Target training

[marie83]

I started training my conure to target this morning. He is doing brilliantly and picked it up in about 10 minutes. He is currently touching the 'target' anywhere. Is it better to encourage him to target the end of the stick eventually by only rewarding for touching the stick further away from my hand til eventually he is only targetting the end of the stick?

Thanks.

[Michael]

Yes because this helps you fine tune it in the future if you want greater subtly. For instance if there is a certain trick that requires the parrot to touch a certain place on an object (such as a handle), it is good to be able to target exactly there with the tip of the stick.