anyone tried birdtricks.com?

[tdmsu]

I've seen these videos advertised, and being a newbie, I am not sure if they work. Has anyone tried them?

I am not a bird companion yet... I am considering a sun conure or maybe a senegal... I am a teacher, so there will be times when I can only give 1-2 hours of time a day... should I avoid suns for that reason?

Thanks for any advice!

Paul

[PowerBBS]

Originally Posted by tdmsu

I've seen these videos advertised, and being a newbie, I am not sure if they work. Has anyone tried them?

I am not a bird companion yet... I am considering a sun conure or maybe a senegal... I am a teacher, so there will be times when I can only give 1-2 hours of time a day... should I avoid suns for that reason?

Thanks for any advice!

Paul

bring your fid 2 school with you, your students will love it... and so will your fid, especially if it's a Sun.... They seem to love people and interactivity. If you did this, you'd most likely have a very social and friendly bird as they'd be so used to being around many people. You'll find out that as long as people are around the Sun will most likely be calm and quiet.

NOTE: Of course, make sure you purchase some hand sanitization lotion and have your students use it everytime.

[jenseits]

Originally Posted by tdmsu

I've seen these videos advertised, and being a newbie, I am not sure if they work. Has anyone tried them?

You can do a search on "Chet Womach", the guy behind birdtricks.com, and see some opinions about his products. You can do the search on this site and on the web.

I personally prefer Melinda Johnson's Clicker Training. She has a book and a Yahoo Group: Bird-Click : Bird-Click. It's all (only) about positive reinforcement and it works great.

[Nazir's]

I looked into BirdTricks and ever since then they have been sending me e-mails DAILY! I have not ever went any further than registeristing myself so that I could watch one of those video clips. It sounded good to me at first but after receiving pesty e-mails daily, I decided that it might be better for me to stay away.

[featherfanatics]

Originally Posted by Nazir's

I looked into BirdTricks and ever since then they have been sending me e-mails DAILY! I have not ever went any further than registeristing myself so that I could watch one of those video clips. It sounded good to me at first but after receiving pesty e-mails daily, I decided that it might be better for me to stay away.

I get the same thing! I figure if it's as good as they say then why would they send you daily emails on it?

[wildirish]

I have never bought any of the training videos, so don't know much about them, but this other thread talks about this one and gives some other sites as well....

Training Methods Which One??

[cody123]

Me To i get those emails daily and if you read the story of the man their is alot of swearing so i decided not to buy it either

[Freedomoflight]

Chet Womach uses flooding methods as his 'trick of the trade'. It is essentially scaring the bird into submission. I would never buy one of his products. Not only is he a regular pain in the you-know-what, but he uses some nasty marketing techniques. Like, buying a crapload of domains, so when you google 'senegal' or 'macaw' or 'caique', you get directed to a page that talks about TOP food and training your bird. All those pages are, are a portal to his main site.

Parrot Training Review

Discover an Explosive New Conure Training System

are examples of these 'portal sites'. Now, here is an example of Chets 'training techniques'

Chet Womach has written an article on "How Can I Get My Bird to Love Me". In it, he tells how to stop your bird from biting. Since I have only had my wild Amazon for 2 weeks I can't submit this as an expert, but I am making progress with it and maybe it will help you too.

If your bird already steps up and you can transfer him to a T perch, you are already half there.

Here is what Chet says to do:
Bring him into a room that has no distractions AWAY from the room his cage is in. TV off, no barking dogs etc.
* Take a wooden dowel in both hands. Each dowel should be about 1-2 feet long. You are going to take one of the dowels and reach towards your bird as if to pet it on its wing. Your bird will most likely go to bite the stick, and at the EXACT moment he does, reach in as if to pet the bird's other wing with your other wooden dowel.
* Stay calm in trying to pet your bird with the sticks, and do your best to not let your bird bite onto the stick. What this is doing is distracting your parrot with one stick while you move in to pet it with the other. Once the other stick touches your bird he will switch his aggression from the stick he was first distracted by, to the one you just moved in to pet him with.
* Then just repeat this procedure by each time he goes for one stick touching him with the other one. this will get many birds quite flustered. we show on our videotape exactly hot to do this procedure and actually taped one of our birds on his first training session. He flapped his wings furiously, and screamed as loud as he could. And the reason he did was because he was uncomfortable, and we were breaking through barriers of distrust and teaching him that no matter how hard he bites the sticks or how much of a ruckus he makes, we will still going to pet him. This slowly starts to train your bird that biting you will not stop you from petting him, and will eventually lead towards significantly reducing that amount of biting your bird will do to get what he wants.
* Most birds will stop putting up as much of a fight against your sticks in a matter of minutes, and might even start enjoying being touched. When you can tell that your bird is starting to accept the touching of the sticks, it is time to start moving your hands in closer.

You must make sure that when it is time to move your hands closer, you do so by inching your fingers closer and closer up the stick towards your parrot with each pet of the stick. This slowly lets the parrot understand, and get comfortable with your actual fingers getting closer and closer. It is kind of like you are trying to inch your fingers closer without having your parrot notice. And eventually you want to sneak your fingers up so close that you can even sneak the tip of your finger out farther than your stick and pet the bird with your finger, and not the stick.

When you have gotten this far, you have been doing all the right things, and just need to continue getting your bird comfortable with your hands. Your bird will most likely make a lot of progress every day, but also backtrack a little bit between training sessions, so the the key is to stay consistent. Each time he backtracks and wants to bite you again, just resort back to the sticks, and repeat all the above steps.

You can always take this one step further and actually do this perch trainign on the floor in a corner of your room. This will eliminate the problem of your bird flying away, because he has nowhere to go, and it puts you in an even higher position of dominance by being located on the floor.

Don't make a big scene when he bites you. Instead of pulling away and screaming "ouch" etc. which is great fun for your bird to see you do, you just act as though nothing is happening and actually push INTO the bite instead of pulling away. This tells the bird that no matter how hard he bites, you are not going to allow him to dictate what you want him to do. You will be training your bird that no amount of lunging or biting will stop you from petting it or picking it up.

You can get Chet's free 3 day training course at Parrot Training Tips To Fix Your Pet Parrots Problems as well as more information on the training course he offers. Don't expect a lot of email support because they don't answer their emails at all.

[Freedomoflight]

Apparently he also passing himself off as a dog trainer, too.

TheDogTrainingSecret: Dog Obedience Training Tips

Chet Womach - Buzzle Author

Inform You - Chet Womach Dog Trainer

I smell a fat, huge, RAT!

[tdmsu]

Wow! I am impressed at the quick response I'm getting here... I am feeling welcome!
If I cannot take my bird to school, would 1 or 2 hours in the evening be enough to create a happy environment for parrot? I don't want to obtain a bird and make it miserable! I have read that Senegals are more able to amuse themselves while we are at work... are Suns less capable of that? I am, of course willing to provide many toys to play with, etc...

Thanks everyone!

pt