Chet Womach says that most companion parrots are 10% overweight & he recommends a certain training diet:
Start out by weighing how many grams of food you feed your bird in a 24 hour period, for a few days. Then cut that daily amt by 2 grams for a 24 hour period. The next eve make up the two grams by feeding treats of some sort from your hand. If the bird doesn't eat the treats out of your hand, it's either becuz he's scared of your hand, in which case you need to keeping trying, OR he's still eating more than he needs, in which case you should then decrease his amt of daily diet by another 1 gram.
He's saying that once you get it established, this is a great way of training your parrots by using treats.
Any other ideas?
i would like to start training jasper ASAP as he is now weaned
Babies dont do 'diet's. I wanna chock whomever printed that book.
Unless you have a breeder bird, which you dont. You have a baby. I would stick to the ringneck diet. Thier food is so essential that the lack of proper nutrition will start to show VERY quickly:
Dull color
Poor feather condition
Black barring throughout the bird, which stress can also cause.
Your bird is a baby. It doesnt need ANY dietary restrictions at this time, IMHO.
Dont buy everything you read. Especially when researching ringnecks. Believe about 10% of it. Truth is... noone knows crap about the breed yet. Its a trial and error thing when it comes to taming anf training this breed. Pick a page, any page... hard pressed to find any 'positive' info on ringnecks yet we all know thats lunacy. They are WONDERFUL!
Tricks?
Lets start with: step up, step down, getting him in and out of his cage willingly... those are the things you need to work on. Not getting him to roller skate.
He is a Baby. Train him to be a good bird BEFORE training him to be a trickster. By that I mean, when you say step up he does it THEN, no thought, just does it on command and instantly because you said so.
Hun, stepping up is a trick. We cant walk up to a wild bird and say step up and they do it. They have no concept. Baby steps. It will be a good deal of time before your baby has its wits about him enough to do tricks.
Baby is 1.5 yrs old and is still a clumcy dork because they try to act like monkeys. Give it time hun. Relax. You have at least 6 months before even considering elaborate tricks. The bird doesnt have the skills. Still clumsy.
If your bird doesnt do that. You MUST, for their safety (house-fire) train them to step up NOW and not leave when and how long it takes up to them. If so, they arent trained.
Last edited by Mikaela on Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
He's up and down no problem, in and out of cage, on to floor or gym, he is such a good boy.
thats why i came ehere before thinking about doing it.
at the moment he's on parrot mix, frech fruit and veg and what ever he chooses off my dinner plate (will tryo to get pics or vids of him eating with me tomorrow.
what would be a good treat, IMHO a treat needs to be able to be eaten fairly quickly for ease of repition, any ideas, he has access to nuts sultantas (gets about 3 or 4 a day) but it takes him ages to eat them.
i do have Kaytees bird treats here, (cherry flavor) but he's not too fussed on them.
Dont let him on the floor or he will never stay on a stand as long as you want but only for as long as HE wants.
Floor bad, scary. My birds were raised this way and NEVER fly from their stand... ever. So I dont have to use cages.
Floor scary! Bad! Someone will step on me!
I use grapes for treats, seedless. They get eaten fast and back to what we were doing. Also, look for something called spray millet. Its like sex for ringnecks.
I just wanted to praise you, yet once again. You are a great daddy and to know a ringneck owns you makes my heart sour.
Oh yeah... eating off your plate... good job daddy. I know to some that sounds nasty but to us, its life. Let that baby eat and eat and eat and eat.
Jasper, Im worried about your baby losing its color. He and Baby were blessed to look VERY vivid, almost emerald. Without proper food, our bird will simply look like a green.
There, I said it... that was my fear with Jasper.
Last edited by Mikaela on Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
he waits to be put on the floor, if he's on the gym, cage or with us he doesn't try to jump down, at the moment we are in a very small flat, so it's the only way we can give him room to play with his ball.
we are moving in january and will have more space and room for a dining room table.
even when he has been put on the floor he has a quick look around and a play then it's straight to one of his spots.
I edited the above post hun. Added more info as you were posting.
Placing him on the floor is cool. Letting him go there on his own isnt. Too many electrical cords. He needs to think YOU have you be around or the floor may get him!
They love string, wires... death by socket would suck and you knoooow that baby can bite through a cord.
he has millet spray in his cage all the time, same with the gym.
he actully looks to us that his colour is getting better, the only cameras we have are on cell phones and most are taken at night with artificial light, will try to get my hands on a decent cam to get some clearer ones.
Actually, a training diet is a good idea. The bird isn't losing any nutrition or anything- it's not like you're switching foods. You just save the treats for training. I don't care how piggish Hane is or how much he likes millet- if he's full, he won't do treats. So I hold a little back for is training sessions. Even if I don't hold back, he still only eats so much per day. So if I do hold back a little, he gets no less than he would any other day. Though, I never limit his fresh foods. It's only time he would spend eating pellets that I train...
As far as trick training- I say go for it. It does strengthen the bond between you and your bird. It means more time spent with one another in a good way. Even with puppies, you don't wait to begin training- you begin right away. And birds need even more stimulation than dogs in their life. They are so much more intelligent.
Our birds like the floor too, but don't go there on their own. If something scares them and they happen to fall, they come waddling over to us to be picked up. But when it's playtime, there's nothing they love more than to walk on the floor chasing the dogs!
IRNs are a very independant species of parrot, but they still do tricks. Sure, our beginning tricks are nothing more than 'step-up' or down, but those are mastered quickly and you can move on. It only takes one trick to get them going, once they realize that you're trying to get them to do something for the reward, they'll try.
A trick in my mind is something a bird wouldn't do naturally, such as Hane letting me touch his extended wings or flipping him over into my hand. Nearly all tricks require the building of trust- and isn't that what we're trying to build with our birds?
Last edited by Melika on Tue Oct 31, 2006 10:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I've been called 'birdbrained' before, but somehow I don't think this is what they meant. say:hah-nay
I for one allow my fids on the floor. Why? Well Prinny loves it as does Aggers. I have the living room and hallway set up for them in mind and I keep an eye on them at all times but they are allowed down there.
And about the whole 'diet training' I too have heard many GREAT things with that. You don't starve them but you do hold back. If a bird is full they aren't gonna want to train. If food motivates your bird...hey more power to you! Then you got it made for ways to get your bird to want to learn.
Don't discount anything when it comes to parrots...one thing will work for one and won't for another. Try it and see...
I don't agree with a training diet limiting food is not healthy. You would do better to pick your training times when your bird is hungry like first thing in the morning or late afternoon to modivate him. After training give him his normal meal. What you do need to do is find a special food your bird will love and only using it during training. I don't have much of a problem with my birds they will eat anything at any time. You could pretend to eat the treat to modivate your bird. I also suggest sticking to fresh foods, bits of apple, almonds, cashews etc.
I have the Womach brothers taining video. I found that Nila loves sunflower seeds and will eat them no matter what or when or where. If I show him a sunflower seed he will stop whatever he is doing and go for the seed. But he played with the shells and wouldn't pay attention some times so I bought a bag of raw sunflower kernels at the health food store, unsalted and already shelled. Nila is like an alcoholic seeing a bottle of liquor when he sees them, I have his undivided attention. So I keep his training short and use the seeds to motivate him, He doesn't get them unless we're training and he knows he has to do something to get one little kernel. I keep them in a jar on my desk and he hears me open the jar he's already at attention and leaning off his cage or playgym waiting for me to pick him up.
I too had trouble thinking of limiting food since Nila is still young and this worked out great for me, since he gets all he wants of his pellets and fresh food and only gets the seeds as treats for training.
Sue
Rowdy Vos eclectus, Dolly Cockatiel
Nila Blue IRN, Priya Grey IRN, and Bigotes the cat
mkmagu wrote:I don't agree with a training diet limiting food is not healthy. You would do better to pick your training times when your bird is hungry like first thing in the morning or late afternoon to modivate him. After training give him his normal meal. What you do need to do is find a special food your bird will love and only using it during training. I don't have much of a problem with my birds they will eat anything at any time. You could pretend to eat the treat to modivate your bird. I also suggest sticking to fresh foods, bits of apple, almonds, cashews etc.
Bird crazy wrote:I have the Womach brothers taining video. I found that Nila loves sunflower seeds and will eat them no matter what or when or where. If I show him a sunflower seed he will stop whatever he is doing and go for the seed. But he played with the shells and wouldn't pay attention some times so I bought a bag of raw sunflower kernels at the health food store, unsalted and already shelled. Nila is like an alcoholic seeing a bottle of liquor when he sees them, I have his undivided attention. So I keep his training short and use the seeds to motivate him, He doesn't get them unless we're training and he knows he has to do something to get one little kernel. I keep them in a jar on my desk and he hears me open the jar he's already at attention and leaning off his cage or playgym waiting for me to pick him up. I too had trouble thinking of limiting food since Nila is still young and this worked out great for me, since he gets all he wants of his pellets and fresh food and only gets the seeds as treats for training.
Hane used to play with the sunflower seed shells too. It's his favourite treat. But he learned so quickly that more would come the faster he ate them, lol! He's such a little pig. Sometimes though, he gets so focused on the food, he'll block out everything else (of course, he'll do that any time, even with a bowl of food in front of him he'll want what I have). So then the training sessions end for the day. He just makes me laugh and starts saying, "Hey Hane, yeah!" to me.
I've been called 'birdbrained' before, but somehow I don't think this is what they meant. say:hah-nay
