Tips for Training a Parrot

Series Summary

We have all seen them. Whether they are perching on a dreaded pirate's shoulder, blissfully flying in the tropical trees, or insulting unfriendly neighbors, parrots have had a very special relationship with humans. Due to their extremely sociable nature and high intelligence, parrots have become a favorite pet of many cultures. Caged parrots can be trained to identify objects, describe them, count them, and even answer questions! With a parrot as your pet, you are destined to have a keen companion. However, the owner must beware. Not all parrots are the same. There are over three hundred species of parrots, and each one of them is different from the other. Where one bird may be calm and subdued, another parrot may just be itching to sing The Beach Boy's “Kokomo.” While this may be a great party trick, some owners may want to control their parrot's outburst. So, if you are thinking of getting a pet parrot, it may be wise to learn how to train these birds.

In this free video series, let our expert show you how to train a parrot. Elizabeth Cantu shows you a variety of different ways to train your parrot. Learn how to reward a parrot's good behavior. Also, learn how to feed parrots food and snacks. If your parrot is afraid of human touch, Elizabeth teaches you how to gain your parrot's trust and love. Also, learn how to stop your parrot from screaming, and learn how to make a parrot step up on your hand. Elizabeth warns about the potential negative consequences of punishing a parrot. So, before you yell or scream, take some time to watch this free video series. Training a parrot may not be as difficult as you may think!

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Elizabeth and I am speaking on behalf of Expert Village. What we are going to talk about today is training your parrot. The importance of training your parrot would be so that you could develop a bond with your bird. It's intellectually stimulating for them to have some thing to do, and a way to interact with you in a positive way. It also allows them to have a bunch of positive behaviors in which to act with you and in their environment instead of figuring out about what to do on their own. Training a parrot, what that means really is to modify any behavior that the bird has from their natural behavior to a behavior that is on a command. So you will say something or do something and that bird will then respond in a particular behavior that you have set forth through training. So you're just modifying natural behaviors to be on command basically. You can get what looks like a natural behavior to look very unnatural through advanced training. More or less, you're just getting normal behaviors, such as stepping on a hand, the same as the bird stepping onto a branch, it's just doing it when you want that bird to do it. "