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WallyCockatiel

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Ali
I have a 7.5 month old male cockatiel and I was wondering.. How do you train them to be calf when you hold them? I've seen this video (link below) of someone holding his parrot and I thought... How does he do that? So I thought why not ask you guys because I don't really know how. Is there any training steps i should do? Thanks in advance

Video:
 

alshgs

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I never “trained” mine to do that. Pickles is a naughty boy and would run to people and bite them, and sometimes the only way to get him was to grab him. He’s used to it now and it really comes in handy when I need to check him over and make sure everything is good feather wise. Now when I do it, it’s mainly playing. Idk how on earth you would train them to do that, never really thought of it as “training” since I had to grab him for doing something bad
 

Dona

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I think it depends on your bird whether he would enjoy that or not. My Linnie would have a heart attack if I held her with one hand and scritched her with the other, lol. Gigi will allow me to work on her head and neck pin feathers carefully, she likes when I touch her beak and cheek and I do tease her a bit by lightly grabbing her for a moment. She really likes to be near me, lap or shoulder, but would prefer no hands. But some species like physical contact more than Linnies. I'd just touch your bird more and more, see how he likes it, keep experimenting with pushing the boundaries. Reward him with his favorite food perhaps. Make it fun. Use one hand until that's OK, then add another hand slowly. My cockatiel from years ago would not have liked this at all but you never know.

Some folks might chime in to say that it's really best only to touch your bird from the neck up because they might view it as sexual.
 

sunnysmom

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I think it depends on the bird too. There's no way my cockatiel would have let me do that- and he adored me. Elvis I think would try to take off a finger if I held him like that. LOL.
 

Monica

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Ditto - it depends on the bird. I certainly wouldn't recommend holding a cockatiel like that anyway... but it *can* be trained.

I can actually pick up my cockatiel Casey around her back and move her and she's fine with it - however I do not hold her in the way shown in the video. Her feet are always down. I have never attempted this with any other cockatiel without good reason - because they don't particularly like it or enjoy it. A good reason to do it with the others would be if they require meds!
 

AviMom

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Just my 2 cents here, but that bird was probably hand raised by that person, and they just started holding it like the from a chick. I doubt many birds would want to be held like that. I'll try it with "Baby" who let's me do most anything with her, but I doubt she'll let me, lol.
 

AviMom

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Ok, I was wrong. Baby let me, but cant video it because I'm using both hands. Baby was hand raised by me, and just very cuddly. She lives for scritches
 
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