left alone when they bite,they wont just do it they'll master it.Even now my budgie tries to test his limits of what he can and cant do,and how far away he can go without me following.

Anyway TheNzJEsse,are you having him step up on the same finger,or a different one?

[TheNzJessie]

getting my budgie and also the others i have trained to step up, so yes it is to stop biting while putting your finger up to them to step up