How to bond with my budgies

[JennyAngelina]

i recently bought 2 budgies and want to tame them, to train them and to make the bond between them and me the most. I've had them for about 2 months and since i stumbled upon this forum i've changed their diet. and controlling when they eat. Now, i've been letting them out of their cage, I got toys for them but they never plays with it, though i understand that doing so will not exactly tame them, or bond to me, so what would be the best way to "start" working towards them bonding to me?i watched some clips on youtube and alot suggest making them comfortable with my hand in their cage, so i've been trying to make them eat out of my hand, when they haven't had any other food for a couple of hours. But they refuse to eat or come close.
so what should i do? not let them go out whenever they want, i guess is a good start, keep on trying to feed them in the cage, but like i said, they refuse to eat, and i've been trying for a good number of days now.
They are very quiet to, never sings or talk


Any suggestions? need help, cause i really want to bond with my budgies ( 1 male and 1 female).

[Michael]

I am going to be controversial here and say it outright.

A) Separate them
B) Flood them

Budgies are kind of dumb in that way. You can flood them and they just give up fighting pretty quickly. Yes you can go through the whole positive reinforcement thing and no doubt you can do that. But some gentle flooding totally seems to work on these birds. I would not recommend flooding on bigger birds that can hold grudges but from my experience with budgies you can do whatever to them and by the next time you take them out, they don't remember and will eagerly let you do it again if you offer reinforcement.

I used a technique that I will call positive flooding. You grab the bird and hold it in your hand until the first signs of calming down and then you release it and give it a millet reward. What you are doing in effect is using negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement simultaneously. The negative reinforcement is the removal of the aversive stimulus of being grabbed and the positive reinforcement is the millet. I think (with budgies in particular) this kind of training works at double rate if not faster than conventional positive reinforcement methods.

Budgies are so reward driven that they kind of lose sight of what is being done to them. Very quickly the budgie will learn that biting and struggling are pointless and the only way to get rewarded and released is to wait it out. Tame them like this in no time and they don't seem to associate it negatively with the trainer. Other parrots will get scared of the trainer and avoid them for doing this. But budgies are kind of dumb and don't comprehend 2 + 2. That the trainer is the one administering the grabbing. And like I said, they are so reward driven that the reward seems to make up for it. And hey, they are not hurt so they really have nothing to lose by allowing to be grabbed.

Make sure you know how to grab them the right way though. Perhaps someone else can explain that. But they must be separated. If they haven't already, they will only bond to each other and not to you. I really don't understand why people are so obsessed with getting them in pairs. Perhaps you could tell us why you got them in a pair, and I don't mean this in a bad way for you. You may have been uninformed or didn't know. So I'm not blaming you. I'd be really curious to know what makes people get them in pairs so that we could try to prevent that. People who get them in pairs really don't know what they are getting themselves into. That's like bird beginner mistake #1. So if you could share with us why you got 2, perhaps we'll know how to best convince people not to.

[JennyAngelina]

Hi
Yes it was just like that, I thought that he would be lonely. But now they just want to be with each other. He didn´t talk or sing so much so i thought he was depressed.

So I got 2 cages so I will put them in separate cages, Can they be in the same room or in separate rooms?

thank you soo much for all help

[Michael]

I'd say it is better to keep them in separate rooms until you are certain that each has bonded to you and only after that can you start having them in the room. I still wouldn't cage them together if you want to interact with them cause they will just obsess over each other and aggressively defend each other from you.

[MandyG]

Make sure you know how to grab them the right way though. Perhaps someone else can explain that.

I just wanted to stress the importance of learning how to grab your bird the right way. If you hold your bird too tightly you can easily suffocate it.

To put it simply, birds do not have a diaphragm, they must be able to push their chest out to be able to breathe. It could be very easy for a person without experience to hold a squirming little budgie too tightly without knowing the bird was being harmed.

Just wanted to make sure you knew

[cockatieler]

but won't they bite if u just lightly catch them like that mmmmmm

[MandyG]

I didn't say not to hold it firmly, just be careful how tightly you're holding it.

[TheNzJessie]

my budgie has gotten very confident around me now he is 5 months old (almost 6 months) and is starting to bite if he doesn;t want to go back in his cage or doesn't want to do something. partly my fault for giving up and leaving him alone the first couple of times he did it so now he thinks he can get want he wants by biteing

[sinomangirl]

i have 2 parakeets, one is very sweet, the other that i have had longer is violent and aggressive. he was that way since i brought him home. I thought he could be tamed, but he just continues to get worse. it is getting so bad that i don't even want to let him out of the cage. any advice for me?

[Michael]

Taming & Basic Training Article