Known Space
Meeting neighbors
- Joined
- 6/6/18
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- 69
..and get her to go back to her cage voluntarily.
So.... this might be of value to some of you. Well, it's helped some people I've interacted with in the past, but I'm far from a training pro. I don't know if this is how people usually do it, though, but it's something I've just kinda gotten into doing.
The solution
My parrotlet's with me, well, all the time. In a room with music production gear no less. And she had the habit of trying to chew on it. Because of course she does. Rather than reaffirm it by giving her too much attention, I tried to find a way to distract her. And my solution ended up being as follows:
When I see her chewing on something I don't want her to chew on, I command her to fly to her cage and subsequently make her perform a trick and reward that.
..that's it.
My reasoning being: As I said before, I don't want to pick her up when she's chewing on cables. I feel as if she would then do it to get attention. By making her fly to her cage -- a perch attached to the inside of her cage door, in fact -- I remove her from the place I don't want her to be. And when I make her perform a trick (usually spinning a circle or waving), I distract her from what she was previously doing and reward it by reaffirming wanted behavior. She usually flies back a couple of times, but she gets tired of it very soon and my cables are unharmed after 3 or 4 attempts.
I actually do from time to time reward her flying to the cage as well, just to reinforce the behavior itself. But I try to minimize that, because I don't want her to associate 'chewing on cables' with 'flight training' (I incorporate voice-commanded stationing into our daily flight-training routine). It's her favorite type of training and I would like she would use it to get attention too much.
All you really need to train this is:
- A parrot that already knows at least one stationary trick (wave, wings, spin, looping around perch, etc)
- A place to station them
Buuut if you haven't trained them any type of voice-command based stationing yet...
Stationing on command
May not be news to some people here but I figured I would add it:
I simply trained stationing her to the cage by keeping the target stick behind the perch on her cage door and coupling that with a voice-command while holding my parrotlet in front of it. I gradually increased the distance between my parrotlet and the cage and gradually removed the target stick by holding more and more of it in my hand, with less sticking out visibly. Until all of it was gone. After a while she got that "voice command" = "stationing". Subsequently, I would train her to do it from multiple angles, distances, all through-out the room. Sometimes randomly to make sure she doesn't just respond to it when she's in training mode. That way, I made sure that she knew how to get there from any place. She's tiny, so it's a nice way of locating her when she's exploring my room.
This is also a great method of getting a parrot that is difficult to get back into the cage in there with no worries. She's become less happy about going back to her cage since she's gotten so bonded with my girlfriend and me. So I command her to fly to her cage, make her perform a trick or two and reward those so she won't associate the command with being caged, and then I just close the cage
So now I have a parrotlet who doesn't chew on unwanted objects, and doesn't cause any problems when she doens't want to be caged. At this point she's voice-stationed at two different locations in this room. And I always station her to the place that is closest by. Of course, I can also station her by pointing. But in this particular case, I find voice commands far more useful.
Hope this was helpful! And if anyone has better solutions, I am all ear.
So.... this might be of value to some of you. Well, it's helped some people I've interacted with in the past, but I'm far from a training pro. I don't know if this is how people usually do it, though, but it's something I've just kinda gotten into doing.
The solution
My parrotlet's with me, well, all the time. In a room with music production gear no less. And she had the habit of trying to chew on it. Because of course she does. Rather than reaffirm it by giving her too much attention, I tried to find a way to distract her. And my solution ended up being as follows:
When I see her chewing on something I don't want her to chew on, I command her to fly to her cage and subsequently make her perform a trick and reward that.
..that's it.
My reasoning being: As I said before, I don't want to pick her up when she's chewing on cables. I feel as if she would then do it to get attention. By making her fly to her cage -- a perch attached to the inside of her cage door, in fact -- I remove her from the place I don't want her to be. And when I make her perform a trick (usually spinning a circle or waving), I distract her from what she was previously doing and reward it by reaffirming wanted behavior. She usually flies back a couple of times, but she gets tired of it very soon and my cables are unharmed after 3 or 4 attempts.
I actually do from time to time reward her flying to the cage as well, just to reinforce the behavior itself. But I try to minimize that, because I don't want her to associate 'chewing on cables' with 'flight training' (I incorporate voice-commanded stationing into our daily flight-training routine). It's her favorite type of training and I would like she would use it to get attention too much.
All you really need to train this is:
- A parrot that already knows at least one stationary trick (wave, wings, spin, looping around perch, etc)
- A place to station them
Buuut if you haven't trained them any type of voice-command based stationing yet...
Stationing on command
May not be news to some people here but I figured I would add it:
I simply trained stationing her to the cage by keeping the target stick behind the perch on her cage door and coupling that with a voice-command while holding my parrotlet in front of it. I gradually increased the distance between my parrotlet and the cage and gradually removed the target stick by holding more and more of it in my hand, with less sticking out visibly. Until all of it was gone. After a while she got that "voice command" = "stationing". Subsequently, I would train her to do it from multiple angles, distances, all through-out the room. Sometimes randomly to make sure she doesn't just respond to it when she's in training mode. That way, I made sure that she knew how to get there from any place. She's tiny, so it's a nice way of locating her when she's exploring my room.
This is also a great method of getting a parrot that is difficult to get back into the cage in there with no worries. She's become less happy about going back to her cage since she's gotten so bonded with my girlfriend and me. So I command her to fly to her cage, make her perform a trick or two and reward those so she won't associate the command with being caged, and then I just close the cage
So now I have a parrotlet who doesn't chew on unwanted objects, and doesn't cause any problems when she doens't want to be caged. At this point she's voice-stationed at two different locations in this room. And I always station her to the place that is closest by. Of course, I can also station her by pointing. But in this particular case, I find voice commands far more useful.
Hope this was helpful! And if anyone has better solutions, I am all ear.
