I felt like I had taken three steps forward, To only be pushed back ten, I felt like we had gotten so close and now all my work was for nothing... I was discouraged
Hello again,
The reason you are having setbacks is not directly your fault, we all have this same problem from time to time, it can be
VERY frustrating
If you get caught up on all the new posts, and then start reading new posts as they come in you will start to see that you're not the only one having this problem AND and you will learn much more by reading what other people do to take care of the problems
When I say it's not directly your fault, everything that happens to the bird is the
owners responsibility (no different than if it was your child)
From reading everything you said I really feel like your setbacks are the direct result of everyone else in your house, the bird has to learn to completely trust you, so when you make progress it's because the bird is becoming familiar with whatever you're doing, the bird is starting to trust you, then someone else in your house comes along and does something that completely freaks the bird out, at that point you're back at square one.
I think now that you understand that you can take steps to stop everyone in the house from interfering with the birds training.
I can give you an example from my own personal problem, we have a Parrotlet, when she sits on my shoulder if she moves out of a target square on my shoulder I say "ah ah ah" and she immediately goes back to the square, I taught her to do that by taking my finger and presenting it to her like she would have to step up but more like pointing at her and then saying "ah ah ah", it took very little time for her to realize that if she didn't go back to the square I would make her step up and remove her from my shoulder and put her on a T stand next to me, she would much prefer to stay on my shoulder so she learned to do that very quickly.
Now here's the problem, my daughter Rissa does not follow those guidelines so when the bird is supposed to be sitting on her shoulder, instead she runs all around her neck, now that may not sound like a very big deal but the bird has learned to chew her necklace, chew her shirt, and prefers to hang right under her neck in the front OR runs completely down her arm to the desktop
, which bothers Rissa, so what you have is a situation where the bird runs off of Rissa's shoulder and then Rissa has to chase the bird back to her shoulder in a never ending cycle of annoyance LOL, the bird has complete control and does not listen to Rissa at all
Now here's where the real problem comes in, because the bird is more annoying on her shoulder Rissa tends to hold the bird less than I do
The thing about the millet training at the bars, if you notice I said it should be as close to the door as possible, what you're doing is setting the bird up for the next step (that's pretty much what you're always doing)
The next step would be to open a door hold the piece of millet between your fingers and say the
exact same words that you would say when the bird would take the millet from your fingers
at the bars
Before you know it when you open the door and say those words the bird would jump right out on your hand
But your response to me was "I can set his food in places in his cage ( I don't think a millet or pellet will fit between the bars because of the spacing)"
Sitting the Millet in places in his cage isn't going to train him anything
You have to understand once you have this bird coming to you and taking Millet out of your hand you will be able to get the bird to do things
I think at this point you should watch a BUNCH of YouTube video about training parrots, after watching a bunch of them pick one that you think will work for you!!
I have been sitting at this post composing it for a while and going to do other work around my house at the same time, I just noticed that Mikey gave you some advice about training
which is exactly what you have to do (so basically I've been post jumped because I am SLOW
)
Anyway it is 3 AM eastern time have to sleep now, let me know what kind of training you decide to try, The FIRST thing the bird should learn is to come out of his cage to your finger when prompted, once you teach the bird to trust you to do that, the bird will start to learn that every time you call him out of the cage it's
fun time
Best of luck!!
Joe
