Tiko is a pale headed rosella, an Australian parakeet most commonly thought of as an aggressive, flighty aviary parrot.
However, I have persevered and now, Tiko (fully flighted and parent raised) once very nippy, is now quite gentle and always immediately steps up onto my hand without biting. He is extremely intelligent and has learnt many tricks on cue such as wave, spin around, bow, target etc.
These are all hands-off tricks as Tiko does not tolerate touching! However, I know I will need to train him to accept being held in situations such as vet appointments.
Thus, I have come up with a plan I would like to run by some experienced members of this forum who I hope could give me some input?
The overall aim will be to teach Tiko to "play dead".
First, I will have him step up to my hand and then I will grasp onto his feet (I have trained him to accept me grabbing his feet which seemed impossible at first!)
I will introduce a hand on his back slowly through positive reinforcement until he accepts me lightly touching his back.
Then I will turn my hand over until he has to lean on my hand, eventually reclining him fully until he is on his back, saying "play dead/bang".
I will gradually remove my hands from his feet until he is comfortable lying on my hand.
I can then use my other hand to use a visual cue for play dead, such as a gun signal.
I am then hoping he will enter the begging phase as he usually does, constantly repeating the trick without cue in hopes of earning a treat, so hopefully he will begin to just lie on his back so I can then begin firmly reestablishing the command through positive reinforcement.
This might have been a bit hard to follow, but I'd like to know if anyone thinks this will be an effective method. I have tried to slowly grab him before over many weeks but eventually he just learnt to fly away at the sight of my outstretched hand so I had to find a new method.