Bird Treats for Training: Finding Yours

BirdTricks Seeds and Nuts

The easiest treats to train with are things that already come in small sizes such as sunflower seeds, pine nuts and spray millet. It's easy to hand your bird a single seed for a job well done or give them a quick bite of a millet stick. Other treats, such as peanuts or almonds, are more time consuming to prepare since you have to break them into small pieces for your bird.

Sunflower seeds, millet and peanut pieces are the most commonly used foods for treats and rewards. But if your bird doesn't like those, there are ways of finding what your bird does like! Also, some birds react negatively to peanuts so it's a good idea to try to stay away from them if you can avoid them.

Gather all the known treats that most parrot owners use such as sunflower seeds, pine nuts, millet, almonds, pumpkin seeds, safflower seeds, and even banana chips make some parrots go crazy! Make sure you aren't using something like cheese or any type of dairy product as a reward for your bird as they are much harder for the bird to digest.

Once you've compiled a variety of "treat" foods in "treat sizes" for your bird (for example, a single almond can be broken into 8 pieces) simply put them out on a counter and allow your bird to inspect them all and decide what it likes. Your bird will eat them in order of how much it enjoys them - which will tell you which treats you can use!

I've never known a bird to not have a favorite treat - even people have favorite treats so make an effort to find our your bird's preference so you two can work together to make things more fun and move onto some ambitious training sessions!  

I've used pine nuts, pieces of almonds, black oil sunflower seeds and even dried pieces of papaya (no sugar added) as treats for my own birds in training. I've even gone so far as to use fresh foods like blueberries and pieces of apple. One of my birds goes crazy for juice (watch out, too much fruit gives runny stools) so I've even used that periodically. Just experiment and see what works for your bird, and of course, the healthier the better if you can manage that!

If you have a bird that will only work for unhealthy treats (such as cheese), you can use very small pieces at first and wean your bird off of receiving cheese as a reward. I did this with an alexandrine parakeet by broadening his diet while also training. Eventually, cheese became the "jackpot" reward only, or was used randomly which made the bird try even harder in training sessions hoping for that really tasty reward of cheese. By the end of my training time with him, I was able to phase out cheese completely and replace it with almond pieces and a whole almond as the jackpot reward.

If you need help preparing healthier versions of unhealthy snack foods your bird is already accustomed to consuming, you can get our recipes for things like home made bird safe potato chips, mac and cheese and much more here.

Remember, the treat you use should NOT be part of your bird's daily diet and it should only be something your bird receives for training. This makes it special and much more worth working for.

Article by Jamieleigh Womach. She has been working with parrots and toucans since the age of 17. She isn’t homeless but is home less than she prefers to be. She travels the world with her husband, daughter, and a flockful of parrots whom she shares the stage with.

7 comments

August

Very helpful! Where do you recommend keeping training treats for easy access (to people) to use for rewards throughout the day? We have a small tub we tried to somewhat hide and our bird sometimes knows where it is and fixates.

August
niky

Hm. So you say millet is a great treat, and that treats shouldn’t be part of the “base” diet, but your own pellets have millet as the second or third ingredient? I’m a bit confused. PS/unrelated: I wish I could order some or your stuff, but shipping costs to the EU are like three times the price of the products themselves. PPS: any good pellet that’s widely available in the EU? I’m currently on psittacus mini, but at 7.5% fat, is a bit too high for my taste. I used to do tropican and then zupreem natural, but they seem to have run into import issues and so both brands are not easy to find anymore — plus both have their own issues (… I still don’t get why would they put sugar in pellets, since birds don’t even really have a sweet tooth…)

niky
Suhana

Someone recently gave me a pair of 4 month old cockatiels. I want to start training them but I don’t know what treats to use. They only eat millet and veggies from the planters. I was told not to feed them nuts as they can choke. Please suggest what I should do in this situation

Suhana
Judith M Mica

I have a 8 month old Quaker was hand raise and tame till my daughter got a cocktaiel, Now he will not let me do nothing.Do you no a train in Texas thats can help.

Judith M Mica
Francesco Camilleri

Have an Congo African grey (women @10 weeks old) and would like to teach her target training but i don’t know what treat she may take although sunflowers are usually mentioned some advised me that they are toxic to birds and actually do harm even in small amounts

Francesco Camilleri
Greta Stamm

I’d like to stick train without clicker but she (bird) is even scared of the stick. Even tried to get her use to stick with treat close to it but she stretches out really far just to get treat. She does that even with step up. So she doesn’t do that either cause of her stretching out really far.

Greta Stamm
Treats for lovebirds? | Parenting Answers

[…] Try sunflower seeds. http://jamiesparrothelp.wordpress.com/20… […]

Treats for lovebirds? | Parenting Answers

Leave a comment

All comments are moderated before being published