How can I train a baby parrot? - Need help please

[Salmando9]

How can I train my baby parrot? They need food all the time and I can't take it away from her. How do i reward her for the training?
Share information and knowledge please!

[Rokisha]

Well I did read something about waiting until your parrot is a bit older before worrying about training it tricks and what not. I mean they live a very long time so you really shouldn't worry about rushing ahead and training it that early. Hopefully someone with more experience can answer you better as I really don't have that much when it comes to parrots. My personal opinion though is to wait until it's at least a year before worrying about trick training.

[Grey_Moon]

My grey (even though she'll be 13 soon) is free-fed and still very trainable.

The key is to take her *favourite food of all time* out of whats available to her 24/7.
For Jacko my TAG that'd be walnuts or sunflower seeds. She has her pellets available in the cage 24/7 (otherwise she gets anxious and plucks) and veggies etc when I fix myself dinner, but the ONLY time she gets walnut pieces or sunflower seeds is in training or to reward a behaviour.

[Michael]

I don't put a number on it. It's when the parrot stops being a baby and demonstrates an interest for food. Then you can redirect that as trick training. This doesn't mean you can't teach it anything or shouldn't work with it, but when it comes to formal cue, trick, treat training it is best to wait. At the earliest baby stage they are still so moldable that you can just grab, hold, cuddle, move, and do whatever with them and this solidifies a desire for being touched and held for life (they can lose it but it's much much easier to bring it back with training if it's already been established). Check out the early stuff on the trained parrot blog how I recall trained Truman for toys rather than food and just handled him as a baby. Also a good time to introduce new foods, toys, people, and objects. Lots to do, just nothing too serious.