Harness training advice

[Atous]

Hi all!

I'm looking for some instruction on harness training my conures. I've been looking for a step by step guide but all I find is advice like "go slow". Which frankly...Duh, that's like the number 1 things with parrots lol.

If anyone out here has successfully harness trained their birds and is willing to tell me their secret step by step method, I'd appreciate it!

I really want to take my birds out side with me

 

[WallyLoopey]

The aviator harness has a dvd. It's outdated but helpful.
I'm training mine now...
The first thing I did was get them used to seeing the harness. It was in the room, the cage, on feeding stands. Then every time I brought the harness close to them they were given a treat.
Now I'm at the point where they can only get the treat if they stick their head through the opening.
It's working really well and none are scared of the harness.
The hardest part in my situation is going to be lifting the wings..none of mine want to be touched there at all.
I know others have harness trained successfully and can give you better advice.
Good luck!

 

[Atous]

I

The aviator harness has a dvd. It's outdated but helpful.
I'm training mine now...
The first thing I did was get them used to seeing the harness. It was in the room, the cage, on feeding stands. Then every time I brought the harness close to them they were given a treat.
Now I'm at the point where they can only get the treat if they stick their head through the opening.
It's working really well and none are scared of the harness.
The hardest part in my situation is going to be lifting the wings..none of mine want to be touched there at all.
I know others have harness trained successfully and can give you better advice.
Good luck!

I never watched the DVD, I really should. Pepe was getting really good at sticking his head threw till one day it slipped and he got caught and flew around panicking! Which brought us back to square one lol

 

[gummyfoxes]

I did not watch the video admittedly because my attention span for step-by-step things is /awful/ but I used my degree in behavioral biology to work with my birds. The process is kinda different for every bird.

(This is for the aviator harness)
At first I usually put the harness near the cage or I fiddle around with it in my hands while my bird is around so they get curious for about the first week. I always let them approach it and never forcefully approach them with it. Sometimes I even play pretend keep away so they want to play with it even more! I let them chew on it, touch it, etc so they can see it is safe.

Then I also start wearing it on me. As I have a bigger bird and I am fairly small, I actually demonstrate slipping it through my own neck. Meanwhile I also slowly train my bird to be familiar with me lifting their wings like how you would normally pull the harness through. It may have to start at different stages depending on how comfortable your bird is with you handling their wings. Mine is very comfortable with me touching it anywhere so I just practiced lifting its wings a little bit at a time and rewarded it afterwards for tolerating it well. I only lift it a tiny bit, then work out to being able to almost fully stretch it out.

My bird also loves to cuddle so I usually let it cuddle with the harness on my neck. She has actually accidentally gotten her head in the harness this way. This is a bit of an unusual tactic but it works for my bird in specific. I would go step by step training with getting my bird to stick her head in the collar but she is very food un-motivated and more cuddle-motivated so my technique worked well for my particular bird. Just continuing to get her to feel comfortable with the collar on her body is the most important thing.

I also separately worked with my bird feeling comfortable with me slipping something over its head. I used my hands at first rather than the harness. You may get bit more this way but my bird is a bit more comfortable with hands than foreign objects so I wanted to get this step first. For slipping over the head, I usually like to get one part under the beak, then slowly go over the beak and head with the other part. Birds tend to wiggle backwards on this part a lot so I definitely get this step down very comfortably with my hands before with a harness. In fact, I almost never do it with a harness but instead a band of mock fabric I made. Harnesses are really easy to tangle/stress a bird out in this step so I try to avoid it until the real ting

Then I kinda put it all together and do movements as smoothly, calmly, and confidently for my bird as possible. I slip the harness over her head, get her wings in, then adjust the strap. I feel sometimes people may do this more slowly but I found out doing it quickly and getting it over stresses out my bird less. Just be sure you have all the different parts down comfortably before attempting this step so your bird is familiar with what you are doing

Just remember training doesn't end when you get your bird into the harness. You kinda gotta get your bird to adjust to the harness for different periods of time. Usually like 30 mins, then an hour, etc. At first your bird will be biting their harness a lot so you gotta distract them with fun times. Usually fun outdoor time in my case where they get to explore a lot and get tons of praise/positive reinforcement. Soon ideally they won't notice they even have the harness on and ideally that's when I like to end it and take off the harness and do it again some other day

I've been able to harness train two birds via similar methods and it is really great to have a harness trained bird!