How to Give Treats to Train Parrots

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Elizabeth, and I am speaking on behalf of Expert Village. And we are going to talk about bridging in respect to parrot training. So what a bridge is, it is basically something that lets the animal know when its done something right. So if you're teaching a bird to step up or walk across the room to pick up something, how is he going to know that at the end of that behavior that he has done what you have expected? One way is using a clicker, so every time the bird does some thing, you would make a clicking sound and then give the bird a treat. Because I have often times too much in my hands and I don't have a clicker with me, I just like using my voice. So when the bird does something good, I will just say the word 'good'. So I say 'good' and then I will give Missy bird a treat. And you will do the same thing again, you will just say 'good' and give the bird a treat. Very quickly, when Missy bird hears the word 'good', she is going to come to expect a treat. So now, if she does something right, I don't immediately have to give her a treat, I can simply say 'good' and she knows that a second later she is going to get a treat afterwards. This allows the animal to understand that this word means that they are going to get a treat. So to help form that bridge very quickly, you need to use the word 'good' and then give the bird a treat. You will know that the bird understands the at good means treat is if as soon as you say that word, the bird comes running over to you. And you will continue doing this, probably you're gonna want to do two to three sessions over a five minute period, two or three times a day for a week before you can really feel that that's bridged and that they have that word or click understood. Again, be very consistent when you use your bridge. It always needs to be the same word, the same tone, and you need to do it within a few seconds of seeing the behavior that you wanted, to make sure that the bird associates the behavior he just did with hearing the word and getting the treat."