parakeet training

[Michael]

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=227

[Frederica]

Hallo,
I train my two budgies together.
When I starded clicker training in Septeember 2008, I had my current male budgie and another female one (who has died in the meantime).

The very first rhing I had to teach Calsey, the female was WAIT and STAY; while Twitch, the male had to learn "do your excercise and take your reward, even though she is staring at you!!!"

Now, how do you trian "wait" and "stay"?

You need patience and have to clench your teeth, when in the beginning one of your birds will be chased away or bullied a lot of times.
You start training, reward one bird, then train the other.
If the bullying one interferes, you reward the bullied one.
I had to follow mine with the millet the first couple of times.
Now you wait, until the bullier goes back to its training branch or perch and does NOT fix the other bird with its eys.
C/t and a lot of praise.
Now, everytime your bullier sits in its place, not fixing the partner bird you c/t.
Do it also if the bullier sits in any place outside of trianing times, c/t, wait, say "wait", c/t, many times shortly after one another and the extend the time between "wait" and c/t.

Most important in my experience:
Reward the bullied bird everytime it has been chased away or intimidated.
Ask it to do a small exercise it can already do fluently and then reward it generously.
The "victim" learns, that even though it has been chase away, it get the millet.
The bullier learns, that chasing away the partner deprives it of all the millet which the partner now receives; cruel game!!!

Beware:
When the bullier has learned to "wait" and "stay"...the former victim will try tofetch the other one's reward or start bullying; having learned that it is always so gerneously rewarded!

My little bullier now, Keisha-May, has casually learned to fly back to its training branch when I point to it.
So it goes:
Twitch is doing his excercise; Keisha-May flies on him ; he flees.
I reward him, ask him to do a favrite exercise, reward him; Keisha-May looks at me confusedly.
I point to her branch, say "Keisha-May" and up she goes, hectically looking bck at me to reach up for her with a millet in my hand!

Advantages of training birds together:
- They may feel safer.
- They learn from one another (jealousy!!): The bird that just watches skips whole steps and suddenly shows the complete excercise that has been practiced with its partner for the last days!!!
- They LEARN to wait, stay, "be freindly" i. e. sit near each other without bullying during training times (mine do that sometimes to show me that they are ready for clickering now!)
- It makes them more creative.
Everytime one of my birds gets bored = impatient, (s)he shows me something that (s)he wants to be rewarded for, like "Hey, look what I'm doing - now come over here and give ME that millet!!!"
for the time being, Twitch "goes away" and Keisha-May "looks at me" (sometimes I sit there wondering why that bird is staring at me!!!??? - oh she's demonstraing "look at me"!! ) or hangs upside-down from her branch.
- New exercises are learned MUCH quicker in competition with one another as every bird wants to have the BIGGEST Reward FIRST.

The only very important rule is:
Do NEVER, NEVER, NEVER reward a billying bird!!!
Instead, demonstrativly reward the bullied bird(s).

Best,
Frederica

[Pola]

i think that they will get distracted if they train them together.

[lover for lil joe]

I really need help training my parakeet i need to take him to the vet for a check up and i need him tamed first if you guys would please help me i would apreciate it.

thanks

[Michael]

Honestly, I don't think it matters very much. The vet will probably just grab it and wrap it in a towel and force whatever position he needs. You need cooperation from the bird much more when it is larger.

It's still a good idea to tame/train it but I wouldn't say you need to worry about that for vet exam. Here's an article about basic parrot training that really applies to all sizes of parrots:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=227

[Shelby]

how do i tame my parakeet? He knows how to talk, but he is not tame please help me.

Read Michael's taming article: Basics of Parrot Taming and Training