Teaching an old eclectus to talk..

[Kaons]

Is it possible to teach like a 10 year old eclectus to talk?

 

[chris-md]

You don't teach talking. Independently They will either pick up things they hear or not. Once they pick things up, you can train the use: encourage it, ignore it to extinction (what you might do with curse words).

An ekkie at any age can learn. 10 is still young, my boy is 8. He just yesterday's threw out something new, it's either "out" or "ow (like ouch)" too early to tell. Not sure which it could be since he doesn't hear either much at all. Though he picked up "oh my god, oh my god!!" After hearing it once.

 

[itzjbean]

Agreed with the post above -- some birds are just born wanting to talk/learn more while others simply don't pick it up. For instance, I tried teaching my male cockatiel to sing the Hunger games whistle (four notes) for like a whole YEAR as I saw a couple online do it, and he just didn't pick it up, will only do the Wolf whistle....lol.

 

[Tsali]

I am a novice - owned by one very young African Grey. Tsali is the ONLY bird I have ever had any personal experience with. Here are some of my personal bird beliefs:

1) You CAN definitely teach a bird of any age new behaviors - and talking is a behavior.

2) Human speech to a bird is simply a flock call and parrots are extremely brilliant in terms of learning how to communicate with their flock - human or feathered.

3) Teaching/Training is simply two way communication. The hard part is finding a way to translate your human thoughts into something your bird finds interesting and can understand.

4) Because of the nature of parrots - you have to give them a reason to want to respond. A favorite treat generally works well.

5) You have to begin at the beginning. Find something that you can ask your fid to do and he does it- teach him that there will always be an immediate reward when you ask and he responds.


Since I am a complete novice with parrots, I have never put limitations on Tsali. I have trained a lot of different types of animals, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, Tsali is the most intelligent I have ever encountered. That having been said, Tsali is also the least interested in pleasing me (with the exception of the rescued raccoon we raised).

Over the course of Tsali's short life thus far (he is 2 1/2 years old) he has learned many words including his "number" my cell phone number and his very own email address. It took months of hard work to teach each, but in the end I learned that YES I can teach Tsali to respond correctly in human words when I ask him his address or his phone number.

Other things that he found interesting he learned very quickly - calling my daughter's two dogs using her boyfriend's voice.

The key is PATIENCE, you CAN do it! It may take years to teach a non-verbal bird to use human words, but if you are patient and give him enough incentive to learn he'll come around.

 

[davefv92c]

yes if they want to talk they will.but never when you want them to.lol
max chats all day long dang guy just don't shut up ,even caught him talking in his sleep.
and he picks up on everything he lives by the TV and learns a lot from it i catch him repeating stuff all the time. hey Chris he does that owww thing quit a bit too, kinda sounds cute. he uses different voices to sometimes mine, sometimes the wifes, and hell he even does the dog's bark. Sam the U2 screams, i say knock it off F*****, now Max says it for me.lol yea he has gotten a bit of a potty beak but thats ok, makes me laugh.
Max is a year and a half now i have been working with him since he was hatched.
today was the first time he ever bit down on a finger hard it was my fault, i have him and Lily the LCA out at the same times well Lily has got her wings back and Max was on my shoulder and Lily flew for the same shoulder, she act aggresive so i don't really want them in close touch of each other, well i caught her on one hand while reaching for Max with the other while he was caught up in my hair he freaked and bit my finger to keep from falling, no blood but it was close. so now i guess they spend different times out of their cages. problem solved.
someone asked me the other day how come parrots
all i said how many dogs ya got that can say hello when you walk in the door.
some people will never get it.

 

[chris-md]

I am a novice - owned by one very young African Grey. Tsali is the ONLY bird I have ever had any personal experience with. Here are some of my personal bird beliefs:

1) You CAN definitely teach a bird of any age new behaviors - and talking is a behavior.

I'd caution this description, given that speech training is a bit different from other behaviors. You can only train a behavior if aspects of that behavior exists in the first place - you get from looking at stick to targeting a stick. There is no training speech if a bird never speaks.