clicker training 2 birds

[tomcat]

Just wondering. Wouldn't using the clicker for training one bird confuse other birds within earshot of the clicker sound??? It seems to me that while conditioning one bird, you're desensitizing the others. What are your thoughts on that?

[Michael]

Yes, to an extent (especially at first). But parrots are really smart and I think they can learn to differentiate that a click with your attention is necessary for a reward and not just any click.

You see if they stopped getting rewards all together when they heard clicks always, extinction would occur. However, they will realize that a click with you looking at them earns rewards while a click looking at the other bird doesn't, they can learn to differentiate. This just ups the stakes of what action signifies treats as a bridge. It is no longer just a click, but click + attention.

I have done a bunch of training with Kili & Truman in the same room or even on the same perch while using the clicker (you might be able to see some of this in my videos). They don't seem to have any trouble and clicker training is anywhere from 90-100% as effective as it was on Kili alone. However, I am teaching two birds during the same training session, so total training results have doubled.

I think teaching two untrained parrots with a clicker could be difficult though as the benefit of hearing a click would immediately be diluted when it's for the other bird. However, assuming that you are adding a new parrot to an already trained one, it's less of a problem. The parrot that already knows the clicker, learns that clicks can occur without attention and then they don't matter (but they do the other time). The new parrot learns from the start that clicks only matter when you are near it or giving it attention (this is why at least initial training sessions should be of one parrot at a time). So to answer your question, in theory it would seem that clicker training 2 parrot would conflict, in practice they are smart enough to overcome that and still benefit from clicker training.

[Crimson_Falcon]

Thanks for your informative post! I too was wondering if I started to clicker train my hahns, that it'd get really confused if it heard other clicks elsewhere. I'm glad to hear they are smart enough to know the difference!

[javelin]

This is good to know.