Parrot Training - Turning Around

Jenny Drummey: Hi, this is Jenny from Phoenix Landing. We are talking about training parrots today and today, in this segment, I am going to be working with my little friend, Cubol (ph) here on how to turn around on a perch. And one of the things that's very easy about having parrots turn around is that you can put them on a perch that they are comfortable with, you don't have to touch them. So it's a really good way to train, start training if the birds that are all afraid of your hands or you have trouble picking them up.

You start this behavior with something they really like, in this case, Cubol (ph) like Sunflower seeds which she wants, and you start by imagining approximations to have the bird go around and we start with a technique that's called baiting or luring, where you let the animal see what the reward that they are going for and that allows them to learn to how to follow the posture. So Cubol (ph), good! So he very quick. He is pretty familiar with this, so that's why he did it. But you notice that as I let my hand around with the seed, he followed it pretty quickly. And what you do is you train them to do this, is that you eventually say that cue and I'll show you what I mean. Good! Each time I repeat this, I am going to go a little bit faster and hide the seed a little bit more. Ready? Good! You see how quickly I did it that time. This time I'm going to try moving my hands, not even underneath the perches if he picks up one of those I want him to do. This training is all about communication and another great byproduct of working with your bird like this is that you guys learn to understand each other. Ready? Good! See how quickly he could pick that up.

Now he's pretty familiar with this behavior like I said and your bird is going to learn uniquely. But if you approach it with this small approximations and then you say that cue, your bird can learn how to turn around pretty easily. We taught your parrot how to turn around on a perch and in our next clip, we're going to show you how to teach your parrot to step on a scale.