How to Teach Parrot to Step Up and to Come Out of Cage

[Michael]

Yes & Yes. Check out http://TrainedParrot.com for more.

[Neeshee]

I recently read Michael's article on teaching the bird to step up, and also how to hold a parrot. This was very informative. I've recently acquired a trained female Eclectus parrot. She knows how to step up, and when we visited her to see if we wanted her, she even stepped up on us even though we were strangers. She is quite friendly and sociable, she loves to take showers with us, and seems to enjoy being handled, and being around us. But, she can be quite moody or uncooperative with stepping up, sometimes. In general, I notice she is less hesitant to step up on my wife, as she steps up almost always and very quickly. With me, its a game of chance. Usually, when I approach her (deliberately, slowly, and while speaking softly to her), she will start to move away on her perch. Then if I move closer to where she was, she walks away even further. For a while, I took this as a sign that she just doesn't want to step up, and so respected her communication, and left. Often, I would try later, and she would step right up.

But, of course, there are those times when a parrot owner needs the bird to step up for various reasons. When she doesn't step up on me and becomes uncooperative, I nudge her belly, and if she still doesn't budge, then I push gently until she is off-balance and then ends up stepping up on me. Once she is on me, she seems quite happy, and I can't understand what all the fuss was about. I am clear about associating something positive with stepping up on me, so I usually sit and feed her for a while, or she ends up going into the shower with me, but most of the time, stepping up on me = food, as one of our favorite activities together is eating! Today, I had to nudge her off balance again to get her to step up on me, and I just want to make sure I am not creating a negative experience, or negative view of myself to her by having to do this. If she walks away on her perch, should I still pursue handling her, or should I go back to my original approach or just walking away at that point? I just don't know if I am forcing myself on her and it is going to become something negative for her, or if this is good training.

[Michael]

Make the bird want to step up not just for a treat but because the entire experience is worthwhile. This article talks about that: http://TrainedParrot.com/Caging

[CommaCole]

Can i use a word for substitute for a clicker sound?

[sega123#]

Hi there, my sennie is 7 weeks old, is he still too young to start the step up training as he is not quite eating any seed at the moment, still on morning an night formula feeds.

[JacobBird]

Hey! My Blue-eyed Cockatoo always sighs when I approach him but he can eat from my hand, let me touch him and he knows how to target train. The problem is that he is not stepping up. When I place my hand in front of him, he just walks away. Another thing i tried is placing my hand on the side of the perch so that he can glide his feet to my hand. He walks to my hand and touch my target stick and I reward him, but most of the times he steps back to the perch. After like 10 times of doing it on every session, he starts to chew the treat on my hand but if I just stayed there and didn't give my target stick, he would just step back to the perch. When I try to lift my hand up away from the perch and didn't keep giving my target stick and treats, he would just jump and fly to the perch. I've keep trying placing my hand in front and push his chest so that he feels imbalance but yet it doesn't work. Please help...

[solodude101]

When you are teaching the Parrot to step up, do you still click and reward with a treat every time the parrot steps up?

[Michael]

While you are teaching this, yes.

[WarToilet]

My father recently bought 2 Double Yellow Headed Amazons. We've only had them for a week or so now, and one of them is very scared of us, I think she just needs more time getting used to us and her new home. The other accepts food from my hand no problem, however, it won't let me touch it or let my hands get too close if I don't have food for it. I've been clicker training him, and I've tried to move on to target training, but he's afraid of the target... What do I do? D:

[Polarn]

about the touching and zons... it isn't too uncommon that they never get to like touching, their not (like most birds) not cuddly animals, and amazons tend to be even less so... but ofcourse there is the odd one that figures out pretty quick that headscratches n stuff are really nice, others take time to develop a "cuddly" behavior through training. and other well they will never really like it. But as far as the targettraining... you could hang the targetstick inside the cage (providing the cage is big enough for the bird not having to live in fear) until you have seen it knock it a few times, or hang it outside the cage near a playstand or whatever and see if they go check it out. once they have checked it out they should no longer be scared.

Hanging it somewhere outside the cage so that it already is there when he/she arrives at that location would be the best option out of these scenarios, and I would never (unless you have a cage big as a kingsize bed) just hand the stick in the cage straight away, but I would start further away and move closer with it day by day.