Training Tidbit – Five Freedoms Training is a part of bird keeping that is getting more and more attention. Training, and especially positive reinforcement training, is supposed to enrich our birds’ lives, stimulate them mentally, and provide additional outlets for energy. I really love talking...

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Training Tidbit- How to Bond with your bird using clicker training If you have a bird you would like to bond with, how do you do it? Perhaps this is a bird that is new in your home. Perhaps this bird loves someone else in the house (and not you!). Perhaps you are looking to deepen the bond you...

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Training Tidbit – Robin makes Shaunas "Chop" recipe Mash! Chop! Bread! We love to make food for our birds, in healthy and easy ways. There are many different recipes available on the internet, in books, in magazines. We rely on pellets to make sure our parrots get the balanced nutrition they...

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Training Tidbit – New Year, New You Welcome to 2021! Start the year off on the right foot by doing some fun training with your bird. Often people think either “training is hard” or “training teaches tricks" or "tricks aren't useful”. I think we can all do some fun training which is both EASY...

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Training Tidbit – The Rhinoceros Test The Rhinoceros is a large animal from Africa. They weight more than 2000kg and can run 50km/hour. They are incredibly strong and have skin that is up to 5cm thick. They are an endangered species, and their numbers are dwindling in the wild, so they are often...

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Training Tidbit – Shaping Training is a process. It’s a science, in that we know the laws of behaviour. If you want a behaviour to happen again, reinforce it. Training is also an art. There is a delicate balance between reinforcing exactly what you want to see and reinforcing each small step...

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When your bird has demonstrated proficiency in looking and finding food pieces throughout the cage, you can try using a foraging toy, or hiding foods inside a toy. I encourage you to move at your birds pace. This small change can have LARGE effects on your birds’ behaviour. Give it a try, and...

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Training Tidbit – What’s an Aversive? When I’m training, I focus on making things as awesome as possible for the bird. This makes sure the bird has a positive association with training, and a positive association with me. It’s also a mutual understanding between us that if the bird does ‘work’...

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Birds have favourites. Birds have likes and dislikes. A reinforcer is something your bird likes. It is technically “something added to the situation to increase the probability of that behaviour happening again”. A reinforcer is something your bird wants and is willing to put in some effort to...

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Training Tidbit – Bird Have Opinions If you have a bird, you know quite well your bird has opinions! There are foods he will eat, there are foods he will throw. There are people he likes, and people he doesn’t like. There is music he likes, toys he hates, and many other things in his world that...

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