Back in the cage - only with a reward!

[Digital_Fid]

Hi all,

I'm discovering with my one year old Eclectus and Long Billed Corella that they are only ever really obedient or 'well behaved' when there are treats (as rerwards) involved.

The smaller items like 'step up' and 'step down' and to some degree 'stay' and 'come' work without treats but the bigger jobs (and the most relevant for us at the moment) is the return to cage. The only way our fids are going to return to their cage without them getting a bit angry is to lure them and reward them.

They both fly, so if we don't lure them they choose to fly from our hand as we enter the threshhold of the cage door. Really the only alternative is to chase and manhandle them into the cage, which as you all know is not very productive or kind - It has happened once when they absolutely had to be in the cage promptly for safety reasons.

Sometimes, although it's fairly rare, even the lure of a treat isn't enough to return them to the cage.

I thought at some stage that habbit would kick in and they would enter the cage without the need for a treat.

Is this the way it is for you?

DF

[4HAND]

How much total time do they get out of the cage?Perhaps they need more playtime?
Tena

[tielfan]

There's nothing wrong with using a treat to lure them back in the cage, especially if the treat is something healthy. What your birds are telling you is that staying out of the cage is more fun than going back, until the promise of a treat makes going back more interesting.

My Shodu loves being with me so much that for a long time it was almost impossible to get her back in the cage without a treat. The only other way to get her off my hand was to scrape her off against a perch, and that didn't always work - sometimes she'd run up my arm to avoid stepping down. After about a year and a half of food bribery she'll sometimes get off my hand and go in without me showing her a treat, and when this happens I almost always get a treat for her after I've closed the cage door. Good behavior deserves a reward!

[Digital_Fid]

Thanks for the feedback - Christmas got in the way!

"How much total time do they get out of the cage?Perhaps they need more playtime?"

Yes Tena, good point. The answer is as much time as possible, which turns out to be the later half of the day when my wife and I are not at work. This obviously does not count weekends and days off where they would get more out-of-cage time. I think they have a good balance of in-cage time and out-of-cage time and since they are only 1 year old I wouldn't want them to get use to 100% out of cage time - this might lead to some annoying problems when they actually needed to be safely locked up.

Our cage environment is a rewarding and playfull one by the way.

For those interested in this post, I've spent three sessions with my fids since my original post, just rewarding step ups and step downs into the cage and this has had good results. Now under some circumstances, they will happily step up from the top of their cage and be transported to their perch inside the cage - without flying off. This is a big change from two weeks ago - especially when they *knew* it was cage time.

I'll keep up the training.

DF