Taming techniques
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:24 am
When I got my second irn, a 3 month old aviary raised bird, everyone I met had some advice on how to tame her, I mean EVERYONE. People who don't have birds, people who had a budgie when they were a kid, older people who breed birds.
The most common advice was "clip it's wings!" Or "clip one wing" because that will make it tame.
This is a complete fallacy. I did not take this advice, of course. There seem to be an extraordinary amount of questions on here that run along the lines of "my bird bites me, his wings are clipped, what do I do?". If we apply some thought into the matter we realise that IRNs are a prey species (ie: they are not the hunters, they are the hunted). Their first method of defense is flight, quite literally. If they are deprived of this method they default to stage two in self defense: bite. The other problem I see with this method is that restricting a birds ability to fly away is not taming it, it is just removing the birds ability to make free choices about whether it should participate.
I am not going to discuss wing clipping in general here. I keep flighted birds and I would not consider myself a good trainer if I have to remove their ability to fly so i could train them.
Clipping one wing is not advocated by any authority on birds. It unbalances the bird and can cause major accidents before the bird realises it had no control and gives up flying.
"Hold the bird to your heart" or "wrap it in a towel and hug it"
Strangely enough, soft hearted hippies who do not understand the mechanics of animal behaviour think that this is nice because you're showing the bird you love it.
This is not how Indian Ringnecks interact with other birds they like at all! It is so removed from their nature that they do not comprehend it as something pleasant.
This method is most likely to produce what is referred to as "learnt helplessness". http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... lplessness
By holding the bird against your heart, it does not know that you love it. It knows it is trapped and it will learn that it can't do anything about its current situation. Resistance is futile, just give up.
"Put glove on, it will soon learn biting has no effect"
I really don't see why this is any different from the last technique. The only way one would have provoked a bite from my bird when I got her would have been to corner her somewhere, like her cage. Not only does the bird end up feeling unsafe in it's cage, but it also encourages the bird to practise biting your hand.
No one bothered to suggest the "take away it's food and it will come to you when it's hungry". This is just as well, as that would not have been well received. At 3 months old my bird still had some filling out to do and was near starting her first juvenile moult. She needed a complete diet.
It is possible to achieve dramatic results by simply using the birds one favoured food from their regular diet and using this food to reward the behaviour you like. My birds favourite food is any kind of fruit, which she only needs in moderation anyway.
I cannot comprehend how, when so much is understood about how effective reward based training is, that people are still advocating any of the above techniques. Why force and coerce a creature, especially when it is possible to achieve better results by letting it choose if it would like to participate?
The method I used was:
"Listen to the birds body language, respect its wishes and offer it wonderful things."
I went with this technique. Within 2 weeks for my bird was hopping or flying onto my hand when called. Taking into account that my bird could live at least 20 years, 2 weeks is a blip across the screen. This process can take longer or be quicker, depending on the bird and the handler.
I had Sapphires cage in a spare room, every time I was going to enter the room I would tell her, open the door and slowly approach her cage to drop a treat (a small piece of fruit) into her dish and leave her to eat it. Within a few days she was running up to snatch the treat from my fingers as I dropped it into her dish. She was still exhibiting very cautious body language, but would not flutter off in a panic at my approach as she had when she first arrived at our house.
If she didn't approach me for the fruit, I just left it in her dish anyway. The idea was to get a positive association with my presence, not to make her come to me. There does not seem to be an advantage in making a bird come to you, besides in a human mind.
My bird soon decided I was pretty cool and is now very tame. She reliably steps up, goes to her cage, comes when called, goes in her travel cage, sits on my shoulder, lets me touch her head, chest and lift her wings, gives me a foot so I can trim her nails, plays with me, flies to me uninvited so she can preen my hair or just watch what I'm doing, demands attention when I'm busy, likes car rides, does a few tricks, flies to where I point and shoves her head into her harness and lets me wrap it around her (she is not completely harness trained yet). All of this has been achieved in about 4 months using only reward based training. Believe or not, I spend 5 minutes actively training her a day, I reinforce everything I like throughout the day. Because it has always been reinforced positively, she loves to oblige and be a good girl!
You can check out both my birds on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/ClaireInTheAir
Anyone with a bird should learn to observe it and what signals are being displayed, it requires sympathy and lots of patience. It is also essential that the trainer assesses themselves and makes improvements to their techniques if necessary. I do this on a daily basis.
Here is the taming method I followed http://learningparrots.com/blog/trainin ... l-parrots/
I would also recommend http://www.goodbirdinc.com, especially for anyone new to parrots and training. http://www.behaviorworks.org is a very valuable resource, especially for anyone who's bird feels it necessary to bite them. Parrots don't bite for no reason, there is always something that happens to cause it. A very common cause is fear.
Show your parrot you love it by learning about it and how is behaviour works so you can behave appropriately towards it and learn to have the best possible relationship with him or her!
Regards,
Claire
The most common advice was "clip it's wings!" Or "clip one wing" because that will make it tame.
This is a complete fallacy. I did not take this advice, of course. There seem to be an extraordinary amount of questions on here that run along the lines of "my bird bites me, his wings are clipped, what do I do?". If we apply some thought into the matter we realise that IRNs are a prey species (ie: they are not the hunters, they are the hunted). Their first method of defense is flight, quite literally. If they are deprived of this method they default to stage two in self defense: bite. The other problem I see with this method is that restricting a birds ability to fly away is not taming it, it is just removing the birds ability to make free choices about whether it should participate.
I am not going to discuss wing clipping in general here. I keep flighted birds and I would not consider myself a good trainer if I have to remove their ability to fly so i could train them.
Clipping one wing is not advocated by any authority on birds. It unbalances the bird and can cause major accidents before the bird realises it had no control and gives up flying.
"Hold the bird to your heart" or "wrap it in a towel and hug it"
Strangely enough, soft hearted hippies who do not understand the mechanics of animal behaviour think that this is nice because you're showing the bird you love it.
This is not how Indian Ringnecks interact with other birds they like at all! It is so removed from their nature that they do not comprehend it as something pleasant.
This method is most likely to produce what is referred to as "learnt helplessness". http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... lplessness
By holding the bird against your heart, it does not know that you love it. It knows it is trapped and it will learn that it can't do anything about its current situation. Resistance is futile, just give up.
"Put glove on, it will soon learn biting has no effect"
I really don't see why this is any different from the last technique. The only way one would have provoked a bite from my bird when I got her would have been to corner her somewhere, like her cage. Not only does the bird end up feeling unsafe in it's cage, but it also encourages the bird to practise biting your hand.
No one bothered to suggest the "take away it's food and it will come to you when it's hungry". This is just as well, as that would not have been well received. At 3 months old my bird still had some filling out to do and was near starting her first juvenile moult. She needed a complete diet.
It is possible to achieve dramatic results by simply using the birds one favoured food from their regular diet and using this food to reward the behaviour you like. My birds favourite food is any kind of fruit, which she only needs in moderation anyway.
I cannot comprehend how, when so much is understood about how effective reward based training is, that people are still advocating any of the above techniques. Why force and coerce a creature, especially when it is possible to achieve better results by letting it choose if it would like to participate?
The method I used was:
"Listen to the birds body language, respect its wishes and offer it wonderful things."
I went with this technique. Within 2 weeks for my bird was hopping or flying onto my hand when called. Taking into account that my bird could live at least 20 years, 2 weeks is a blip across the screen. This process can take longer or be quicker, depending on the bird and the handler.
I had Sapphires cage in a spare room, every time I was going to enter the room I would tell her, open the door and slowly approach her cage to drop a treat (a small piece of fruit) into her dish and leave her to eat it. Within a few days she was running up to snatch the treat from my fingers as I dropped it into her dish. She was still exhibiting very cautious body language, but would not flutter off in a panic at my approach as she had when she first arrived at our house.
If she didn't approach me for the fruit, I just left it in her dish anyway. The idea was to get a positive association with my presence, not to make her come to me. There does not seem to be an advantage in making a bird come to you, besides in a human mind.
My bird soon decided I was pretty cool and is now very tame. She reliably steps up, goes to her cage, comes when called, goes in her travel cage, sits on my shoulder, lets me touch her head, chest and lift her wings, gives me a foot so I can trim her nails, plays with me, flies to me uninvited so she can preen my hair or just watch what I'm doing, demands attention when I'm busy, likes car rides, does a few tricks, flies to where I point and shoves her head into her harness and lets me wrap it around her (she is not completely harness trained yet). All of this has been achieved in about 4 months using only reward based training. Believe or not, I spend 5 minutes actively training her a day, I reinforce everything I like throughout the day. Because it has always been reinforced positively, she loves to oblige and be a good girl!
You can check out both my birds on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/ClaireInTheAir
Anyone with a bird should learn to observe it and what signals are being displayed, it requires sympathy and lots of patience. It is also essential that the trainer assesses themselves and makes improvements to their techniques if necessary. I do this on a daily basis.
Here is the taming method I followed http://learningparrots.com/blog/trainin ... l-parrots/
I would also recommend http://www.goodbirdinc.com, especially for anyone new to parrots and training. http://www.behaviorworks.org is a very valuable resource, especially for anyone who's bird feels it necessary to bite them. Parrots don't bite for no reason, there is always something that happens to cause it. A very common cause is fear.
Show your parrot you love it by learning about it and how is behaviour works so you can behave appropriately towards it and learn to have the best possible relationship with him or her!
Regards,
Claire