How to Teach Parrots to Step On Your Hand

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Elizabeth and I am speaking on behalf of Expert Village. Today we are going to talk about how to train your bird to step up. Most birds already know the behavior step up, they do it every day, they step up onto a branch. Now how do you motive a bird to step up onto your hand, versus stepping up onto a branch as they would naturally. Most birds, if they are friendly birds, if you just offer your hand, and say 'step up', they make themselves comfortable and step up. Now you want to for most birds, unless it's a budgy or parakeet, you want to offer your whole arm for that bird to step up on. For two reasons, if you stick your finger right in their face, they are likely to bite it out of curiosity, not necessarily by aggression, since nobody likes being poked in the face. So don't offer your hand this way, offer it in a very benign manner. You will just offer it up to the bird, if the bird does not want to step up from this point, as you can see Missy bird does not want to now, you can use the word 'step up' and you can gently press on their chest. And by pressing on their chest, you cause them to be slightly off balance, and to regain their balance, they are forced to step up on your hand. Immediately after that, you want to offer the bird a treat for having stepped up on your hand because by pushing on their chest, one of the first things you have done is cause a negative experience, you cause that bird to be off balanced which is very unpleasant of them and you don't want that to be the last thing on their minds. You want it to be a positive experience. So again, you will push on their chest if they are resistant to step up, then immediately give them a treat for stepping on your hand. If you have a bird who is offering they beak, as if they want to bite, you can also approach the bird from behind. So you can put one hand here just to control and distract, and you can use your hand from behind and ask the bird to step up backwards. So as you can see Missy bird is slightly off balance, so she will step up backwards onto my hand. Because her beak is not facing my hand, she is distracted from the other hand, she has then stepped up backwards, and immediately I give Missy bird a treat for stepping up backwards so that again, this is a positive experience. Every time a bird steps up on your hand, you need make sure it is a positive experience for that bird. If it is a negative experience for that bird, the bird will not step up for you anymore. So try to always give them a treat, or makes sure that they want to come to you and make them understand that where they go is positive for them."