Stop Your Parrot From Being Afraid Of You

This info provided by Chet at www.YourParrotGuide.com

Today I want to talk to you about an important technique you can use that is EXTREMELY effective at convincing your parrot to willingly start to overcome his fears of you... even if you've always treated him VERY nice.

I've already showed you how you can use the "Power Pause" technique to convince your bird to let you touch him... but if you want to train your parrot to willingly step up when you want, or let you pet him, you're going to want to use a different strategy.

A strategy that is powerful enough to convince your parrot to come to you when you offer a command, instead of you always forcing your parrot to do things.

You'll need a way to convince your parrot, who is STILL a little scared of you to be willing to overcome his own fear, on his own FREE will. keyword "his FREE Will"... NOT yours ;-)

You see, when I was first trying to train my Macaw, Tiko to stop biting. I used the "Power Pause" technique that I showed you earlier, to get Tiko to let me come near him and even touch him every now and then.

And I didn't want my parrot to just tolerated me. I wanted my Macaw to REALLY love me. I wanted him to want to be with me, to like being pet and to show affection towards me like my little Golden Retriever does (with 100% devotion)

But every time I tried to reach in his cage and get him to step up, he'd whip that big black beak around, lower his head so I couldn't pick him up by his feat and try to fend me off.

And if I pressed the matter I got nipped. A couple times I got my hand torn to pieces... and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared to death each he whipped his beak around at me.

I could tell my Macaw was scared of me, that's why all parrots bite, out of fear and mistrust. It's not that I ever hurt him, but for some mysterious reason he didn't trust me.

So I put together a strategy for finding a way where I didn't have to force myself on my parrot when he wasn't ready. I wanted to be patient and let my bird decide when he was ready to open up to me.

But I didn't want the process to take months either ;-)

What I needed was a way for me to just set my hand on my parrots perch and convince him to walk over and step on it. Instead of me trying to grab at his feet or push up on his chest to get him to step up.

I needed something that could reward my bird for even taking one step towards my hand... one step towards overcoming the mislead fear he had about my hand.

So today I wanted to share that technique with you. The 'EXACT' way to safely motivate your parrot with a positive reward he likes.

and I call it my Cardinal rule of parrot training...

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My (Chet's) Cardinal Rule Of Parrot Training
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*This lesson is very detailed and should be saved for future reference in a separate email folder. This is not just a few short tips, but a detailed manual of how to truly get fast results in bird training.

THE VERY FIRST STEP

So let's begin! The first important thing to understand is the thinking process your bird will be going through during the training and how to take advantage of that process. So I will do my best to put you in your bird's shoes, so to speak.

If you've followed the instructions that I first laid out for you on Day one with the "Power Pause" video, you already know a simple to use technique to get your parrot to let you get VERY close to him... even let you touch him willingly.

But getting a parrot to go from letting you touch him, to letting you pet him, or stepping up for you is a WHOLE other ballgame.

Remember, your parrot is still fearful of you...

the second you try to reach for his feet to pick him up, or start scratching behind his head is probably going to get you nipped or bitten very quickly... and the trust you've just built up by following the "Power Pause" technique will be destroyed.

So we need to figure out a way to bridge this gap.

I've shown you how to get your parrot comfortable with letting you come close to him, but now we need to convince your parrot to cover the next 10% on his own -- that means you can't force ANYTHING!

This means we need to give your parrot a reward that is MORE important and enticing than his fear of being touched by you.

And we need to offer that treat as a reward for your parrot when he starts to come closer to you.

But here's the cardinal SIN I used to make when I first started trying to offer rewards to my parrot for stepping up or letting me pet him...

I didn't put him on a training diet... oops :-(


Here's what I mean...


If you are like most parrot owners, you leave food in your bird's cage all day long and your parrot can eat all he wants whenever he wants. So, here is a statistic you will be happy to know. . . . .

MOST PARROTS Are FULL 99% of their life!

Too many parrot owners make the mistake of leaving food in their parrots cages ALL day long! And if I've got a parrot who's been stuffing his face all day long, and try to offer him a treat as a reward for coming to me on his own free will...

... that's not going to be very enticing since it would be 1,000 times easier for my parrot to just walk down to his food bowl and get the treat there instead.

So the trick is all in setting up a training diet for your parrot that gives him all the nutrients and calories he needs to stay in good health, while also getting him hungry two to three times a day.

And it's the process of getting your bird mildly hungry that gives him the motivation to get out of his comfort zone and be willing to step out of his comfort zone a little bit to earn a treat.

Some fools think that when I talk about training diets I'm talking about food deprivation... but nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact I've had several stupid students think that if getting a bird mildly hungry is effective, then getting a bird SUPER hungry is even more effective.

In reality, a bird that is made severely hungry will start to associate it's deep hunger pains with training. Because every time it's super hungry it has to train.

So make sure to follow the instructions below carefully, and remember that your goal is to only create a mild level of hunger twice a day to be used as a technique to make a food reward extra motivating.

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Here's how to set up your bird's training diet:
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To start off with, you should switch your parrot over to a low sugar, preferably organic pelleted
diet.

All those seed, and nut mixes out on the market are complete crap, and provide WAY too much fat for your birds diet.

These high seed and nut mix diets are a MAJOR cause of the increase in avian tumors and shortened lifespans, as well as organ failure in pet birds.

So we use pellet diet from http://www.feedyourflock.com that is completely organic and extremely healthy.

It's not the only food out there, but it's a good one, and it's one of only two major foods that are certified organic... so it's healthier for the bird.

I recommend picking some up immediately and switching over your birds food as you start this process.

Once you order the food, here's how to set up your parrot's feeding schedule.

1. First of all, establish how much food your parrot eats in a day. Do this by purchasing a scale (triple beam scale is the most accurate) and weighing your bird's food for the day.

Let's use round numbers to make this easy to understand, but keep in mind that all birds will vary drastically in their daily food consumption. Now, make sure that the amount of food that you are weighing is more food than you know your parrot could eat in a day.

2. Put that amount of food, let's say it was 20 grams, in your bird's cage right before you go to bed. Then, wait until right before you go to bed the next night, (a 24 hour period) to take the food out of your bird's cage, and weigh the amount of food left in your bird's food dish.

3. After a complete day of food being in your bird's cage, let's say your bird's food, weighed 10 grams. This means that your bird ate 10 grams of food in a 24 hour period. Keep in mind that you will want to do this process for 2-3 more days to get a really good feel for the amount of food your bird eats on a daily average.


4. Everything is done in very small steps with bird training, and this first step is the same. You now know that your bird eats 10 grams of food a day. So you now are going to only feed your bird 8 grams of food before you go to bed.

BUT WE WILL NOT STARVE THE BIRD, THAT IS NOT THE IDEA OF THIS LESSON WHATSOEVER!

5. After you feed your bird 8 grams of food the next evening, you are going to feed it the other 2 grams of food that you took out of his diet, in the form of his favorite treats; usually sunflower seeds, dried banana chips or peanuts.

Do this by weighing out 2 grams of your bird's favorite treat, let's say, sunflower seeds. Take the bird out of his cage, and feed your bird his special treats by hand.

PROBLEMS YOU COULD HAVE:

A. If your bird won't eat the treats, he could be afraid of the hand that is feeding him the seeds. In which case spend time calming down your bird, and try feeding him again, or....

B. Your bird is not hungry and has been overeating even after you cut his food down to 8 grams. This is not unusual because people usually over-feed their parrots. Don't despair, just simply stop feeding your bird the treats, and when you fill up his food bowl for the night, only give him 7 grams of food, a gram less than the night before.

THIS IS YOUR HOMEWORK FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS!

1. Establish a training diet that your Vet approves for your parrot so that your bird will eat treats out of your hand at night when he is hungry.

Keep in mind that this is not cruel in any way. We are still feeding the bird the same amount of food in a day. We are just breaking it up into meals, just the same way you and I eat. This will be the foundation for motivating your parrot.

Getting this training diet set up will change you and your parrot's relationship in ways you could never imagine. He'll start wanting to cuddle with you, bury his head in our finger tips begging for pets, or cuddling in the folds of your clothes while you sit in your favorite chair.

All it takes is to bridge the language gap between you and your parrot, so you can start to reward him for overcoming his fears.

There are hundreds of tips and techniques for doing this with your parrot that we teach in extreme detail in our best selling parrot training course at:
www.YourParrotGuide.com


And if you're TRULY interested in creating the happiest relationship possible with your bird, you'd be making a big mistake by not picking up a copy of this course.

I've poured my heart and soul into it, and it's pretty darn good. So good that I'm happy to announce that David Copperfield, the Mega Entertainer learned about how effective we were at training birds and had us come out to his warehouse and train a few of his birds for him :-)

So go pick up a copy of our training course and start taking your parrot training to a new level!

This info provided by Chet at www.YourParrotGuide.com