Refusing to step up

[LiquidSky2385]

My Green Cheeked Conure Loki is a wonderful bird but coming down to the simplest thing of stepping up he is REFUSING to do so! I've had other birds before and I never have run into such a problem before with stepping up. I've tried many times to get Loki to step up and he just won't do it. He will perch on my finger only if I put him there and usually only for a short time. I spoke to the owner of the bird store I got him from and he told me when he is on my finger to roll is slightly while putting your other finger under his chest as a way that he certainly would do it and that didn't even work. Getting Loki out of the cage isn't really a problem but I have to pick him up. I really want to get him to start stepping up and it just doesn't seem to be happening. When I try and work with him he just jumps right back to me with not even one thought of staying on my finger and stepping up. Can someone please help me with this? Any suggestions? Thanks so much in advance!

[marie83]

Have you tried a bit of good old bribary? opps I mean motivation obviously, a nice treat makes all the difference. My green cheeks favorites are apple and sunflower but he will take pretty much anything as a lure/reward.

Alternetively have you tried target training?

Just make sure whatever treat you give is only used for training as it won't be as much of a reward if they have it all the time. If your not sure what your birds favorite food is put loads of different things in a bowl, offer it too him and see which items he takes first.
Also remove all food from the cage a while before training as being a bit hungry can help motivate the bird too.

[Polarn]

Well the way i see it when I teach mines something is that I bribe em to begin with and then reward them for completing. I mean to start with you have to bribe them with the treat so that they know they will get something for it, eventually you remove the bribery and ask them todo something and they do it, and you still reward them for it.

I do the same when trick training my nefue to get everything right on math tests etc, I resort to bribery telling him he will get a candy for each correct answer he gets, but to not get him content and relaxed when he's halfway through I also tell him that for every answer that wasnt correct I'll take a candy back and once completed he is rewarded with X amount of treats the upcoming weekend and if he gets everything right he gets to eat all of them and I get nothing. Hopefully though he will get the hang of studying is something he does for himself and not for his crazy uncle trying to keep him from redoing grades...

[Wayne361]

As mentioned start target training, if you havent already. Once he can target affectly start targeting onto your hand and rewarding. Use verbal "step up" every time he is to step up. Make good things happen when he obeys the step-up command. Positive re-enforement. Your bird will progress if these things are done. My was terrified of some training perches I got before I began flight training. I mean he would fly if perches were even in same room. So I slowly desensitized him to the perches and began targeting onto perches for rewards/treats. Soon he realized "hey being on these perches get me treats" (positive re-enforement). Now Oscar is not only willing to go on his perches but will fly to them hoping we will do training/flight recall etc to get his treats. Bottom line.....if the bird realizes he will be rewarded for a behaviour (intentionally or not by owner) he/she will gravitate toward performing this behaviour.

Wayne