26 Jul When Do I Start Training My New Parrot?
When you are bringing home a new parrot, is training your new feathered buddy the first thing on your mind? Or are you in the same camp as one of my clients, Matthew, who emphatically explained to me: “when I think of training, I think of my dog. I just want my parrot to ‘be.’ Training is for obedience.”
While I understood what Matthew was trying to get at, I congenially yet vociferously disagreed with him. While all animals – and humans, for that matter – need some level of two way communication for a peaceable coexistence, the natural inclinations of parrots, with their loud voices, social needs, and strong beaks indicate that the training relationship is just as much about helping us identify environmental factors (including our behavior) that support mutually beneficial behaviors as it preventing and solving some of their behavior challenges.
As a child of the 80’s, when we finally brought home our first dog, Charlie, we were told that we should not start training him until he was six months old. While I am not sure of the origin of this advice, I can tell you that a) many of the training techniques I learned then was about using force, coercion, and applying direct pressure, so it’s conceivable that a six month old dog would be a bit more physically equipped to handle such force and b) that also means that the puppy is rehearsing all of these puppy behaviors for several months and then suddenly we have to re-learn what we are practicing. Neither of those scenarios leads to a communicative relationship from the beginning.
With that in mind, what does it mean for you and your parrot? As someone who has consulted with both brand new freshly weaned baby parrots arriving in their new homes or adopted older parrots, I can say that training often starts as close to Day 1 as you can imagine.
There is a very distinctive reason for this. We assume that training happens when we have a bait pouch, treats, and maybe even a target stick. But learning – and therefore training – occurs every time our parrot interacts with the stimuli that we provide. From our visual appearance to the sounds that we make, these stimuli give our parrots information about how to act. For instance, you parrot knows that you are approaching from your voice, your steps, the keys in the door even, and they might change their behavior. Will they vocalize? Or will they move to a different position in the cage? This is training! And it happens with rigorous consistency.
Another example is the way your parrot might rush at or away from the food bowls when you change out the food and water. Your hand approaches, and the bird changes their behavior. You can try to move faster, but your parrot will learn to move faster too! (if you’re curious about how to solve this, not only do we have a full course in the Avian Behavior Lab on it, but we have a free training challenge!)
In several cases, people have come to me with confusion that their birds need a period of either getting on a better diet or a period of settling in. While settling in might take some time for an older parrot, we always gauge what we will train with how the bird is presenting behavior. I wouldn’t, for instance, train a step up right away with a bird that didn’t want to be anywhere near me.
Your parrot is picking up on your body language right away. They might some undesirable habits picked up from the breeder or their previous home, and rather than wait the obligatory honeymoon phase, you will likely want to get cracking right away so that you don’t find yourself frustrated and disillusioned. These are normal feelings, but part of the fun of working with parrots is that they pick up skills readily.
In one scenario, I was called into help a foster parrot caregiver who had just taken in a moluccan cockatoo with feather destructive behavior. The cockatoo had no skills to speak of, didn’t know how to step up voluntarily, didn’t engage with any toys, and his diet was gummy worms, pizza, and Nerds candies. Instead of waiting until we had converted him to a better diet, which took several months, we started getting him to target, forage, and engage with his environment for his beloved junk food. To think about it still makes me stomach turn, but he and his foster person took on the challenge with gusto.
If you aren’t sure what to start training first or why you even need training for parrots in the first place, join us on June 6, 2024 at 5 pm PDT for our free webinar, Bringing A New Parrot Home. We can’t wait to share this training with you!