Training

The Foundation Of Trick Training For Parrots! – How To Start

The foundation of trick training is something that is often overseen. Everyone just wants to jump into the fun tricks and then get frustrated when their bird doesn’t understand what they are asking of them.

The first thing you should teach your parrot is to “touch” – often referred to as target training. It is very easy to miss a birds body language cues and push them beyond what they are comfortable with resulting in a bite and the bird learning to bite rather than giving you body language to show that it is confused, tired etc. by doing target training your hands are out of the reach for the bird.

To do this you will start on a training stand or even in the cage if you haven’t gotten to that point yet with your bird. take a chopstick and place it just within reach of the bird’s beak. Naturally, the bird will get curious are reach its beak out to touch the stick, the second the bird touches the stick (not bite but touch, otherwise you are making the “trick” aggression which is not something you want) click with a clicker (it is important the sound is consistent and coming at the exact moment they touch, I find it is much easier to be exact when you have a clicker) then immediately follow the click with a treat.

Once your bird is comfortable and understands this trick you can go on to ask them to take a couple of steps to reach the target, progressively making them take more and more steps. This can then lead to tricks like spin and recall training.

Helpful tips

  • once you place the stick somewhere for the bird to go do not move it. This can be seen to the bird as teasing and will completely lose their motivation to train.
  • place a bunch of treats in your hand and see which one your bird picks 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. this will be important for more difficult tricks or even for those times you need a bit more motivation.
  • Once the bird touches the stick remove it from their sight, I always place the hand holding the stick behind my back and then treat it with the other hand.
  • Patience, your bird is learning something completely new they are going to take time to process and to learn.
  • Keep training session to a maximum of 5 minutes (leaving the session on a good note)