Potty training

[sugar_queen10]

With my sun conure i want to potty train him and i notice he starts to back up when he gets ready to poo but i never have time to get him to his cage,trash can, or a napkin in time.Im finding this very hard to do anyone have any tips?

[The Outlaw]

Here's how I trained my Ekkie: I took a wicker basket, weighted the bottom with a brick and covered that with newspaper. I keep that basket whereever I'm sitting. When I thought she might be ready to go, I'd put her on the handle and told her to "go potty". She was reliably trained within 72 hours. They are very smart.

THE OUTLAW

[peeker]

My nine-year old trained his gold capped conure. It's fifty percent training the bird where and when and fifty percent training the boy to remember! He places her on a perch and tells her "go poop!" and then leaves her until she does. When she does he tells her "good girl!" and lets her ride on his shoulder for awile. In a bit he places her on a perch again with the same command. She had many accidents when she first got here and hardly ever does anymore!
Good luck with your conure!
Christy

[TooLover]

My newest addition, my female U2, tells us "give me poop" when she has to go. We put her on her perch, she goes, we tell her "good girl" and pick her up. It is the cutest thing ever..................

[Ingrid]

Well I cant say that Kally was trained in 72 hours, but I can sAY, that it is an on going thing with her, but she is just about fully trained, I take her back to her cage about every 15-20 and tell her to go pee, and she does .there are sometimes that I have waited to long and she will poop.

Ingrid

[smallonion]

Be careful with this. I've read that some parrots are so eager to please, if they are trained and you forget to give them the 'signal' they can make themselves sick holding it in.

Michele and Humph

[birdyland]

smallonion is right, but I have heard that this happens very rarely.

Tiki my Scarlet Macaw and Niki my M2 are both trained. Tiki within 2 days when she was 6 months old, and Niki within a week when she was 2 years old. Their commands are "bombs away" for Tiki, and "drop it" for Niki. I recommend different commands be used when training multiple birds.

As the others have said, the best way to do this is to put them on a perch, give them their command line, and praise and pick them up when they have done the deed. This will take some patience on your part, and the older the bird, often the more patience and accidents. First, I would pay attention to how often your bird "goes" and start putting them on the perch at least 5 minutes before then. For example, if your bird generally goes every 20 minutes, place on the stand and start giving a cue at 15 minutes. As the bird starts to get it, you can shorten that safety window... and eventually, hopefully your bird will start to let you know!

You are doing good that you recognize your bird's cue (backing up). Once they realize what you are trying to train them to do, they will often extend that behavior by a few seconds so you can see what they want, or in many cases if you have a talker... they will start saying their cue word!

[Ingrid]

Kally will actually get nippy and squarms around, so I know that she has to go..............and if I'm not paying attention, she will let go and poop..........never really had a problem at all.

Ingrid