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Target training issues

Exchange information about how to teach specific tricks to parrots. Most of these techniques should apply to all bird species. Share your success stories.

Re: Target training issues

Postby Pajarita » Sat Nov 11, 2017 12:52 pm

Michael wrote:I have trained budgies and cockatiels and most topics relate to training of parakeets. I see no reason why there should be any more stress for parakeets of all sorts than larger parrots. I will admit that they are generally less interested in a one on one bond or interaction with humans. However, this makes training all the more important if you wish to have any sort of hands on experience with this bird and not confine it to a cage/aviary lifestyle.



Michael, you and I are looking at the issue from different points of view. You look at it from a trainer's point of view: namely, whether training can be achieved and whether the results would be acceptable to the owner. I look at it from a bird lover's point of view: namely, what makes the bird the happiest. A budgie can be trained and it can be kept living only with humans but it will never be as happy as a budgie living in a flock and not been interacted with by humans. Same thing with any aviary bird.

I had a neighbor when I lived in a apartment building in Jackson Heights many, many years ago. I found out through his son [who went to school with one of my daughters and often came to play to my apartment] that he kept canaries, like me. He had 'trained' them all to come to his hand and they did! Do you know how he had trained them? He did not feed them when he first got them and, on the third day, he put his hand in the cage with food on it. Voila, trained canaries!

Almost all animals can be trained but some, like dogs, can be trained by just saying 'Good boy!" when they do the right thing - no problem, no stress, not even a need for a food reward because all you need to do is show the dog that you like what he does through praise and because the animal wants to please its owner, it works. Other animals need methods that produce stress: isolation, enclosure, food deprivation, etc. - even punishment. Companion birds, because they bond deeply with their humans and, up to a degree, want to please them, are easier to train than aviary birds which, by the time they are sexually mature, would much rather be with another bird of their own species than with a human.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
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