- Hey everyone, Jamieleigh here.
Ooh boy, I know, blalalalala.
(bird chirps)
I know.
Blue, I totally messed that up.
(upbeat music)
Hey everybody, Jamieleigh here from Birdtricks
and today I have very random, but super important message.
I got this DM over on my Patreon
and I wanted to read it to you guys
because it was so meaningful to me
that I hope it's eye-opening for all of you.
This is what it says.
Hey, Jamieleigh and Dave,
I recently started a feeding schedule with my four birds.
Thank you for pushing for people to do this
so much on your videos.
I was so stubborn
and did not want to put them on a schedule
for whatever reason.
I've been using your natural feeding system for a while.
And I use decent pellets,
but never realized how much of a difference
a schedule would make,
Some unwanted behavior disappeared overnight.
Training became so much better.
This was the one reason I didn't see a purpose.
I thought my training before was really productive,
but holy moly, now it is.
I can track what they eat better,
and I even found a medical issue my cockatiel has
that I never would've noticed
before it was too late
to prevent anything terrible from happening.
So, this message
just has so many amazing eye-opening things in it.
And it's a lot of the reason that I do say
use more of a feeding schedule
and it's not so much a strict schedule of feed at 8 a.m.,
because something like that
leads to a bird having expectations
that you can't meet every single day
for the rest of your bird's life.
So what I really mean by that
is my birds get breakfast anytime before noon
and they get their evening meal anytime after 3 p.m.
And what this does,
is it just, it does make your training a lot more effective.
Good boy.
Holy moly.
That was amazing.
I'm going to let him enjoy his treat off of me.
Good boy.
Good job.
Holy crap.
Like, that's pretty much it.
I mean, you gave it to me, buddy.
That was so good.
It increases the value of your treats,
especially if you're able to train before meals
if your bird works better that way.
Some of my birds actually train best for certain situations
after meals.
Some birds train best with a half meal.
We've had some flight students
that do better after having half breakfast
before starting their session.
So you're going to kind of find what your bird falls into,
which category it falls into.
Do you need to work before breakfast?
Which would be my camelot macaw, Tusa,
do you need to work with half breakfast?
Which would be my other camelot macaw, Comet.
Can you work completely after breakfast?
I will say not a lot of birds fall into that category,
but some do.
And do you need to wait until later in the day?
is there a certain point of day
that your bird's more receptive to training,
or more just receptive to interacting with you?
Some birds take a little bit to wake up.
We've had flight trips where, you know, Momo,
one of our galahs that we trained,
he's not a morning bird.
He wanted to fly last.
And so we really had to put birds in a certain order
that they would do best at.
So finding times of day
that your bird's just more receptive.
But a feeding schedule isn't so much
of a strict, strict routine,
but it is some sort of structure
that gives you a better know how
of how much your bird's actually consuming and eating
versus a 24-hour buffet where you can't tell.
And it gives you a lot more opportunities
throughout the day to interact and bond with your bird.
And that's really what we're looking for.
We want to give the bird reason to come to you.
My budgie Blueberry, who's out right now,
she will often just come fly and land on my back
while I'm walking around and choose to interact with me.
And it gives me opportunity to either just hang out with her
or actually have a little bit of a training session
or work on something new.
There's times where we've had little cuddle sessions
that are random,
there's times where I've been like,
"Ooh, she's really receptive to cuddling
at this time of day, I'm going to specifically train it
so that other people can do it too."
So it just kind of lends itself
to opening up the possibilities for you and your bird
to make a better relationship.
That's why we say do a feeding schedule.
You know, I'm not about the kitchen sink diet,
the kitchen sink diet
is grabbing anything that won't kill your bird
and stuffing it in a bowl and just giving it to your bird
thinking that you're a great human being
because you gave it fresh food,
but you have no idea which fresh foods it's consuming
or the exact amounts.
A lot of people think one grape
is not a big deal for a bird,
but if the bird is only 75 grams in weight,
it ate an entire grape.
It's probably not eating adequate amount of vegetables
to offset the sugar content in that grape.
So it's things that you really need to be aware of
and you need to be setting your bird up for success,
of giving it those really good foods
when it's most likely to consume them.
We want the space in the crop
to be taken up by the most awesome foods
that make your bird feel good, look good, and be healthy
so that we can have long, amazing relationships
with our birds.
So please consider checking out my natural feeding system.
It goes over how,
it gives you the recipes that you can just make at home.
And I highly, highly recommend
the first time you make this recipe,
have your bird take part with you.
Obviously do this at your discretion,
but it's really awesome to have your bird
a part of the fun of, you know,
washing those vegetables, preparing those meals,
stuffing those bags full.
Your bird can be a part of a lot of it.
And so all the safe bits,
make sure that your bird's a part of it
so it can explore all those awesome new foods.
And it really gets the bird
to be interested in what you're doing
because it thinks it's supposed to stay out of it.
So of course they think they're not supposed to get into it.
Birds want to get into it.
So please check out my seasonal feeding system.
It's meant to give your bird year-round nutrition,
check out my pellets and all of the training advice
that I have on my website.
I have a ton of free resources,
like here on my YouTube channel, on feeding.
And it's all meant to better the relationship
for you and your bird.
So thank you so much to Mickell
for writing this to me,
it was amazing to get feedback like that
and know that somebody that already thought
they had a good relationship with their bird
just timesed it by 10 by implementing my advice.
That just makes it so worth it to make these videos
to put content out there,
to hear feedback like that is literally what keeps me going.
What gives me inspiration and motivation
to get up and make more videos for you guys.
I appreciate knowing that they're appreciated,
and that the advice isn't falling on deaf ears.
So I think that a lot of the times,
saying the same thing over and over again
but in different ways,
will sometimes get to somebody new.
And so I really hope for that.
And I hope that you guys share these videos
and the advice that I give you with other bird owners.
So we can up the new standard
of where relationships with birds should be.
So, thank you for watching,
and again, thank you to all my patrons,
and thank you for the DMs, like keep them coming.
I try to keep up with all the information
and messages that you guys send.
So I really appreciate just connecting
with each and every one of you