Clicker training fail!

Hi everyone,

It's been about 6 days since I adopted a medium sulphur crested too. She had an owner previous to me. She gave up Eva, because she was going through a divorce. She dropped Eva off at a friend and I know this lady as an aquaintenance. She contacted me because she knew I was interested in adopting a cockatoo. Ok so fast forward, it's been 6 days , took her to the vet, waiting to hear back on blood results. Eva's previous owner must have kept Eva in a very small cage, her tail feathers are broken and the way her wings are clipped is an atrocity!

I know absolutely nothing about her, I don't know her favorite foods, snacks, anything! She's dealing with the pellet food she has , with fresh fruits and vegetables it's a big no-no. Did the lady feed her anything other than pellets?!

So I ordered some sunflower seeds in today and thought I would try some clicker training. Part of it was my fault, she didn't seem hungry, and I think the sunflower seeds were too big because it was taking her forever to crack it open.

So the end result, a big bust on the first clicker training session.

Any advice?

Oh wow! Thank you for taking in poor Eva, it's such a shame she was living in those prior conditions [emoji20]

When you're training, it's always best to use small pieces of any reward food so that most of the time isn't spent with the bird eating. If you've ever seen a professional bird show, when the bird successfully does a trick a small treat is given and the bird can eat it within seconds without having to hold it. My birds are far smaller than a SC2, so they get halves of sunflower seeds, small pieces of slivered almond, broken up nutriberries, or small pieces of a pine nut. Each treat has different "reward values" to my birds. To my conure, sunflower seeds are the *best* treat in the entire world. For my IRN, his favourite treat is a nutriberry.

If you want to emphasize how well a bird has accomplished something, you can always do "jackpots". A jackpot for my conure is two whole sunflower seeds. For Shiko it's a whole nutriberry. Once you figure out their favourite treats and which they value the most, you can start prioritizing them based on their behaviours. Almonds are my "general" training treat, pine nuts are my "that was pretty good", and the nutriberries/sunflowers are "WOW!" treats.

Hope that helps! I'm sure some of our other members will have some great advice for you as well [emoji4]

Thank you so much!!! I even started to take the sunflower out of the shell to make it easy for my second training session . I'm still trying to figure out what treats she likes best. I do have nutri berries I will break them up too see if that works better. I'm literally starting from the beginning with her. She doesn't eat any fruit and vegetables, or grains. I've been able to get her to eat some some romaine lettuce. Wish me luck! Do you suggest a certain time to train her? And how long should I remove her food dish before starting to train her again?

Look for pinenuts at your grocery store. They make great tiny training treats. They're kind of expensive but since you only use a few they really last quite a while. My guys find them irresistible so they must be delicious (a SUPER high-value treat), even the big guys go nuts for them and not something that's in their regular food so they really think it's special. Congrats on your girl.

Thank you! I will look into pine nuts as well. Just wanted to let you guys know that Eva is 10 months old, but the last 6 days has been great. She's beginning to trust me and it feels great.

You've been given some excellent advice, already. I'll just add that the best times to train are between meals when her motivation for treats will be at its strongest, and that her treat foods should be something reserved only for training time. Not something she gets during regular meals. She should associate said treats with having done a really good job.

And yes, I personally don't even use seeds as training treats because of the time factor waiting for them to finish chewing. So I use nuts which I break into little munch-sized pieces. 2 or 3 chews and they're ready to go!

Check out Costco for pine nuts. Big bag, but great prices, same for all the nuts! I have never found a better price anywhere else! I divide them up, double bag and freeze.

Nuts are a large part of my diet, so this works out quite well.

Wanted to add, our bird store, The Bird Store, carries a sunflower seed that is very small, perfect for training treats! It is also the non oily variety. 2 bucks a pound!

Congrats on your lovey 'too! It sounds like you'll be a great new home for her.

What I did first was find out my Amazon's treat preferences. There are many possibilities for use as rewards -- seeds/nuts/dried fruit in limited quantity, but even fresh foods that your bird really likes can work, and nonfood rewards too. The more you work with her, and keep thinking about it, the more you'll think of to try, and then learn. (Example... I had an idea this morning. In switching my girl from Zupreem to Roudybush, I've found that in a pellet mix she eats all the fruit blend, then the naturals, then the RB last. Because she loves our training times and gets several little goodies, I've decided to pull the fruit blend from her regular feeding and use it for some of the "lesser" treats and see how that goes, because it would be nice to be able to train without feeding her too much seed junk food. Mixed results so far. Twice she was happy with them, but then she did the "wave" for me and chucked the fruit blend pellet reward on the floor. )

Anyway... try to get an assortment of different treats to try as rewards over time. Take some time exploring and enjoy the discoveries. You'll probably find, as you offer her more choices, that there's a hierarchy of favorites. You can reserve her #1 and #2 picks for the training things she likes doing least. (For the first couple months, I gave Ginny her absolute gaga favorite, dried papaya, for getting into her cage for bedtime at night. Now she is happy to do it even without the treat.) You can keep offering her two choices of treats for a while to see which types she keeps choosing first over and over. It may take her a bit to decide.

To find out her favorites, I got a mixed bag with many seed and nut types, and dried kiwi and banana. I got some ideas from that and can make a custom treat mix for her, based on the ones that work, when I run out.

Larger pieces I break into little pieces as we go, or reserve as rewards for things she doesn't like doing. For instance, she likes to be on me more often than not. That, in itself, has become a reward to a degree... After some initial flight recall training, when I now call her to my arm, I only give her a food treat if it was a longer distance than usual. Otherwise just sitting on me and being praised/oogled is her reward. But it's much harder for me to motivate her to fly back to the perch, so when she does that, she gets something that takes longer to eat that she likes, like a pumpkin or sunflower seed. (It's fun to watch her eyes pin in excitement when she sees the bigger goodie that's coming to her!)

The more habitual treats I use are safflower seeds and buckwheat seeds. They have the nice combination of being liked reliably and quicker to eat. Your 'too may like them less, though -- it's just individual.

Praise is the only reward she gets every time.

I avoid peanuts. I don't know from personal experience, but have read they can cause aspergillosis.

Hope this helps!