introducing ... Pedro!

[Robyn]

Robyn i have never had to resort to clicker training with any of my birds. I must admit it does come very easy to me when i work with my birds, I just seem to know what is required. My birds are so intune to praise that treats don't really work with them. For instance I will ask Elliott to show me his pretty wings & he spreads his wings out & then up, I tell him he's just beautiful He will also do hi 5 & wave. He will even lay on his back in the palm of my hand. All done by just praise.

I guess i also have the advantage that most of my parrots have been hand raised by myself so the training sort of starts the day i take them from the nest.

But i also think that the eckie is an easy bird to train, you really don't have to try to hard to make them happy.

[twr]

I've never started off with a baby. Butch was over 12 months & came from a pet shop where he was not handled, Tinga, a rehome, was nearly 6 years. Cheeky, another rehome, was around 3 1/2 years.

Tinga was the hardest for me. With the others, I didn't do clicker training and they came around quicker. Tinga lunged and hissed in the beginning & had zero interest in praise or friendship from me. Although I did praise him, it was not effective with him. I now look back at how sudden the progress was once I started clicker training. I will never know for sure, but I think I would have gotten there so much quicker if I started the clicker training with him in the early days. There are lots of similar success stories out there re the clicker, so there has to be something to it. I don't think I have your special touch of always knowing what is required and I do envy you for it I came into loving birds later in life, so haven't got the background of experience in raising babies, etc.

I never felt that I had to resort to using a clicker, rather that it was a tried & tested tool to help me bridge any gap that may be lacking in my skills. It might not work for all birds, in all situations, but it did for me. I still really recommend them, especially to those new to companion parrots.

In the end, I don't think it matters how we get there, as long as we get there and keep on trying our best for the fids.

[Robyn]

LOL. I wouldn't exactly say i was a spring chicken Robyn. I would have been about the age you are now when i first got handed a fluff ball & a bag of hand rearing mix, it turned out to be a red collared lorikeet & then i was hooked & the rest they say is history. That was about 20 years ago now. Have i made mistakes, course i have, it the best way to learn. I don't have all the answers either, like yourself I know what works best for me. It's also benefits others to read all sorts of experiences we have with our parrots. They can then make up their own minds what will work best for them.

I have heard clicker training if understood by the trainer can work & is a good teaching tool. So i certainly am not knocking it. I would probably train in the same manner except i use my voice instead of a clicker.

I might also add Robyn that if i hadn't ever got a computer in 2004 I wouldn't have the knowledge i have now. So it's thanks to all the information out there that i can now put it into practice with my own birds.

[twr]

Hey, I'm no spring chicken either. Already 51 years. Got my first bird, Butch, an olive rainbow lorikeet in Sept 2007 so Ive only been at this 4 years and I've made so many mistakes. But I'm reading up and trying to learn. My sweetie Butch is a habitual plucker and my AV has told me to accept that he always will be. There's lots I did wrong which I'm sure contributed.

I agree, with you. I think thats the way in most things in life. If you are having problems ask what worked for others, then by trial and error, work out what works for you. There's more than one way to skin a cat and as long as the cat gets skinned, who cares which way worked

Yes, the clicker marks the behaviour you wish to reinforce, so you could use your voice. Especially if the bird is motivated to please you.

Disclaimer: no cats were skinned in the training of my birds

PS. If I were to guess, I would put us close to same age. Not because I've seen pictures (I haven't) but because of our name. There were quite a few Robyn's in and around my age group growing up. But I haven't met any Robyn's too far outside of my own generation. Of course, I'm probably totally wrong with my guess.

[Robyn]

There's about 9 years difference then. Hehehe I am the older one.

LOL I thought you were 10 years younger than that

There wasn't anyone with the same name as me when & where i grew up & i thought i was pretty special. I do hear it often these days. I have come across a couple of guys with the same name but spelt Robin.

PS I don't skin cats either . But i get what your saying.

[twr]

Sept 10, 2011 19:22:14 GMT 10 Robyn said:

There wasn't anyone with the same name as me when & where i grew up & i thought i was pretty special.

then we can blame you for the trend of Robyn's in my generation. My sister (11yrs older than me) got to choose my name. She probably got wind of your existence

[Aimie]

Jax loves his showers. I feel so mean when I turn the shower off, He seems to love it so much.

Sounds like your doing well with Pedro.

Jax seems to have picked up a bad habit, He seems to Squawk if i talk to him or when I take him out for cuddles. It's not screaming as such just a squawk, pause, squawk, pause. Etc but it is high pitched and rings my ear especially when hes having cuddles. He chats away quietly to himself in his cage but when i give him any attention he starts the squawk. Does Pedro do it? Its a different noise the the noise he made when he was informing me it's his feed time. I'm ignoring it, Anyone got any ideas on how to stop it? or change it to a less ear piercing noise?

[kinsei]

aimie i think i know what your talking about. our first bubs was a squawker! when he saw us, when he spoke to him, when we played. most times it was very loud and left a ringing in my ears. i found by ignoring him when he did it or not giving him any kind of attention for a couple of minutes he would calm down again! we did start seeing some slight progress however didn't get far as this was around the time he got out
keep us updated with jax and whats worked for you guys
pedro is so quiet i sometimes wonder if there is anything wrong with him ?? the only time when he really does the whole squawk is when i'm taking to long for his food - lol! and even i wouldn't say it's at the 'help i'm going deaf' level.

robyn i checked out the link to youtube on sun conures and i really was expecting alot worse! i'm a person that doesn't mind noise in fact it's nice (on the other hand if your a person whos not so with the volume it's also good to know what your getting into)

the discussion on clicker training is interesting, i haven't received it yet but he's doing fine on praise - and wonder if he'll do better with clicker not sure. i'll give it a go but if he doesn't respond it can become a toy ...

i did want to revisit the whole cage thing thats going on, sorry to keep bringing it up but i'm seeing that this is clearly his comfort zone and just having some trouble still getting him out (and him always going back to it). basically most of the time i roll it into our kitchen and the cage is well, the size of our kitchen! so when it's in use, when i get him out i'll just leave his cage where it is and he'll just want to go back to sit on top. i can't move it into another room as there are some steps i can't get it up. do you think if i took all his toys and fun stuff out maybe he'll get bored and give him more incentive to become more adventurous? (or is that too mean?) i'm getting a little worried as he spends so much time inside or on top (i leave his door open for him) and hardly anything out n about.
pedro is a bird not to give away too much (!!) i know there is more to him than meets the eye.... his weaknesses so far are passionfruit, corn and showers. thats all i've figured out in the 2 whole months we've had him. before we were jumping leaps and bounds (according to my last post lol) and now it's more like a stand still. no regression yet not progression either and is this normal? dunno if i'm even reading his signs correctly however he's not giving too much away. he just looks content.

[Robyn]

www.pbec.com.au/downloads/martin_trust_account.pdf

Kinsei, I thought you might like to read this link.

Aimie, i do know what the squawk is about. Your Jax is only a baby yet & that is the only way he knows how to communicate with you so IMO you could use a special word or acknowledge him in some way. He doesn't know why your ignoring him. When my babies do that i always talk to them, as i would a child. You need to reassure them that all is OK. I never have a problem with reinforcing a screaming behavior with my young eclectus. Try answering him when he squawks by saying "What's the matter" Talk to him to let him know that you have heard him.

It's really only a baby squawk & will pass as he gets older & starts to actually say words. You wouldn't even know i had 6 young eclectus in my house most of the time, except of course at feed times & that is only funny little baby talks. So there is hope for you & Jax yet.

[twr]

The sun noise doesn't bother me either, but it does bother some. Glad you're ok with it too.

Do you have a separate play stand with toys etc? Like I may have said earlier, it took my Sun (adult) around 6 months before he was ok leaving his cage. I would expect a baby to take much less time. They are so much more open to new things, but in the end, I still think everything will just have progress at the pace that Pedro sets.

Can he make his own way back to the cage? What worked for my lorikeet best was making sure he did know how to go back the cage when he wanted to. It was like he was happier to leave it, so long as knew he could return to it at will.

[twr]

Great article Robyn

[kinsei]

thanks for the article link robyn, i've had a thorough read of it and it made me see more from pedros view rather than mine. it's an awesome read and i hope others will benefit from it also!

we don't have a play stand for pedro all his 'stuff' is in his cage, it's been on my mind for awhile though the type that caught my eye were the large branch type stands that you could hang goodies from. only seen them on google and when i tried searching here i didn't find anything!
and robyn it's funny how you mentioned his age because my hubby and i were only discussing this an hour ago!! he reckons that pedro is a much older guy ..... i disagree. i'm not expert but going by the colour of his beak the black is only just starting to show up recently and he still has black marks on top. not that it really matters but say if he is abit older than we thought than as you suggest pedro could take longer too.
where his cage is located it's easy for him to go back and in and this usually happens within a few minutes of coming out and when i move it away from it's area he becomes more dependent on me (as in he'll approach me and just want to sit and have a nice chat!) ;D

i know it's going to be awhile before pedros doing back flips (lol .... !!) but this whole learning experience for me is quite exciting and we wouldn't have even gotten this far without all of your support and advice

[Robyn]

The black on male Eclectus beaks vary from bird to bird. All my males have little black on their beaks & has almost disappeared by the time they are weaned. Usually their beaks are a little paler than an adult but by the time they are 9 to 12 months ols they should have a corn coloured beak ( Yellow/orange.)

I think your Pedro is of the right age. He may have not been socialised well by his hand rearer. So that makes your job to get him to totally trust you a little bit harder. It's not that hard it just takes time & a little patience as well. Don't worry you'll get there.

[twr]

Sept 18, 2011 0:58:49 GMT 10 kinsei said:

we don't have a play stand for pedro all his 'stuff' is in his cage, it's been on my mind for awhile though the type that caught my eye were the large branch type stands that you could hang goodies from. only seen them on google and when i tried searching here i didn't find anything!

. I got Tinga's from petcare 2000, though I have seen better ones on line too



The toys didn't come with it. To make it easy to hang toys, I bought some stainless steel eyelets from
www.myparrotshop.com/index.php and screwed them to the underside of the perch

[kinsei]

oh i like your (rather, tinga's!) play stand, i never thought of checking out petcare i'll probably just start shopping round from now. what sort of price bracket would i be looking at for a stand similar to tingas? i'm just pondering if it would be not to much of a challenge to put one together myself although that is easier said than done!

as for black on beaks, pedro still has some ... which you can see in photos now that i just posted! ;D i believe it has actually worked

[Robyn]

If i can make a bird stand anyone can. I go out & find a beaut branch that is suitable, shove it in a bucket or large pot planter of sand with rocks on top of sand so it stays put then put potted branch on a large square of lino to catch the droppings. Then we decorate the branch with toy's, rope & fun things to play with. When the birds have chewed the crap out of it it is easy to replace & the bird isn't stuck with the same stand.

[Robyn]

www.birdsnways.com/birds/igyms.htm#p032801

Some great DIY parrot stands. Think i will keep this Bookmarked.

[kinsei]

thats a fantastic, Simple idea! i had these images in my head of drills, nails, mess - headache!
then i just wanted to buy one cause i don't know how bothered i could actually be but the thing that made me hesitate was that i have a feeling pedro would completely demolish it within a month (as they do)

twr - i came across a thread of yours that i can't remember where it was with some photos of your bird room, my goodness! you have put so much thought into the set up - that is one awesome room for birdies!! ;D ;D ;D

[twr]

The stand was around the $90 odd mark. Thanks for the compliments on the bird room. My humans kids are all grown up and moved out, so my birds are my babies that I like to spoil. it's also my chill out room, with a couch, TV, desk, music & PC.

[twr]

Sept 20, 2011 14:19:38 GMT 10 Robyn said:

www.birdsnways.com/birds/igyms.htm#p032801

Some great DIY parrot stands. Think i will keep this Bookmarked.

I've book marked it too, thanks Robyn. I'll have a good look at all those ideas. Ive also made one before in the way you describe. I did really like it. Hubby cemented the branches in place in the bucket, then we covered the cement with some polished pebbles that are inert (they were originally meant for use in an aquarium). But what I found was that it was too heavy for me to move around, so if you want it to be mobile, use a container with castors.