What do you use as a training treat

[AmyBullock]

I have a Pineapple GCC, and I just found you, and want to start teaching her some tricks. I can't seem to find a treat that motivates her. What do you use? She actually seems to like the praise for a good job better than a treat.

[Michael]

http://trainedparrot.com/treats/

[Pajarita]

If you don't free-feed any protein food (as you shouldn't with GCCs), any seed can be a high value item.

[Loriusgarrulus]

I have found my caique Tupi likes sunflower seed kernals.
I buy a bag of them ready shelled for him.

He is fed fruit and veg and pellets and a seed diet without sunflower in it, which is probably why he likes them so much.

[AmyBullock]

So after reading the food management section of Michaels book, I think the problem is that I am over feeding my girl. She is allowed free access to pellets all the time. She just turned a year old, so maybe time to cut that back to measured feedings to get her interested in treats.

[Pajarita]

Well, conures should never be free-fed any sort of protein food because their natural diet is mostly fruits so a change in her diet would be very beneficial to her both in the short and the long term. But, I am afraid that I don't agree with Michael's food management method... I understand why he does it but a pet bird is not a working bird and I don't agree with depriving any animal of food unless there is a medical reason for it. Birds metabolisms are so fast that avian vets don't ever make a bird fast before a blood test or even surgery so keeping them hungry is really not healthy for them. It's unnecessarily stressful... The truth is that this is a problem that is easily solved to everybody's satisfaction by free-feeding a low protein food and reserving the high protein for dinner (which, for a sun conure, should never be really 'high' protein, anyway), saving the highest value item to be used only as rewards for training. This way, the bird is always more than happy to work for their favorite treat and, at the same time, they never go hungry.