Clicker Training.

[Renae]

Anyone do this with their birds?

I do it with 2 of my tiels, I find it very helpful and good for teaching tricks.

[Courtzrocks]

I havent done it with birds but it has worked for some dogs we have had....Matches pretty much responds with the "good girl" phrase i use when she does a trick.

[Taldaine]

I've been working on some clicker training with my conure. It has some promising results so far. I'll probably look into reading one of the training books out there for birds that involve clicker training. I've heard good things about the book by Melinda Johnson. I believe that's the author, but I could be mistaken.

[VictoriaRose]

I've started clicker training with my parrotlet... I couldn't tell you if it works or not as right now we're only on the very first step: getting him to understand that when I click, he gets a reward. :P

But its a very good idea, IMO, I think its a good way to train desirable behaviors into your birds and ween out the bad ones. I'm hoping it will help when he becomes mature and starts being hormonal. :)

[jenseits]

Melinda Johnson also runs the Bird Click group on Yahoo, which is completely free. I have been doing clicker training with my sun conure for a couple of months and it has been really great. (here's my first blog entry about it: Fast Progress with Clicker Training « Best in Flock - Blog About My Conure Parrot)

He can do several "stupid parlor tricks" now, but more important to me is that he behaves so much better.

It's a lot of fun and I recommend it to anyone. Would love to hear about some of your success stories - please update us on your progress!

[sweetpeaches]

i have bought the books and the clicker and will start training bailey when i get back from vacation in a couple of weeks.

[aidee]

Yip - either clicker training definitely works or I have a really tame birdie :)

I got my 4-month-old cockatiel about 6 days ago. At first, he would start flapping about his cage whenever anyone got within 5 feet of it. So, I bought a clicker and would stand there until he stopped flapping. As soon as he stopped, I would click it and walk away for 5 minutes.

That same day, he let me put my hand in his cage.
The next day, he let me touch his head.
On the 3rd day, he was stepping up when enticed but was REALLY nippy (biting hard sometimes).
By the 4th day, he was stopped most of the biting.
On the 5th day, he was stepping on command (even when my finger was really far away, he would use his beak as a third foot kind of thing).
Today, the 6th day I've had him, he's learning to fly from one hand to the other when enticed.

What was holding his training back was the fact that I could only reward him verbally, since he was still afraid to eat treats from my hand. I tried sunflower seeds, pellets, etc but he wouldn't eat them because my fingers were too close to his mouth. Tonight, I found some millet spray thing that he does eat from my hand!

Tomorrow, I'll try to teach him to wave and keep working on the fly-on-command :-)