A Kermit Training Update

[IndySE]

So big interesting update on Kermit....

We got the harness 90% on. Head thru the headloop, under both wings, and the buckle mostly tightened. I opted not to go all the way because I didn't set up the buckle right (I really got to get good at manipulating it) and also she was getting er.... a bit sick from the bowl of safflower seeds.

That's right, I've finally done it. I made my parrot sick on safflower seeds. And she was STILL trying to down another as she puked some up like the glutton she is. Will this reduce her love of safflower seeds? Seems doubtful. Once she was done puking, she seemed rearing to go for more. Suffice to say, I'm going to try using chia seeds as her "infinite bowl of seeds" treat rather than safflower... probably better for her birdie heart anyways.

 

[Laurasea]

Yippie!!!!!!!!! Wow!!!! Way to go! Congratulations!

 

[IndySE]

Training went pretty well today all considering, but I may have a new problem.... motivation. I'm trying to find a substitute for the infinite bowl of safflower seeds, but there are few substitutes out there. I tried a bowl of millet/parakeet seed mix, and I swear you've never seen a more insulted parrot out there. She was interested in my mom's yogurt, so I tried yogurt with chia seeds mixed in and that at least did not insult her... but it was no safflower seed. I think I'm going to try a mix of chia seeds and a few safflower in a bit of yogurt tomorrow. I just need to keep her from scarfing so many down her gullet so quickly. In about 10 seconds I'm sure she could take in 15 seeds o__o;;

 

[FlyBirdiesFly]

Good job Lady Kermit! Why won’t you use safflower seeds anymore?

 

[IndySE]

Good job Lady Kermit! Why won’t you use safflower seeds anymore?

Because in our last training session she ate too many too fast, was probably kind of anxious, and puked some up on me.... At least parrots keep life interesting.

I still use safflower seeds, but I'm trying to find a way to use a lot less. I just need her to eat them slower when I set out the entire dish of seeds.

 

[FlyBirdiesFly]

Oh no! Have you tried using a whole millet spray? Sir Kermit really likes those.

 

[IndySE]

Oh no! Have you tried using a whole millet spray? Sir Kermit really likes those.

Ohh spray millet is a good choice ! thank you for reminding me, I'll see what she makes of it. She's had spray millet before, but I don't know if she thinks its The Best (TM). It might be too similar to the parakeet seed mix for her to get excited.

 

[Laurasea]

Popcorn is another favorite at my house

 

[IndySE]

Kermie is doing ok. We had a few days off from training (from entirely human related reasons) but she seems to be pretty on the ball now. We switched back to safflower seeds. Nothing could hold a candle to a good o'l fashioned safflower seed. Other treats just made her a lot less motivated/shorter training sessions. So instead I'm trying to slow down how quickly she gobbles them up. Once the harness is on, I'm having my mom help me give her safflower seeds 1 or 2 at a time. She disslikes this more than the infinite bowl of seeds (obviously... less gluttony), but it's having more success than anything else. Mom suffered a few bites in the line of duty).

Today we got the harness on her neck twice and thru one wing. Woo Today I tried placing my other hand against her to more easily put the harness on her neck and to keep her from skittering back. The fact that she's extremely hand-tame and loves hands might mean this will work (gotta love some positive tactile reinforcement), though I'll see if I get any pushback from this approach.

 

[Laurasea]

Keep up the good work !

 

[IndySE]

Wew, it's been a while. A short update human side, I got a 9-5 job. So it's been great to get some money, less great to have less time with the parrot. Luckily I have a great family who plays with her while I'm gone. When I move out, I'll have to really figure out how to max our hours together.

In light of this, training sort of fell off the radar. I felt awful it did, because I know she enjoys it, so decided to pick it up again as an after-work special thing we do I think I'm going to put harness training aside. Because of said new job, I splurged and got her a pack-o-bird. So I can take her out without much fuss, and I don't have to worry about people trying to touch my bird. Win-win. I'd like to really focus our training on things we both enjoy like the ring game. I also want to do some recall training.

Here's a short video of the "easy" tricks I was having her do. Of course once I wip out the camera, she gets sassy. That sharp little whistle is how she argues (it's her version of "be nice", which is what I tell her when she bites)

[ame="https://youtu.be/P01ejCZhcTw"]https://youtu.be/P01ejCZhcTw[/ame]

 

[ChristaNL]

She is adorable!


(I loved the "not quite yet human, I am still eating"- squeek.)

 

[IndySE]

[ame="https://youtu.be/Zr9gZ72tPc4"]https://youtu.be/Zr9gZ72tPc4[/ame]

I got video of the ring game. We haven't done this in ages, but by day 2 she pretty much is where she was. Watch the entire video, and it's really neat to see her warming up and connecting dots. By the end of it, you can tell she's so close !

This video needs some commentary and explanation. So to anyone unaware, the objective of this game is actually to teach 2 word sentences (so the verbs are: Touch, Put, and Take ; the objects are: Yellow, Red, Blue, and Green). So far we established the definitions of all the verbs, and have learned yellow/red. So a lot of what I'm asking her is to put them together in the context of a sentence. At the beginning she's relying a lot of my body language cues to tell her what to do. By the end, she gets by without them. This could be in part her picking up on the context (so there was 1 yellow ring left, and she inferred the yellow ring has to go on the yellow ring stand), but I do see her pausing and thinking whenever I say something. So she is starting to really pay attention to the language! I really find it fascinating to learn how she's thinking as well as getting her to cue in more to language... if she can get this concept, I feel like this opens doors for other games that I could come up with

 

[Flboy]

Really awesome!

 

[IndySE]

Thank you Flboy !

Another training update: Kermit is an A+ superstar. We just started target training. I knew it would be a hard ask for her, because she's very reserved about flying. After only 3 days where I could get her to hop or do a little flutter (but not truly flying), she did a proper flutter ! Caught air and everything to get to the other perch. So proud of her and all the progress she's made in only 3 days.

I like to cross-train other tasks simultaneously in each session so I'll talk a little about those. Just in case it's useful for someone else out there, I think it's helpful to have short sessions for each item I'm training (about 5 minutes), but do a full 15 minutes of training with other tasks -- which I define as cross-training. Birds don't seem to do so well with focussing on one thing for a long time (they get bored), but are certainly very intelligent creatures that might want more than 5 minutes of thinking, so I've seen a lot of success in training for about 2-3 different items in one session.

Anyways, I digress... I've been playing around more with the "fetch" aspect I was talking about before. This came about because I saw her doing this behavior on her own, and thought it was so cute that I wanted to encourage it. I can usually get her to pick up the ring and bring it right to my hand -- super impressed. I'll try and get video. She can sometimes struggle with the rings because they're a bit heavy for her, so I might look into having her "fetch" other objects for me in the future. I'm entertaining the idea of having my own "carrier pigeon", especially once I can get target training done, but this may be magical thinking.

 

[FlyBirdiesFly]

Nice to hear a positive update from you and Lady Kermit! Glad to hear her training is going well.

I think you should give the harness another shot. One thing that I learned from my experience harness training Sir Kermit is that the bird doesn’t have to always voluntarily put the harness on themselves in order to wear it and enjoy being outside. One day, I just decided to put the harness on him to see how it would go. I was a tad bit worried that he wouldn’t trust me afterwards, but that didn’t happen in the least. In fact, as soon as we got home from that first outing he just wanted to be held and get scritches. He loves going outside regularly now and I’m okay with the fact that he doesn’t eagerly run over to stick his head through the loop on his own. Sure it’s great if you can get to that point, but it’s not necessary for the bird to love the harness in order for them to wear it. As long as the bird trusts you fully (as in full body handling, touching wings, etc.) and is mostly comfortable with the idea of a harness then you can still put the harness on them and enjoy going on outings. Just make sure Lady Kermit isn’t scared of the harness and then give her the “jackpot” (unlimited treats) while she’s wearing it. It also helps to immediately go outside once they have it on to distract them from chewing on it — this worked really well for Sir Kermit. He still nibbles on the harness here and there, especially as I’m fiddling with the straps when I’m putting it on, but overall he doesn’t really care that he’s wearing the harness and thoroughly enjoys the outdoors.

Putting the harness on is actually really easy for us because I just hold Kermit in place while I slip the loop over his head and adjust the wing straps. He chews on the harness at first, but once he has it on and he’s outside he does really well. He doesn’t bite me during the process and is always very trusting. He basically sees putting the harness on as a minor annoyance and not something to dread/be scared of. Of course every bird is different and not all will cooperate.

 

[wrench13]

Trick training is a excellent way to maintain intimate contact with your parrot, as long as the lessons have a positive upbeat conclusion. We always start with one trick Salty loves to do ( roll over) and end with another ( going down the slide). He is not overly fond of the colored ring game, though he knows exactly what he needs to do; when he is in the mood he can do all the rings correctly first try. When he feels like F-ing with me he will either ignore them or purposely put them on the wrong post. Kermit seems to have this one down pretty good!

 

[debratoo]

I was a bit apprehensive about getting a harness for Shoshana after reading the difficulties some people have with their birds (especially when it came to biting) but she let me put it on from day one (and thank goodness for that cause I don't quite have the patience you have lol)

 

[IndySE]

Nice to hear a positive update from you and Lady Kermit! Glad to hear her training is going well.

I think you should give the harness another shot. One thing that I learned from my experience harness training Sir Kermit is that the bird doesn’t have to always voluntarily put the harness on themselves in order to wear it and enjoy being outside. One day, I just decided to put the harness on him to see how it would go. I was a tad bit worried that he wouldn’t trust me afterwards, but that didn’t happen in the least. In fact, as soon as we got home from that first outing he just wanted to be held and get scritches. He loves going outside regularly now and I’m okay with the fact that he doesn’t eagerly run over to stick his head through the loop on his own. Sure it’s great if you can get to that point, but it’s not necessary for the bird to love the harness in order for them to wear it. As long as the bird trusts you fully (as in full body handling, touching wings, etc.) and is mostly comfortable with the idea of a harness then you can still put the harness on them and enjoy going on outings. Just make sure Lady Kermit isn’t scared of the harness and then give her the “jackpot” (unlimited treats) while she’s wearing it. It also helps to immediately go outside once they have it on to distract them from chewing on it – this worked really well for Sir Kermit. He still nibbles on the harness here and there, especially as I’m fiddling with the straps when I’m putting it on, but overall he doesn’t really care that he’s wearing the harness and thoroughly enjoys the outdoors.

Putting the harness on is actually really easy for us because I just hold Kermit in place while I slip the loop over his head and adjust the wing straps. He chews on the harness at first, but once he has it on and he’s outside he does really well. He doesn’t bite me during the process and is always very trusting. He basically sees putting the harness on as a minor annoyance and not something to dread/be scared of. Of course every bird is different and not all will cooperate.

I kept meaning to respond to this, but thank you so much for the support and belief in us !!

I think a lot of why I've put aside harness training right now has more to do with me than the bird. I think you're right that I could probably get the harness on Kermit by just forcing her through it once her head is through the loop; I have a good relationship with the bird and she's ok with being handled. But I just don't have the heart to do it to her right now... and I'm also weirdly paranoid of not putting the harness on right and having a break-out while outside, which I know is more paranoia than anything else because aviator harnesses are very well made, but something I can't ignore either. The fact that I now have a pack-o-bird means I can still take her out if I want to with ease. I've taken her on some walks and she's been having a really good time even from the view of the pack o bird

Anyways, at the end of the day I just feel like I need to move onto other tricks and training. I felt like I was at a stagnant point with it all, and I really wanted to get to recall training. If anything, it feels like I should do recall training first, if in the event that the bird does ever escape (as she's fully flighted) so I can increase my odds of recovering her.

So that's where I'm at. I haven't given up, but I'm at a break, and Lady Kermit and I will meanwhile root for Sir Kermit's marvelous adventures <3

 

[IndySE]

Thank you wrench !

& I'm glad to hear your bird took so well to a harness debratoo <3 Sometimes we get lucky.

Some quick updates:

Target training is going decent. I can sometimes get her to do a short flutter. On a few occasions, it looks like she even got a small amount of lift in the 15-20 cm distances we're working in right now. My issue is largely motivation... Kermit is a lazy bird, and unconfident flyer. While it's not much to ask some birds to fly, you'd think Kermit wasn't a bird based on the fuss she puts into NOT flying. I was really trying to encourage her to do a longer flutter, with a jackpot reward, and the bird was unswayed. By the end of it, she refused to even touch the target stick when I put it next to her -- she was THAT over it. So motivation will be our big struggle.

In the trick-training department, Kermit is an A+ superstar. I guess she's more a brainiac than anything else. I can get her to pick up a ring from about 20 cm away, walk it to me, and deposit in my hand. I'll try and get a video. I think she could get it from further away. She's even able to do it with some distractions on the table.