Negative Reinforcement: Leaving Your Bird Alone

Back in January 2006, we bought three macaws; two blue and gold macaws and one military macaw. They were all around the age of 6 months old and were shipped to us while in Henderson, Nevada. We were preparing for the show we would perform for 13 months straight on the island of Saipan with them entitled Magical Flight. Jersey and Chayko, the two...
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Behavior Shaping

My favorite type of training is behavior shaping. It can also be the hardest because it requires finding a natural behavior your bird already does and having a clicker on hand to let the bird know it's a good thing to continue to do for a reward. I trained my galah, Bondi, (featured in the video above with Dave Womach) to do what is called "Th...
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Target Training and Clicker Conditioning

Photo by Dave Location: Orlando, Florida Trainee: Galah "Bondi" I just began target training our new Congo African Grey, Cressi. She caught on super fast to it and is learning the clicker more and more at the same time. She's still hand feeding but should be fully weaned soon enough. She's so smart and it's neat to watch her learn and gr...
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Bathing Your Parrot Properly

I've always had a very diverse flock. Because of this, all my birds have reacted differently to certain aspects of thier life. For instance; bathing. My larger parrots such as my Rose Breasted Cockatoo (Galah), Congo African Grey, Blue and Gold Macaws, Military Macaw, and Swainson Toucans have always preferred to either bathe in the natura...
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