Parrot Training Logs
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: July 9, 2009
- In: Diet and Nutrition| Training
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Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
Shown: Parrot Training Log
It’s so important to weigh your bird and chart its weight for at least a complete year so you know the ups and downs of the seasons, weather, age, and more of your bird. So you know what is normal, what isn’t and what is predictable. When your bird commonly loses weight, gains, and it’s average “full” weight as well as its “working weight” for training purposes.
You should be familiar with the obese weight of your species, as well as the baby, weaning, adult, and flight weights of your species of parrot. What SHOULD it weigh and what SHOULDN’T it weigh? This helps you keep your bird healthier and happier and your training sessions and all interactions will be the best they can be with proper chart keeping on your side of things.
Above is the chart I use. It has:
- The month/date
- Name of the bird in reference
- Weight in grams
- Motivation level (1-10)
- Trick I’m working on with that bird
I personally use the scale as number 1 means the bird refused to train and was completely stuffed on food and having a bad day regardless. Number 8 is ideal and where the bird is working perfectly. 9 and 10 tell me that bird is too “hot” or motivated, meaning TOO hungry. There is a perfect middle ground and your bird will perform badly if it’s either too full or not full enough. Charting helps you figure out where that middle ground is, exactly.
Hyacinth Macaw Showers
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: July 8, 2009
- In: Hyacinth Macaw| Parrot Bathing
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Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
Wet Bird: Hyacinth Macaw “Hymie”
Hymie took his first shower with me within the first week of his stay. I was super happy because it is so hot here in Florida during the summer months and I was thinking he really needed one to cool down. I tried 2 times unsuccessfully before this. I approached Hymie with a water bottle (spray/mister) on two other days and he went away from the water telling me he wasn’t diggin’ it. So I respected that he didn’t want it and left him alone those days. I’d let days go by without trying and then I tried again on the third day and he wanted it. He was out of his cage and on his travel cage in the middle of the bird room and I approached him with the spray bottle just like I did Storm, the blue front amazon parrot I watched for 45 days. You can see that video here.
I was really surprised by how much Hymie’s plumage colors changed once he was wet! Teals, aquas and purples came out in his feathers and he looked so, so cool! I’ve always been a fan of how hyacinth macaws look in color anyway, but this coloration was just too cool! I loved it.
If your bird doesn’t want to bathe every day don’t try to force it, otherwise you’re pairing that spray bottle with a negative thing and YOU are the one bringing that negative thing to them so you then become negative too. Your bird will tell you when it’s ready to bathe.
Amazon Parrot Talks on Cue
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: July 7, 2009
- In: Parrot Talk
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Remember that Blue fronted Amazon parrot I took in for around 45 days? Well, his owners Jeannie and John have been clicker training him ever since they got him home and it is going so well! Not only is he flying around the house for them and not showing any aggressive behavior anymore, but he is now talking on cue!
Check out the video above to see what I am talking about, and to learn how to teach your own bird to talk on cue, check out the bird tricks talking course.
Hymie Settling In
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: July 5, 2009
- In: Hyacinth Macaw
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Hymie is finally stepping up very nicely and letting both Dave and I hold his feet to transport him short distances (from one room to the other) and we’re getting to the point of placing him on our shoulders for a reward rather than having him put himself up there.
He is almost settling in nicely and becoming super comfortable with how things go around here… he is flying from his training perch to the couch now to see Dave or me. He gets himself there and waddles around talking to us and just wanting to hang out and play a little. I’ve been a bit hesitant to really play with him because I don’t want to get hurt. So I’m trying to figure out how he likes playing.
Photo by Dave
Location: Orlando, FL
Bird: Hyacinth “Hymie”
I like when a bird starts settling in comfortably and I’ve been surprised how happy Hymie has been ever since being on the road with us. He watches our other macaws do recall training in the house and then he wants to fly again even if he has already had an earlier session. I think he will be joining them shortly…
Bird Aviary Landscaping for Cheap
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: July 3, 2009
- In: Housing
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Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
Cages from Cages by Design
Dave and I finally got around to landscaping around our parrot aviaries in the back yard. We outlined them with white bricks and planted small plants all the way around and covered it all in red rock, even behind the aviaries to the fence.
We even dug out 2-3 inches of dirt in the entering part of the cages and put in white sand with stepping stones to match. The bottom of the aviaries are just a dark sand and dirt, what they have been since we moved into the house. Some of them had some grass, but our cockatoo Bandit ate it all, or at least pulled it out for fun. Not only does he know the trick the “lawn mower” but he actually is one, too!
Photo by Dave
Location: Orlando, FL
Cages from Cages by Design
We were quoted $2,500 for this landscaping project and said no way! Instead we did it ourselves for $600. The plants were only under $2 each and the bags of red rock were $4 each.
Teaching Parrots to Forage
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: July 2, 2009
- In: Parrot Play
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I posted a pretty cool post over at Live Journal in a community called Captive Foraging. It’s a slow moving community as far as posts are concerned, but you can check out my post on how I taught Hymie the Hyacinth macaw how to forage and see his progress on VIDEO where you truly see the difference from beginning to end. You also see what toys I started with and am at currently.
Go to the post here: http://community.livejournal.com/captiveforaging/27238.html
Best Parrot Shirt Ever
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: July 1, 2009
- In: Travel
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Moab, Utah is one of my favorite spots to freefly my birds and I think it’s because it’s where I got my first “taste” for free flight so it’s just familiar with good feelings… plus the scenery and everything is just outstanding. While there this last time in April 2009, I went and did a little “off time” shopping. I found this awesome t-shirt with a bird on the front in kind of a stencil and the back was wings.
Needless to say, I HAD to have it! Now I try to do all my flying behaviors I teach my birds in it because I just think it’s the coolest thing ever. I’ve actually had a lot of people ask where I got it, and it was a little shop downtown by Eddie McStiff’s in the plaza. I don’t remember the store name but I got more than one thing there, and all were bird related tops!
Photo by Dave
Location: Orlando, FL
Training: Galah “Bandit”
Training My Galah to Hula
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: June 30, 2009
Normally my female galah, Bondi, is the best at everything out of out entire flock. But man, this hula hoop flight training is not her favorite thing in the world…
She was doing really great for a while, as you can see in the video below:
But the further I got back from the hoop, the more likely she was to land on the actual hoop. So I would have to back up, and put my hand OVER the hoop part so there was no way she could land on it without making it hard on everyone (her and me). 100% of the time with my hand over the hula hoop part, she would do it right. But once I backed up too far, it was on the hoop again.
Here is a video of us working on this, you can see her do it wrong and right. Notice: I end on the RIGHT behavior. Never end on the wrong behavior in a training session if you can help it.
Peek-a-Boo Conure
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: June 29, 2009
- In: Parrot Play| Training
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I just think this video if the cutest thing ever. This is a client’s bird (John) it’s a mitred conure named Ditto playing “peek a boo” with his loving owner!
Plexi Glass Bird Cages
Posted by: Jamieleigh on: June 28, 2009
- In: Housing
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It can be pretty confusing for any bird to go from a metal cage to a plexi glass cage, even if only part of the cage is plexi glass. It is so confusing to a bird who has never been in one before and I can’t tell you how many times they will bang their head on the front, tap their feet looking for grip and walk straight into it once in a while to get to you.
I realized when I brought Hymie, the Hyacinth macaw, home for 6 weeks and introduced him into his new cage. Well, he went from this cage:
Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Waynesboro, VA
In cage: Hyacinth Macaw “Hymie”
To this one with an entire plexi-glass front:
Photo by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
Cages by Cages by Design
The first things Hymie did was check out everything inside the cage, but then when we was done, he knocked his head about a zillion times against every part of the glass and tried to step on it a ton because that’s what he is used to doing… being able to climb on every part of his cage!
It definitely took some adjusting and once he started getting comfortable flying around in our bird room, he hit it a bit more…
I had been teaching him it was okay to fly himself back to his cage, but with our cage you can only have half of it open on the front and for a bird, it can be a little hard to tell which part is glass and which part is not! Hymie hit one side when we took flight that wasn’t open, poor guy, but he “got back on the horse” so to speak and didn’t stop flying more after that (that is, after his headache went away)
Once he figured out the plexi glass situation in his cage, which took about 2 days and multiple hits, he had yet to figure out the glass doors in the bird room. You see, the bird room looks like this…
Picture by Jamieleigh
Location: Orlando, FL
In bird room: Hyacinth Macaw “Hymie”, Blue Throat Macaw “Jinx” & Camelot Macaw “Tusa”
Hymie flew all the way from his cage (the other side of the room) and hit that glass door behind him in this photo, since I was sitting on that red couch and he thought he could get to me… it only took once for him to learn he couldn’t go through that door.
However, when you have glass around, you need to be pretty careful because if a big bird chips the end of its beak, it will normally bleed and becomes pretty scary for the bird. I highly recommend putting a bird who isn’t used to glass on one side and you on the other, I do this normally with both me and the bird on the ground so it walks instead of flies. The bird will then try to get to you through the glass and you can show it that it’s hard and unbreakable and teach the bird to walk around and look for an opening, or to just know it’s impossible to get through depending on your situation.
It probably sounds pretty brutal for Hymie to hit the plexi so many times, but the truth is, he wasn’t hitting that hard because at the time of flying, he didn’t have enough muscle or practice to gain enough speed and power to seriously hurt himself. He never bled or anything like that, and was perfectly fine after hitting (just so everyone knows) and was very new to flying at the time so it was a good time for him to learn while he didn’t have the strength to make the flights strong enough to hurt himself when hitting it. His flights were also fairly short.
And since I get this question a ton, all plexi front cages are from Cages by Design!
