Posted by bird-lover34 on Mon, 08/08/2005 - 22:09 :: Training
Note that the methods in this article are not endorsed by FeatherForum. Please see the discussion at the end of the article.

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 www.birdtricks.com 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.

I have to admit that my bird has really progressed in just 2 weeks following Chet's training program. Beginning from the wild, climbing all over the cage and flapping of wings and running away, (his Jackie Chan routine) he is now quite mellow.
He now sits quietly on his perch watching the daily activities of the household. He doesn't scream or screech. I try to give him several 5-10 minute training periods during the day and he readily steps one foot at a time up on the perch without trying to bite. We haven't gotten to the point of him stepping up with both feet yet but hey, for 2 weeks, he is doing great!

Hope this will be helpful to you.
Posted by Clive Jeffrey on Tue, 08/09/2005 - 16:10.
I do not mean to offend anyone but this is outdated information and is commonly called "Flooding" and basicly scares the animal into submission and has been scientificaly proven to fail over time. I certainly believe people should be very weary of these methods. If you want good information about bird training visit www.naturalencounters.com or join Dr Susan Friedmans ParrotBas list on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ParrotBAS/

Clive Jeffrey
Posted by NateW on Thu, 08/11/2005 - 22:03.
I'm amazed that works at all. It seems like what the bird learns is that it's helpless to avoid the owner, and Chet is betting that all birds will learn to enjoy being pet before they go totally nuts from being unable to escape. Fear and helplessness are not the best things to build a relationship on.

Even if this does work for you, I *strongly* recommend learning all you can about operant conditioning and clicker training. That stuff is all about teaching birds that people are fun to be around, not that people are unavoidable and must be tolerated. The sooner you switch to that approach to training, the sooner you'll have a relationship based on trust and choice.

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
Posted by NateW on Mon, 08/15/2005 - 22:16.
Bird-lover, I thank you for posting this, and I hope you are not offended that I have added a disclaimer to the top of the article. I am sure you mean well - and Chet probably does too - but I strongly disagree with the methods described in this article.

I hope you will stick around and learn more about training through positive reinforcement. I believe that it is a much better approach to parrot training (indeed, for training anything, including people!) and I think you will agree. :-) If you have any questions, just ask.

Respectfully,

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
Posted by bird-lover34 on Tue, 09/13/2005 - 10:09.
When I posted this article, I was passing along information gained by my desperate attempt to train my newly rescued Amazon. Since then, I have done a lot of research and tried several different methods of training. I consulted with Joanie Doss who has extensive experience with Amazons, her 9 performing Amazons and being able to allow up to 250 people to handle and pet her birds.
Her methods and Dr. Susan Friedman's seemed to be the best way to handle my bird. I have completely changed my approach to him and do not force him to do anything he doesn't want to do. We have had him 7 weeks now, and he is stepping one foot at a time on my hand willingly and happily accepting his treat for doing so. One of these days we will get both feet on my hand and we can progress to other fun things.
My apologies for posting the article without knowing all I needed to know a positive way to train.
Vel
Posted by NateW on Fri, 09/16/2005 - 19:26.
I'm glad to hear things are progressing. I'm huge fan of Dr. Susan Friedman and her approach to training.

I've also been reading some interesting stuff about food management lately - particularly about how birds that have a full bowl of food sitting in front of them all day are harder to train than birds who have well-defined feedings schedules. If things are going slowly with your Amazon, consider feeding him twice a day, and training him before meal times. But make sure he can eat all he wants at his evening feedings. The extra motivation will likely speed your progress a bit.

(Some people go so far as to manipulate their birds' weight by feeding just enough to maintain the weight at which the birds train best, but I'm not convinced that's worth the trouble unless you're going to fly the bird outdoors - where excellent training is literally a life-and-death issue.)

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
Posted by ChetWomach on Thu, 05/03/2007 - 20:24.
Hey Guys,

Chet Womach here just wanting to throw in my own thoughts to this post. First off this article I wrote was written back in 2003ish when I first started training parrots and I wasn't as experienced. And I no longer have quite the same view as I did back then when I wrote this article. However I will say this... my bird is still tame as ever and has NEVER reverted back to his old biting behaviors.

But with that said I have modified this approach to training. I still like using sticks with birds that like to attack their owners, lunge at them or run accross the cage and flail at them, as it lets sticks block a birds bites and let's you stand your ground so the bird doesn't learn that he has control over you. So that part of the training is still the same.

But what I have changed in my teachings is never doing anything that scares the parrot... scaring the parrot means you're moving too quikly. So what I do instead is move the sticks closer to the parrot and reward him with treats when he let's me get close, and continue to reward him with treats as he lets me get closer and closer to touching him with the perches until he actually let's me touch him. I take this approach slowly, and try to reestablish the birds trust in a way that I'm not going to scare, or hurt him in any way. And then once the bird realizes he get's rewarded for letting me touch him with sticks, I start inching my fingers up the sticks until I'm actually petting him with my fingers instead of the sticks. It's a fail proof method that works 100% of the time without upsetting the bird.

And it's particularly powerful for dealing with birds like macaws who like to stand their ground and attack you. Other methods should be used on birds that are fearful and run away from you, like many african greys for example. They require a totally different approach. Just don't read this article and think you know everything about what my training methods teach. My course comes with lots of different guidelines for dealing with different types of birds with different types of temperments, and I'm constantly updating it to show you the latest techniques with what's working today.

Hope that clears up any confusion,

Chet
Posted by kasabia on Tue, 05/22/2007 - 12:43.
I'm sure you are right but not in all cases. I have adopted a bird resently (first bird ive ever had), he is a little rascall!!! A beutiful bright green ring rosed parakeet. His bite can do some serious damage. Thing is, he is a very social bird, loves attention and to be around you. Where ever I go he will be flying close making sure he knows were I am. He loves cuddles but ON HIS OWN ACCORD!!! It has taken me a long time to be able to get my hands anywhere nere him. Ive worked around his visious bite and as soon as my fingers has touched his back or the back of his head he stops trying to bite me and starts singing and whissleing and really enjoys it. But should I do something he didnt expect like, move my finger half an inch closer to his wings or go to close to his beak, he would bite me! Its not until (with out using the wooden sticks, just my own fingers, but its the same thing) I just simply took his bites and didnt react to them, he has started to understand that his biting is going to do nothing. He now trusts me more, that I am not going to flinch and he is not going to scare me away. The principal is the same and I think it can do good its not just outdated. It did work for me and my little bird is now a little bundle of joy!
Posted by cockatoorescue on Fri, 09/07/2007 - 06:56.
I'm sorry this is VERY late in the "conversation" but I just stumbled upon it. Chet, this method does not work 100% of the time. I'm a professional bird trainer and have been for over 19 years. Lately I've been getting lots of birds that have lost all trust and respect for humans and their behavior has not only reverted but has gotten worse after using the techniques from your site! These birds are the most difficult to retrain and I really think you need a makeover on your website. Just because something works on a few birds does NOT mean it works on all of them. There are thousands of training methods and each bird needs a different one. You have to match the method to the bird and not generalize.
The other problem I have with your website is the clicker training. Birds do NOT consider clickers a treat. I don't believe in treat training at all because it teaches the parrot to do the behavior (or not do the behavior) just so it gets a treat, not because it wants to make you happy. The moment you don't have a treat or clicker in your hand, that bird is going to go back to the screaming and biting. If you teach the bird to do something based on your approval or a "good boy/girl!" it will then always do the behavior because it seeks your approval-not a treat. This teaches them to be your FRIEND instead of your birdie robot.
I'm not saying at all that your techniques never work or that you are a terrible person or anything, I'm just letting you know my experience with birds. I'd also like to offer to help you "come up with" some real techniques to put on your website, and I really think the best thing you can do to make it really successful would be to put a "matchmaker" function on it. List common problems with birds, then the type of bird, age of bird, the food the bird is eating (yes, this has a LOT to do with behavior, actually) and some other variables to best match the training method with the bird.
Anyways, those are my thoughts. Not meant to be rude, insulting or anything like that. I just really wanted to comment.
Carol
Posted by kibibi on Sun, 11/18/2007 - 15:14.
For anyone interested, here are several links to positive reinforcement training techniques that are used by most professional animal trainers;

http://www.infosuperflyway.com/links.php#iti

Here is also a listing of books related to positive reinforcement training;

http://www.infosuperflyway.com/links.php#rtbrl

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Visit Kibibi's InfoSuperFlyway
http://www.infosuperflyway.com
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Posted by tweetysmama on Sun, 01/27/2008 - 01:01.
I do not mean to offend anyone but I do not agree with that method at all. When I got my cockatiel, Tweety, he was already 6 years old and had been rarely handled because he would bite whoever was handling him. When I first got him he tried to bite me as well. I started off with just talking to him at first. Then after a few days I opened the door to his cage so he could come out when he wanted all the while continuing to talk to him. After about a week I would go up to him and put my hand to him for him to step up. He did bite me. It took me several weeks for him to come to me when he was outside of his cage and several months before he let me put my hand in his cage and bring him out. They are not biting you to be mean or vicious. They are biting because they are scared and also that is their way of testing you. If you jerk your hand away every time they go to bite you because you don't want to get bitten then they take it as you are afraid of them and will continue to do it. Keep in mind too that they don't always want to be held. My cockatiel is very affectionate but he has his moments where he wants to be left alone and will bite or hiss at you to let you know. Getting a bird to come to you takes patience just like everything else. They are no different than any other animal.