Bird Tricks?

[Shinobi]

We don't leave food in henry's cage overnight because it attracts nocturnal rodents and insects. We take the opportunity to train Henry before breakfast, because he is hungry and will be motivated for a food treat and feel that we get better results. We only feed Henry a set amount of food each day this is two meals a day with some foraging food toys between meals. Henry will also get a five minute training session before his dinner. I disagree about always having food available to any animal, all this does is cause animals to over eat and become FAT. Henry will tell us when it's dinner time. He actually tells us "dinner time".

I have found that birds will prefer to sit and preen themselves after eating a meal and are not motivated to train regardless of what reward is offered.

 

[finchly]

Most of mine are millet crazed and will train nicely. The tiels will perform for either millet or loud cheering accompanied by clapping.

Rio caique is ADD and doesn’t respond to anything . She looks off in some other direction, you can’t get her attention. She is difficult to train and, although she is very sweet and likes to step up etc., we don’’t have her actually ‘trained’. Which could be a large problem when she gets older, she’s only 1.

I never withhold food although I will delay a feeding a little to train beforehand. I agree @Shinobi they are certainly not motivated after a meal.

 

[Shinobi]

All animals have to eat a certain percentage of their weight in food. It could be 10% or 75%. This depends on the animal , what type of food it is eating, what physical activity it does and it's metabolism.

I don't believe that any bird in captivity would do the same physical activity as a wild bird. Large wild parrots would fly 45 kilometres or more a day, in search of food. Where an aviary bird of the same size would be lucky to fly more than 50 metres in a week.

But if the aviary bird was given the same amount of food as it wild counterpart. It would become obese.

We don't withhold food from Henry. But we don't believe that he should have unlimited access to food. Henry tells us when he is hungry.