2 Parakeets fighting while Target training

[Michael]

The biggest reason I advocate flooding on a budgie is because I think many budgie owners aren't taking the time to train through positive reinforcement. As you said, on a budgie you can get away with it while a larger parrot could bite so hard you couldn't stand it. But this is not all of it. As you know I had experience with a budgie. I noticed that their reaction to flooding is somewhat different than even a small parrot like a Senegal Parrot. Essentially, they are pretty dumb and forgiving. They have a very fast metabolism and go crazy for millet spray (Truman could never get so excited over food) so it seems to outweigh the grabbing for them.

By the way, notice that I never recommend pure flooding. I always suggest coupling it with positive and negative reinforcements. Now that Kili is tame, you can see me use flooding on her as well in this combination as I did for wearing the harness. Essentially systematic desensitization requires small but progressive amounts of flooding. You can get away with doing this off the bat to tame a budgie but it is too harmful to the owners (and also the parrot catches on that the owner will be forceful and hate the owner) on larger parrots. I don't know what it is but larger parrots seem much more prone at developing phobias than the little ones.

[spiritpaw]

I am currently training three budgies who are untame parent raised. I have also had the problem of fighting while targetting, and it is Jedi who bites when mummble the secon boldest came up once for some millet. I am uncomfortable with ANY flooding although I do not see anything wrong with it just grabbing a budgie, I dont want to do it that way because I want to prove these lil guys are worth teaching without causing them to be afraid of me. But I have had to grab them myself to check thier legbands, and once when mummble got a toenail caught in his leg band. Might remove those if they ever cause safety issues again. But if you are training for tameing and getting out of the cage without fear, which it sounds like to me you could try this way. Jedi is the oldest and boldest, whatever she does they do. So I am target training just her. Which is why mummble is feeling safe enough to take millet anyway. I am useing the flock training approach, in the theory that what she learns they will fallow. So when she gets out of the cage I can target her somwhere she will go for treat, and they will go for the positive reinforcement of being with her. Try it it works. But mikes way is faster and takes less patience, also if they are fighting to seriously and it is getting dangerous, you should also do it mikes suggestion.