Ideas for training treats

[Colibri22]

I'm looking for some suggestions for what kinds of treats to offer my green cheek conures for positive reinforcement for training. They are picky. They like sunflower seeds and safflower seeds and millet, but they don't seem motivated by much as far as food goes. What do other use as training treats for little parrots?

 

[chris-md]

Options are many! I know someone who’s treat was tiny bits of banana. I had a dog who would have been fine using WATER of all things as a treat!

You have to find the birds Achilles heel. And it may be something you aren’t expecting. Even praise could be the HIGHEST value treat you can give. My Ekkie? Cheese. Hell go berserk for the tiniest nip. Not a good treat, but for him I can use at the outset of a new trick to speed up learning.

You know your bird well. What, under this big old sun, would your bird KILL for?

 

[wrench13]

In a word - pine nuts. I use them exclusively for training. Salty would paint my house for a tiny piece of pine nut.

 

[Scott]

Bits of almond, walnut, pecan work will with my flock. Some love small blobs of plain cooked oatmeal at room temperature. Others enjoy original Cheerios. And yes, verbal praise, as in "good bird" and pat on the head!

 

[TheBabyBudgies]

When, I volunteered at the bird rescue, I saw that many sun conures were eating some millets, and something that looked like a very colorful thin Cheetos. Then I found out that what they were eating.

 

[TheBabyBudgies]

They also like to eat fruits, but never give your sun conure apple seeds, as I seen many people rush to vets because there bird consumed some apple seeds. Make sure that you go to a room they are not familiar with, so they concentrate on you.

 

[Skarila]

When I started training Pascal I was using finely diced apple, that is still his absolute favourite. I would dice it so fine that it was a real quick treat for him and perfect for training. Then I started using millet for the more simpler tricks, but kept using apple for recall training. Then I bought Harrison's power treats, and lord, Pascal would kill for those. They come in big cubes, so I cut them down to millet size. When I have time I cut them up with small pair of wire cutters, it does the trick. The treat becomes a tiny size, but Pascal is super happy to train with me for those. I try to keep the treats really small otherwise the bird would get full quickly. It is suggested to feed up to one and a half of the power treat cubes per day for small birds.

A treat must be out from your bird's diet, so if you bird is on a seed diet for example, then those seeds cannot be used as a training treat.

Other birds love all kinds of nuts, just my bird is silly enough to hate nuts. He doesn't even like if I crumble them up for him. Eh.