- Hey everybody.
Jamieleigh here from bird tricks.
And today I'm going to be talking
about five things that you should be doing differently
with your small birds.
Bo, everybody heard that, who heard the baby macaw noise
in the intro to my small bird video?
You're not a small bird,
not a small bird.
Not small.
You're baby, but doesn't count.
(upbeat music)
Number one is one that my husband
Dave talks about all the time with our clients.
And that is treat your small bird as if it could kill you.
So in essence, we always say, treat it like a tiger.
Would you do that with a tiger?
A lot of the times people tend to bully small birds
because it can't bite that hard.
And it's a really sad reality, but it is true.
It's also why people tend to get small birds
as pets for kids and kids tend to manhandle birds
whether it's intentionally doing it or just
because they're kids and they want to snug them
and squeeze them and love them all over.
So it's something that you have to be really mindful about.
Try to change your mindset with a small bird
and think about, would you do that with a medium bird?
Would you do that with a large bird?
And now would you treat a tiger like that?
A lot of the times when small birds give us warnings
we think it's adorably cute, and we press
on annoying the small bird.
But if that was a tiger and it flicked its ears at you
you would back off.
So try to change your mindset and not bully your small bird.
Number two is, do not give your small bird food
all day long, unless you do not plan to be around all day.
I like to give my budgie, Blueberry, two meals a day
and she usually tells me when she wants them.
I've trained her to fly over to my gram scale to prove
that she needs that meal.
And she fluctuates by one to two grams every day
especially when she wakes up in the morning.
She usually down a gram or two
Blueberry.
Good to know, good to know.
And I know if I can train her or if I should just
skip to breakfast based on my routine that day
and what I have going on, but it'll really
help your relationship go a long way,
if your bird associates you with coming and giving food
or finds ways to communicate to you like, Hey
I'm ready to interact with you.
I'm ready to train.
I'm ready for breakfast or dinner.
And if your small bird tends to need three meals or more
just break it into smaller meals more often
throughout the day.
Now, number three kind of goes back to number one.
And this is all about training your small bird to come
into your hand instead of having to go chase your bird
around. So for example, when somebody really needs to
get their small bird in or out of the cage, they tend to
just grab it or if they need it to do something
they tend to just grab that small bird because it's small
and they can fit their hand around it.
What is a better tactic is to actually formally
train your bird to come into your hand itself.
So if you ever need to grab it for some reason
it is a trained behavior that isn't traumatic
or traumatizing in the way that it would set
back your relationship.
So this is something that I trained my budgie, Blueberry to
do very early on, understanding that I would definitely
need this and it would come in handy
and it not to mention that it's absolutely adorable.
So something that goes a long way in building a bond with
your small bird.
Number four is work through, they flighty scary moments.
A lot of the times we give these small birds characteristics
like flighty, and we just say, Oh, they're flighty.
They're easily scared, that scares them.
This scares them.
They just get scared.
And we kind of accepted it as fact,
instead of working through
with desensitization, to what those things are.
If they're scared of specific things, you need to address it
and work through it, given that it is an irrational fear.
Now, if your flighty, scared bird is scared of the cat
or the dog.
That's a rational fear.
It should be.
That is a predator animal.
Let's leave that fear
as it is so that your bird knows to get to a safe
spot away from them.
However, if it's irrational fear where it's terrified
of your purple slippers
that's something you're going to want to work
through so that you can wear your fuzzy slippers.
My fifth and final one is crate train and maintain.
Again, this goes back to some
of the earlier stuff where people tend to just
grab their small birds when they need them
and stuff them in a travel cage for the vet, because, hey
it only happens once a year.
I'll work through it
fix it later win my bird back with millet.
But ideally you don't want to take those step backwards.
You want to crate train your small bird to go into a carrier
so that you can ask it to do so whenever you need it,
also it's great to always maintain crate training
so that your bird doesn't associate the crate
with only negative experiences like the veterinarian
which is pretty traumatizing,
and it takes a while for them to forget that.
So it's ideal to associate your travel cage
with really good things.
Some ways I've crate trained,
some birds is through giving meals
in their crates and also leaving the door open
for that first initial time that you're working
with a crate.
So it doesn't accidentally slam shut.
You really want to pin that door open so
that they feel like they can come and go. The more control
over an environment or situation that you give an animal,
the more likely they are going to feel safe and secure
venturing out and going
beyond their comfort level to try something new.
Well, I hope you guys have enjoyed this video
and it gave you some insight
to how to treat your small bird.
Should you already have one, or if you're thinking
about getting one, if you need some more help
taming, training, and bonding with your small bird.
I have a budgie course that is applicable
to all small species of parrots.
I will leave a link in the video description.
So go check that out.
It goes through day one, getting my budgie, Blueberry,
from a pet shop, completely wild and taming her
in just as little as about two days, it was pretty amazing.
And you should definitely read the reviews on this course
because people that did everything wrong from day one
and found out they did through my course ended
up being able to fix those issues within days.
So it's really amazing transformation when
you're using the right techniques, which is what we're all
about here at BirdTricks is permission based training.
So go ahead and check out that link
in the video description, hit the thumbs up button
if you enjoyed this video
and please share it with your bird loving friends.
Thanks for watching.
No, that makes sense in these little videos, did you notice?
I don't know if you read your YouTube comments
or like all the videos lately.
They're like this one must have been edited by Dave.
- [Dave] Oh Yeah, I did see-
(beep)
(upbeat music)
- [Dave] Would you, could you, if it was tiny?
- Dr. Seuss.
Okay.
- [Dave] Would you, could you on a bus? Would you, could you
(indistinct)
- Would you, could you, should you, shush?
(laughing)
What a film here.
(upbeat music)