Right now Salty is.....

[wrench13]

THankfully, Salty loves his chop, all of it, but yeah he will eat the pasta first. Previous batch I put in WAY too much. Latest batch i only used like a 1/4 of the box, a little less. Small elbows and enough so each serving has like 1 or 2 pieces in it. SIngle ingredient pasta, no salt, no added vitamins or preservatives.

 

[wrench13]

These are some of Salty's animal friends we use during training sessions. He has to pick and hand me the animal I ask for. Its odd, sometimes he learns the name right away and has no fear of it, like his chicken. Other times it takes a few sessions before he will even go near one much less touch it and give it to me. Man he loves that chicken, and the bear too. Weirdly, the duck, that he is hesitant on, the turtle too. Altogether now I think I have like 20 some odd different ones; different parrots, some farm animals, and some sea life too (the octopus - thats Kryptonite right now!). THese are all mixed in with the normal objects we use, small bell, ball, a baby figure, etc. The animal figures are like 1-1/2" in size - Salty size! I get them from safariltd.com if anyone is interested.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

Those are really nice detailed critters. I wonder why the duck and turtle bother him. It probably makes perfect sense to Salty. Parrots can be so strange.

 

[nkrbkr]

These are some of Salty's animal friends we use during training sessions. He has to pick and hand me the animal I ask for. Its odd, sometimes he learns the name right away and has no fear of it, like his chicken. Other times it takes a few sessions before he will even go near one much less touch it and give it to me. Man he loves that chicken, and the bear too. Weirdly, the duck, that he is hesitant on, the turtle too. Altogether now I think I have like 20 some odd different ones; different parrots, some farm animals, and some sea life too (the octopus - thats Kryptonite right now!). THese are all mixed in with the normal objects we use, small bell, ball, a baby figure, etc. The animal figures are like 1-1/2" in size - Salty size! I get them from safariltd.com if anyone is interested.

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This is a great idea. I might try this with Ava bird.

 

[Talaya]

Wow Salty is so bright and clever.
I’m trying to teach Solo colours. I managed the first couple of stages : To take a hoop off the hoopla stand, turn around and give it to me, but colours I’m only on the first one .. RED. Sometimes he seems to understand and picks up the red hoop immediately, he even searched for one once in a drop pile. But then he chooses the blue again. (I have 2 colours) I can’t train it very often as he gets very excited by it and just wants to take the hoops off the stand to give them to me as fast as he can, without even waiting for a reward or if my hand is there to take them. So many of them go on the floor. He then gets growly and aggressive at me putting them back on the hoops. So it’s just once a week about 130/2 pm. So the rewards are lunch.

 

[wrench13]

Colors - I started Salty on one of these

But now he pretty much hates it and we use it like once every few months. They are plastic and the colors bright. Then we switched to something like this:

These are wood. 75% of the time Salty gets most right, out of that about 50% are done all correct. And then some nights, he purposely either makes mistakes or refuses the trick, which I always allow him to do. We use these like 1X a week.

Remember - parrots dont see colors like we do, they have extra cones in their eyes and see into the ultraviolet. I suspect thats why he doesn't like the original set up.

You'll find that with regularly scheduled training, Solo will come to anticipate and look forward to his sessions. And Salty does his right after his dinner, so the reward is tiny bits of pine nuts, 1 on 1 time with me and just the joy of using his noodle and solving problems etc. That last one is important for a smart parrot!

 

[onamom]

Colors - I started Salty on one of these
View attachment 81245
But now he pretty much hates it and we use it like once every few months. They are plastic and the colors bright. Then we switched to something like this:
View attachment 81246
These are wood. 75% of the time Salty gets most right, out of that about 50% are done all correct. And then some nights, he purposely either makes mistakes or refuses the trick, which I always allow him to do. We use these like 1X a week.

Remember - parrots dont see colors like we do, they have extra cones in their eyes and see into the ultraviolet. I suspect thats why he doesn't like the original set up.

You'll find that with regularly scheduled training, Solo will come to anticipate and look forward to his sessions. And Salty does his right after his dinner, so the reward is tiny bits of pine nuts, 1 on 1 time with me and just the joy of using his noodle and solving problems etc. That last one is important for a smart parrot!

Ona loves when we do colors! I have a few different colored pieces I use for her. Kinda similar to Salty she either nails it out of the park or she’s not into it. She knows blue, red, green, yellow, purple. My favorite part about this trick is how we start it. I always look her in the eye and say “Are you ready? Ona…. Touch….. {color}”. The look of understanding in her eyes when I say that is priceless.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

We all know that Ona is a genius. Are you going to teach what's-her-name her colors, too?

 

[onamom]

We all know that Ona is a genius. Are you going to teach what's-her-name her colors, too?

Eventually!

 

[Talaya]

Colors - I started Salty on one of these
View attachment 81245
But now he pretty much hates it and we use it like once every few months. They are plastic and the colors bright. Then we switched to something like this:
View attachment 81246
These are wood. 75% of the time Salty gets most right, out of that about 50% are done all correct. And then some nights, he purposely either makes mistakes or refuses the trick, which I always allow him to do. We use these like 1X a week.

Remember - parrots dont see colors like we do, they have extra cones in their eyes and see into the ultraviolet. I suspect thats why he doesn't like the original set up.

You'll find that with regularly scheduled training, Solo will come to anticipate and look forward to his sessions. And Salty does his right after his dinner, so the reward is tiny bits of pine nuts, 1 on 1 time with me and just the joy of using his noodle and solving problems etc. That last one is important for a smart parrot!

Thank you so much, this is really useful.
I did buy him the wooden ones as I want him to feel free to chew them if he wants. He learnt really fast how to lift them off without pulling the stand over.
Yes if he doesn’t want to play how I want to, then that’s ok too. He knows the trick spin and I just ask for a couple of those instead, which he does gladly to get rewards, so he feels good about himself, (always stop on a good note)

Teaching Colours - Wooden Training Parrot Toy

Teach your Parrot to stack and identify the different wooden coloured rings with The Teacher Training Parrot Toy. Made with Bird Safe materials and colouring.

parrotessentials.co.uk

 

[kme3388]

These are some of Salty's animal friends we use during training sessions. He has to pick and hand me the animal I ask for. Its odd, sometimes he learns the name right away and has no fear of it, like his chicken. Other times it takes a few sessions before he will even go near one much less touch it and give it to me. Man he loves that chicken, and the bear too. Weirdly, the duck, that he is hesitant on, the turtle too. Altogether now I think I have like 20 some odd different ones; different parrots, some farm animals, and some sea life too (the octopus - thats Kryptonite right now!). THese are all mixed in with the normal objects we use, small bell, ball, a baby figure, etc. The animal figures are like 1-1/2" in size - Salty size! I get them from safariltd.com if anyone is interested.

View attachment 81230View attachment 81231View attachment 81232View attachment 81233View attachment 81234View attachment 81235

May I ask how you present these to Salty? I train with my parrots too. The one of mine who does play with rubber duckies just rips out the squeaker, and then throws the rubber duckies to the floor once he gets the squeaker out. Everything with him seems to be to destroy vs learn.

 

[wrench13]

SO you have to understand that Salty and I have been doing trick training for almost 10 years. Almost from day 1 he has been trained to hand back to me the object we are working with. We started with him just putting an object into a cup and then taking it out and givng it back to me. Its the basis of a lot of his tricks, like picking the Kings out of a deck of cards. Even the little skate board trick, he rides it and then hands it back to me. With the animals and stuff, I'm trying to get him to develop his skills at discerning different objects and associating the name with the object. I will say that the fact that he actually gives things back to me, when he clearly wants to play with them more is pretty cool and unusual with parrots. Good luck with your training!