new owner and need training tips

[kelan]

Hi everyone, i have a 3.5month old indian ring neck. Sweetie-lou (as named by my daughters!lol) was hand reared and has settled down nicely. In fact today she left her cage all by herself for the first time. Can you get them to play games with you? What tricks can you try and how? What foods shall i try for rewards? Sweetie's favs so far is apple and nuts but these take a while for her to eat...unless i chop the nuts?... She doesnt like to be patted or scratched, is there anyway to her to like this?
Thanks for listening, all help apprecated!

[ellieelectrons]

Congrats on your Sweetie-lou!

What foods shall i try for rewards? Sweetie's favs so far is apple and nuts but these take a while for her to eat...unless i chop the nuts?

Chop them up really small and remove them from Sweetie's regular diet - make it so that she only gets these from you. I buy granulated nuts (for human consumption) for my birds as treats as they're already snack-size.

Can you get them to play games with you? What tricks can you try and how?

Is Sweetie happy to take treats from your hand yet? If so, that's the first step to trick training. You use treats as positive reinforcement for behaviours that you want to train. You can see some of the behaviours I've trained my guys to do here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ellieelectrons

The principles behind positive reinforcement are that you break a behaviour down into small approximations (or steps) and gradually teach them what you want them to do. The easiest trick to start with is the turn around as it doesn't require you to touch the bird and it's probably the fastest one to train. There are a couple of threads on here if you do a search explaining how to do it.

She doesnt like to be patted or scratched, is there anyway to her to like this?

One of my IRNs likes to be patted and the other doesn't. Some birds will never like it. If you do train your bird to take pats, I have been told you should only pat from the neck up and not lower on the body as this will confuse them and may send them a sexual message.

Hope that provides some assistance. Congrats on your bird. I hope you enjoy looking after Sweetie!

Ellie.

[kelan]

wow, i looked at your birds and how clever are they!! or should i say you! I did you get them to twirl and turn around? That was great.

[ellieelectrons]

Thanks kelan. Training is fun for them & me although it does require patience. Turnaround is the first trick they both learnt & is possibly the easiest to teach. If you search the board for it I've written trainng instructions in a couple of threads. I based my trainng methods on Barbara Heidenreich's work www.goodbirdinc.com.

Ellie.