Establishing Your Parrot’s Training Diet
The training diet, like many of the “core” necessities of
parrot trick training is essential,
and often gets me into heated arguments as to its validity.
There are people who profess to be experts in the parrot
world who get very upset when
they find out that I set birds up on a training diet despite
my efforts to show them how to
do it in a way that is actually healthier for the bird than
not being on a training diet.
l’ve found that these people can tend to be the “tree
hugger” type, and I’m not against
firing them as customers. Of course I do it politely, and
they get their full refund, but
I’m not in business to make everyone fall in love with me.
I’m in business to teach
principles that work, and that improve a bird’s health and
happiness. And I have way
too many other customers who’ve become true believers in the
magical things a training
diet can do for a bird, to let a heckler or two get to me.
I tell you this to prepare you for the uneducated would—be
parrot savior who may
attempt to come into your life after starting your bird on a
training diet. Don’t let them
convince you that you’re an evil person.
So here’s what I’m going to do for you... first I’m going to
explain how to set your
parrot up on a healthy training diet, that will leave him
motivated for training. And then
I’m going to show you how to counter a would be “training
diet hater” when you meet
them in an intemet chatroom or forum. That way you’ll know
how to stand up for
yourself and these proven training principles.
Why Does Your Bird Need A Training Diet?
Trick training is predominately taught by rewarding a parrot
with a treat for performing
a particular task or tasks. Treats are not the only form of
motivation that work
effectively. Praise, scratches on the head, and strokes
under a bird’s wings work well
too. But for 95% of parrots, food is the best motivator.
There are however, right and wrong ways to use food as a
reward for training your bird.
To demonstrate these reasons, let me ask you a question?
Let’s say it’s Sunday, and you are having family in from out
of town, and heading out to
the biggest, best place for Sunday brunch in your town. This
place doesn’t just offer
brunch; they offer the most conclusive spread of amazing
food you’ve ever seen. They
even bring in the best Chefs from around the area.
Warm plate in hand, you head for the omelets first, and then
come back for a quiche,
waffles smothered with strawberries and whip cream, and you
can’t help yourself so you
grab a cinnamon role and pile up a plate of fresh fruit too,
Let me ask you a very important question that is vital for
you to understand if you’re
going to have success in training your parrot? How do you
feel after you’ve managed to
cram all that food into your stomach?
I’m serious, answer the question for yourself. Here’s a list
of the ways I’d feel:
- · Lethargic
- · Like I want to take a nap
- · Sick from too much sugar
- · I’d have a stomach ache
- · Like I’d puke if I got too much exercise
So now let me ask you this? It’s THE most important point of
this whole section... if
after that point where you were stuffed beyond stuffed and
didn’t want to eat another
bite, would it matter if I hired the world’s best gourmet
chef, flew him in from Italy, and
had him bake you your most favorite dessert?
Unless you’re a total glutton for punishment, my guess is
you’d turn down any more
food at the drop of a hat! You wouldn’t even think twice
about it. And just the thought
of more food makes you green at the gills.
So how does this relate to parrot training?
For most parrot owners, they treat their parrots like the
restaurant business treats Sunday
brunch. Every day they leave a full bowl of food in their
parrot’s cage all day long.
This inevitably causes the bird to overeat, get overweight
and lethargic.
But more importantly, from a training perspective, a bird
that’s been stuffing his face
into a never ending pile of food for the last 5 years or
more, doesn’t get real fired up
about learning a new trick when all you’re offering him, is
the same sunflower seed that
he’s been chomping on all day!
Do you understand how important this point is? To train a
bird requires that the bird
know that if he does something you want him to do; he will
get a reward that is worth
working for. And if that reward isn’t worth working for,
you’re going to have a tough
time training your bird. It’s that cut and dry.
Manufacture A Training Diet That Helps Motivate Your Parrot
To do this let me first explain the basics. I am not talking
about any form of starvation
or food deprivation. In fact, your bird will get nearly the
same amount of food that he
already gets; he just won’t have access to it all day long.
Instead we’ll break it up into
meals for him.
I should also mention that when changing your bird over to
the diet I am about to
recommend, you should consult your avian veterinarian to
make sure that your bird is in
good enough health to be put on this type of diet.
1 should also mention that a baby parrot that is still
growing should not be placed on this
diet either as their bodies are in constant need of
nutrition necessary to become healthy
adult birds. Restricting a growing bird’s caloric intake is
not a healthy or wise thing to
do.
I also want to encourage you to adopt the practice of
weighing your birds daily. You
should do this for 2 main reasons:
1. Because the training diet limits your bird’s access to
food, the only way you can
know for sure that your parrot is getting enough food to
remain healthy, and that
you are not over restricting his diet, is to monitor his
bodyweight. This is
critically important when training smaller birds, because
any drop in bodyweight
is more critical to a cockatiel or parakeet, than a Macaw.
A macaw could go several days without food before dying,
Where a parakeet
might make it a day and a half. Attempting a training diet
without using a scale
is foolish, and not recommended.
2. The second reason is because a parrot will first show
signs of sickness by
dropping its bodyweight. And because we make a strict
practice of weighin g our
parrots daily, we’ve saved the lives of Linus, our cockatoo,
and the lives of one
of our Toucans, by our weight charts showing a drop in
weight and us getting the
bird to the veterinarian in time to fight off a deadly
infection that would have
killed our bird if we’d waited another 24 hours. It’s vital
you treat this with
importance.
Which Brings Me To The Second Most Popular Mistake I SeePeople Make When Setting Up A Training Diet For Their Bird
Picking the wrong food can crumble your chances at training
success before you even
start. The reason for this is because currently over 50% of
the parrots in the world are
told by the breeders and pet stores they bought their birds
from, that an all seed based
diet is normal, healthy and OK.
This is complete garbage, and you may be shocked to hear
this, but you’re cutting your
bird’s lifespan in half if you feed it an all seed based
diet!
I’m not going to go into all the reasons why seeds are
terrible as a base diet for your
parrot. That discussion deserves its own place and time.
This course is about trick
training, and l’n1 going to do my best to keep it that way.
But it should be sufficient to
say that you need to make sure your bird is eating at the
very least, a pellet based diet;
preferably an organic pellet based diet.
I personally recommend and use an organic pellet
manufactured by a friend of mine,
which has recently been getting a lot of recognition in the
parrot world for her quality of
food. And you can find some of this food on my website at
http://www.birdtricks.com/
organic. The food isn’t cheap, but neither is your bird. And
in my opinion, you need to
focus on feeding your bird the highest quality of food,
versus trying to find the cheapest
bargains. It is true, that in life you get what you pay for,
so you should worry if you’re
buying your food for $8 a bag at your local pet store, it’s
probably garbage!
Ok I’m done. I’ll get off my soapbox now and approach this
issue of food from a
second, and entirely different, perspective. Even if you
don’t care one bit about the
nutrition and quality of health of your bird, you should
still avoid seed based diets for
this reason...
Usually, seeds make the best treats! And it’s as true for
parrots as it is for us humans;
absence makes the heart grow stronger! Meaning that I
suggest you pull all seeds out of
your parrot’s diet, so that when you offer them as treats,
those seeds suddenly become
way more worthwhile to work for after one week without them,
then if they were always
in your bird’s food bowl.
I’m going to go slightly off track here and just mention
briefly the importance of findin g
treats that your bird enjoys as training rewards. The
easiest way to accomplish this is to
offer a bowl of what you think would be yummy treats; seeds,
nuts, and fresh cut fruit to
your bird. Watch what he goes for first and what he leaves
behind.
Offer these first eaten treats as rewards when you begin
training but be sure to offer a
variety of treats throughout the training process so that
your bird does not become bored
with any particular food.
Setting Up A Training Diet For Your Parrot
By now you understand you should be feeding your bird a
pellet based diet, you’ve got a
weight scale to monitor your bird’s weight so that he stays
healthy. Now let’s talk about
the specific details and suggested guidelines for setting up
your bird’s training diet.
Here is my philosophy...
I am a big believer in not leaving a bird’ s food dish full
all day long. Instead I believe in
setting up an eating schedule for your bird, sort of like
mealtimes.
There are three ways you can set up your bird’s training
diet
I. You can train 3 times per day, with 3 scheduled feeding
times. This is the
quickest way to see results in your parrot, and allows you
to have 3 training
sessions throughout the day.
2. You can set up a 2 separate meal times throughout the
day, and train before you
head to work in the morning, and then again when you come
home from work.
3. Or you can just train once per day, usually in the
morning. This will get you the
slowest results that you’re after, but will still work.
Some of this may be determined by your personal schedule but
it will also be
determined by your bird’s attention span. Some birds simply
cannot or won’t train three
times a day.
Setting Your Bird Up To Train 3 Times A Day
When I’ve a new trick in mind, I like to train my parrot
three times per day. You will
find that your parrot has a limited attention span, and that
your parrot only enjoys
training for a limited amount of time. When you first start
training your bird, this
amount of time, can literally be as long as 30 seconds and
may only give you enough
time to get one or two repetitions of a behavior in, before
your bird is no longer
interested.
What a training diet does is get your bird hungry; not
starving. Just like you and 1 might
get hungry between breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner.
It’s the same way for
your bird. We set up training, and feeding schedule so that
between meals the bird gets
hungry for his next meal.
Then all we have to do is offer that bird a treat he truly
loves, and he’s going to be 10
times more motivated to perform for us.
Here’s how the set up goes...
You’ll want to plan out your training a day in advance. The
night before you plan on
starting your parrots training, I recommend you make sure he
gets a good dinner, with
lots of healthy foods. Make sure he gets tons of fruits and
veggies, and lots of his pellet
mix. Then, after he’s finished eating, take his food out of
his cage.
This way, in the morning when the bird wakes up, and goes
through his normal ritual of
marching down to his food bowl to get some breakfast because
he’s hungry, he’ll be
forced to turn to you for his source of food.
So that next morning when you wake up, make sure to have a
baggie of your bird’s
favorite treats ready. This should be something your parrot
truly loves to eat. My bird
likes sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, banana chips, and
peanuts. Peanuts are by far
absolute favorite.
This sets up the stage for a perfect training situation. You
should then train your bird
until he starts to lose interest, preferably before. Make
sure to end on a positive training
note and then put your bird back in his cage. This time make
sure to also put back his
full food bowl and plenty of fresh fruits and veggies.
Congratulations, you’ve now finished the first of three
training sessions for the day.
Now you can let your parrot eat, while you get some
breakfast for yourself, and get
ready to head to work, or the office, or whatever you do
during your day.
Just remember, that before you head out of the house each
morning, and after your bird
has had plenty to eat, remove your bird’s food bowl from his
cage, so he’ll be hungry
when you come back for lunch.
When you come back from lunch, simply repeat the process
again.
Take your bird out of his cage, train him while he’s hungry
with tempting treats, and try
to always end the training sessions before your bird gets
bored. Place the bird back in
his cage, feed him a lunch he can stuff himself with, and
before heading back out to the
office, remove your bird’s food bowl once again, so that
when you come back from the
office, he’s ready to work for treats.
I’m sure you know what comes next, but I’ll finish
anyways...
The third training sessions will take place when you come
home from work for the
evening. Your parrot will not have had food in his cage for
the last several hours and
he’ll be ready for his dinner.
But before you feed him his dinner, train him for a third
time, always rewarding with his
favorite treats and ending before he gets bored. Keep the
training fun and playful for
your bird.
When you’re done, prepare a nutritious feast for your bird.
Give him all the goodies he
desires, and let him stuff himself and have access to as
much food as he wants until you
go to bed for the evening.
Then right before you cover his cage, or put him to sleep,
take out his food bowl for the
evening.
That’s it! Now just repeat the same process day after day
and you’re now putting your
bird on a training diet that is providing more than enough
nutrition, yet still motivating
him to pcrfoim tricks.
Do I Need To Always Have My Bird On A Training Diet?
Absolutely not! Training diets are only needed during
intense training sessions. They
are especially important when first starting out on a new
trick, or if your bird hasn’t
been training for long.
You’ll find that without placing your bird on a training
diet, your training sessions will
be much shorter because without the diet your bird lacks
motivation to work for food
and will thus become bored with the training MUCH quicker.
This makes it really hard to develop what I call “Training
Momentum”. Training
momentum is when a bird has been on a training diet, and
you’ve been working with
him regularly for weeks.
He probably started with only a few minute attention span,
but because of the training
diet, a seasoned trained bird can train for up to 45 minutes
at a time, three times a day!
This is the type of training momentum I’ve created with
Tiko, my Blue and Gold
Macaw, and it allows me to train completely new behaviors in
a day or two, behaviors
that might take other birds a few weeks to learn.
It’s not that my bird is that much smarter, but that he’ll
out work any other bird 10 to 1
during the same amount of time. This has several advantages.
·
The bird remembers what he was trained in
previous sessions more easily
·
The bird ends up spending more time with you,
due to longer training sessions,and develops a stronger bond with you, becoming
a much more loving pet
·
The bird doesn’t have to be re—taught anything
from the previous days training
sessions.
You’ll find that parrot training is usually 2 steps forward
one day and then the next day
your bird will start the day 1 step back from where he ended
the day before. And things
must be re—taught, and reinforced every day.
So the more training sessions you can get into your bird’s
daily schedule the quicker
he’ll progress through these amazing tricks you’ll soon
learn about in this course.
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