Skittles - Off the Cage!

The gravitational pull of the cage!


Nothing beats a quick and skillful, opposable, thumb!



Common Skittles, give me a whistle!




Calm and relaxed ... FINALLY!




Finger Food! (No, he wasn't biting down, just checking it out.)



Forbey

WOHOOOOO!!!! Many congrats on an AWESOME accomplishment, Forbey!!!

GREAT pictures, and GREAT tutorial, too.

Skittles sure is such a handsome fellow!

That's awesome!!! Skittles is doing so good!!!!

YAYYYYY!!!!!! Good job!!!! How exciting pretty soon he'll never want to leave you!

Thanks everyone, I would like to take credit for Skittles being a handsome feller, but ...

The next wo things to work on are the "step up" and the "show me your pretties" tricks.

As I indicated in another thread, the only way to get Skittles to step up is to crowd him with my other arm until he has to. A simple "Step up" would be much more fun. As for the other, my son use to be able to tell Skittle, while in hand, "show me your pretties" and Skittles would spread his wings and tail feathers and hold them out. He makes for a beautiful display.

If I want to work to increase his vocabulary, whistling and singing, do I leave a radio or TV on? If I want a certain tune or specific words would an MP3 player, played on a loop, work better?

Forbey

Yes and Yes on radio and/or MP3 player. My radio is on from dusk to dawn. If I want to teach new words and/or phrases I pre-record it and play it for an hour or so at a time, then do one on one sessions with the same word/phrase I want the individual bird to learn.

Skittles looks great. Beautiful bird. See where he gets it from lol

Congrats on having skittles off the cage but he is clearly showing fear. Jojo would act just like this if I even walked past his cage! Target training did wonders for him for calming him down. As Jojo's foster parront my job is to teach him to step up reliably without showing any fear. I thought it would be nearly impossible due to the severity of the fear response he showed to dowl perches. In his previous home the people used to corner Jojo into submission and make him step up. Didn't boost his ego and helped increase the likeliness he'd bite! I wouldn't recommend doing this as this is where people start calling me in.

Birds also happen to learn much faster when they feel relaxed and comfortable. Haha, students agree! The more relaxed a test taker is the more answers they get right versus the anxious students. Makes sense!

Best of luck but I would work on calm behavior before doing cute tricks.

CaitlinBird said:

Congrats on having skittles off the cage but he is clearly showing fear. Jojo would act just like this if I even walked past his cage! Target training did wonders for him for calming him down. As Jojo's foster parront my job is to teach him to step up reliably without showing any fear. I thought it would be nearly impossible due to the severity of the fear response he showed to dowl perches. In his previous home the people used to corner Jojo into submission and make him step up. Didn't boost his ego and helped increase the likeliness he'd bite! I wouldn't recommend doing this as this is where people start calling me in.

Birds also happen to learn much faster when they feel relaxed and comfortable. Haha, students agree! The more relaxed a test taker is the more answers they get right versus the anxious students. Makes sense!

Best of luck but I would work on calm behavior before doing cute tricks.

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He's showing fear ... you should have seen ME!

His fear isn't as great as it might seem. Usually, anything that really scares him causes him to either bail from the cage, or bite. So far he hasn't done either. He is more comfortable in, and on, the cage and he would rather retreat to his comfort zone than try new things.

It's something new for both of us, the only way to get him over it is for me to calmly get him to trust me and do it. The only way I know to do that is to continually do it and treat him for it.

Time is on my side (for the time being).

Forbey

Yes, he will retreat back to his comfort zone and that's ok!

I never push my birds past their comfort zone, it doesn't mean they won't make progress. We do repititions of what they are comfortable with and then ask for the next, maybe less comfortable step. Part of teaching Jojo how to step up without showing any fear response is to teach him the behavior in small achievable steps. Steps small enough to not overwhelm him and to keep him feeling safe and comfortable.

For Jojo my training plan sort of looks like this:

Look at the perch

Turn head toward perch

Take one step towards perch

Brush perch with foot

Purposefully touch perch with foot

Place a foot on perch

Place two feet on perch

This may seem a bit excessive but you will find its a good idea to know where you are in training and where you want to get to! All these steps seem like A LOT I know! You will be surprised how quickly they catch on though. Some birds start at "looking at the perch" and skip all the way to walking towards it! They are smart little buggers!

Being observant and becoming an expert in responding to a bird's body language is like having a conversation with a person. I can engage in a conversation with a person and gage what they could be thinking from their body language, even if what they are saying is a lie I can still guess what's really going on. Thankfully birds don't lie as often as humans. Unless a bird has been taught how to lie (this is where the common African grey sneak attacks can happen) birds are very honest animals when it comes to expressing their feelings.

Just like you would treat any guest in your home by asking how they are doing, I try to emphasize us understanding and empathizing how our birds might be feeling based on what we see. This is how professional animal trainers make headway with their animals. If you would like help training beautiful skittles then I would like to see you two have the best relationship possible! It's what I'm going to school for anyway!

I do hope to see more updates on the guy! best wishes.

Lovely companion you ve got there. Skittles is a wonderful bird, might I ask how her name came to be? I m rather fond of the candy skittles

prsgirl77 said:

Lovely companion you ve got there. Skittles is a wonderful bird, might I ask how her name came to be? I m rather fond of the candy skittles

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Not sure about his name. He was named Skittles when my son got him 13 years ago. I would expect that it has to do with the rainbow of colors on his tail and wing feathers.