# training proble



## christake (Jan 28, 2018)

Hi again, I have a big problem. I have a 4 month old cockatiel that knows to fly to my sloulder and back again at his cage. i trained him every day 15 minutes twice a day. he even learned the clicker reward.. unfortunately 3 days ago i tried to do the back to cage trick from another room and he couldn't and i forced him a little. so he stopped to do it.. the other day i tried again and still nothing. yesterday i tried to teach him the big eagle by opening his wings for him and i made him angry. so now he doesn't even stay at his training perch and he is constantly flying when i try to reward him with clicker or do anything to train him. i blew up everything...can someone help me to clean this mess?


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

You gotta start back at the beginning. Go back to square one and do it all over again. You broke what trust you had built up with him by forcing him to do things he didn't want to do.


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## christake (Jan 28, 2018)

do i have to wait some days before trying again?


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## christake (Jan 28, 2018)

by trying again i mean ofcourse from the beginning. and if he understand a trick, how much days should i repeat it before going on a new one? i know it depends, but is there something i need to know about it?


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

Honestly, I don't know. I didn't teach my birds tricks. I sat with them and scratched their faces and let them hang out with me. I wasn't big into teaching them things. You need to go at the bird's pace. And you should always keep repeating the old trick before starting a new one, to refresh their memory. You don't teach a trick and then not do it anymore to teach them a new one. Practice makes perfect.


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## christake (Jan 28, 2018)

ok, i will follow your advice. thanks


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## frozengirl (Nov 26, 2016)

I train my cockatiel, every couple of days I reinforce old relearned tricks like fetch. Every day I get my tiel to wave, turn and show wings to come out of the cage, so she won't ever forget, she does it and gets to be free  takes like a few seconds since she's mastered them. At first I would get her to show wings only , and progressed it to a couple more quick tricks. Sometimes she does her tricks without a treat in sight , just to show me she's happy  todayor the first time she was on my knee and doing handshake to my finger without me even noticing for awhile... then I'd move my hand away and back again and she would do it again, she thinks it's a game now, my heart melted.


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## christake (Jan 28, 2018)

how old is your tiel?


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## frozengirl (Nov 26, 2016)

She is 8 months old. I started training her at around 3 months of age.


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## christake (Jan 28, 2018)

how did you teach her to show wings?


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## frozengirl (Nov 26, 2016)

Well , since my tiel is not scared of my hands, I started by holding my finger near her wing without touching it for a day or two. Clicked then rewarded. The third day I quickly and very lightly touched her right wing and clicked then treated her. When she seemed comfortable with it, I just rested my finger on her wing longer. Eventually it was for 3-5 seconds then clicked. I always clicked before I knew she would move away, thus not going out of her comfort zone. If I started a step and she moved away, I would go back a step or two. Eventually it lead up to me using my fingers in a v shape and pushing her wings from her body a little. In time when she saw me moving my v shape hand towards her wings she would move her wings away from her body because she predicted what would happen. I would go towards touching her, then stop just before I did and click once she moved her wings. This took me 3 weeks to get to this stage. She would move her wings but never spread them out, so , since she loves doing bat bird, I then bridged the gap by clicking when she did bat bird too, fully spreading her wings and treating her. She caught on very quickly when she was in the mode to hang upside down and I showed her a v shape and she finally spread her wings completely, then she knew I wanted her to show wings. So then she would hang upside down when I showed her a v shape so I would hold my v shape in front of her to stop her from leaning forward while she spread her wings. I also would hold the millet high up so she would look at it and keep her head up. This was around the 1 month mark. This was one of the longest tricks I taught her. I started some simple tricks first like targeting a stick, wave, turn, step up, walk to me for a treat ( which I turned into fly to me when I moved further away ) .


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## christake (Jan 28, 2018)

you did it pretty well btw. Thanks for the advice.


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## frozengirl (Nov 26, 2016)

No problem! It's all in baby steps  for the first two weeks I trained her, it was really just simple things like, walk to the millet, click once eating. Move it to other side of perch, click when she came to eat it. Then it was, touch the chopstick, click, give millet. Eventually moving the chopstick from one side of the training perch to the other. Step on he finger to eat the millet, click, reward. Step on the perch from the hand, click, reward. You want to do really simple things at first to grow their confidence, then you can attempt the more complicated tricks.

Search on YouTube for flocktalk videos , this girl trained her small parrotlets to do some amazing tricks , and shows the steps.


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## christake (Jan 28, 2018)

nice, I will watch them. Thank you!


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