- [Jamieleigh] I definitely hear her coming.
(Dave laughs)
(bird chirps)
And I see tiny boys.
- Hello.
- Hi guys.
- [Jamieleigh] Hi.
You brought your Nanday Conure.
(all laugh)
- This is Sebastian.
- What a cutie!
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to another masterclass video
with this time a Nanday Conure named Sebastian.
Now we have no idea how old Sebastian is,
but we do know for sure in fact,
he has a DNA sexed,
male Nanday Conure.
So, some of the issues,
that Jessi is having with Sebastian,
are things like he doesn't really like hands.
He doesn't wanna step up willingly.
Doesn't necessarily bite, hard.
(Jamieleigh laughs)
And she does feel like she can read his body language,
but he'll fly off her hand and back to his spot at home.
So he kinda lives on a stand in the living room.
And he's not too keen on the interactions
that she wants to have with him.
So he does say some words, whistles, targets.
Just kind of some of the basics.
And then as far as his food,
we were so proud of Jessi because,
he is on our seasonal feeding system and our pellets.
Which always excites us because it means
we can get to the fun part,
which is the training.
So Jessi's main objective for today's class,
is just to get Sebastian to step up on her hand willingly.
Now she's seen our family friendly parrot formula
one and two.
She's watched our baby bird course, cause she's a patron.
And she's even watched our parrot effects video,
which is more edutainment.
But today's goal is definitely getting
that awesome enthusiastic, step up willingly
onto her hand without ever feeling forced.
So, let's see if we can get it for her.
- [Dave] So to start things off,
we asked her to take him out of the cage.
And so,
she went over it,
and she was totally prepared with the chopstick
and the clicker and the treats.
She tried to target her bird out of the cage.
Now, it didn't take too many repetitions to realize that,
we weren't really set up for the best success.
And that's one of the things
we preach a lot here at Birdtricks.
And that is to, make sure that you're set up for success.
No matter how you start the interaction,
think about it ahead of time.
What could go right?
What could go wrong?
And in her case, she already said,
the bird doesn't step up well.
This cage is not ideal for getting a bird to step up.
So after multiple attempts of trying
to get her bird to target,
(Dave sighs)
I finally said, you know what,
why don't we just take the top off the cage.
And make it easy.
So, at this point,
the top is off.
So to gain his trust, she continued to do,
lots of targeting.
Targeting him closer and closer to the edge.
As he tries to figure out how to overcome that fear,
to come touch the chopstick,
and get a treat.
And she's trying to target him over to the T-stand.
So this is something we did to try to make that,
transition really easy from the cage to,
a familiar stand.
But that didn't really work.
So we just said, "Okay, let's go ahead
and step him up for a treat."
- [Jamieleigh] So obviously since Jessi's here
to work on the step up,
and she offered it.
(Jamieleigh chuckles)
It didn't work.
Cause we're not quite there yet.
So, it made Sebastian fly all around which happens,
a lot throughout this video.
Because he is fearful of her hand.
And the interesting thing is,
what she stated when she came back with him,
is that he's actually okay like going on his back,
and being held in her palm.
And, he really like ran up her chest,
and things like that.
But she kind of pointed out any time,
that he was just perched on her hand, it was a problem.
And then--
- [Dave] But then she can hold him and it was okay.
- [Jamieleigh] But then you walked in.
(both chuckle)
With him perched on your hands.
It didn't look very traumatic.
- [Dave] So one thing to be aware of
at this stage in the bird's life,
it almost appears that the bird is submitting.
And almost giving up to fighting,
when it is on its back.
Cause you notice whenever the bird is upright,
it has the ability to escape,
it runs forth.
And so we're trying to work through that.
But the reason I mentioned that,
is not to try to make her look bad,
but to try to let everybody know that
sometimes at a certain point in a bird's life,
usually when it's younger,
it's tolerant or willing to accept it.
But it doesn't mean it likes it.
So try to be very sure that you're not confusing that like,
"Oh yeah, he likes this or he lets me do this."
He might let you do it, but not forever.
Often times in the past you might have heard us talk about
the importance of training your bird
in a room away from its cage.
And I would say that some
there's some concepts going on that relate to that here.
Where I was able to just go over and,
pick the bird up on my finger and walk him back.
A lot of this had to do because he wasn't near his cage.
And out of all the fearful things,
a human was the most familiar thing in that environment.
So he was willing to come to me.
Now I was very slow with him,
very cautious with him.
This bird doesn't know me.
But I was able to kinda quote and quote,
rescue him,
walk on over and stand still
while they got the T-stand set up, away from the cage.
We weren't worrying about him
trying to jump back to the cage since,
that was one of the problems
that she specifically said he has at home,
is he'll fly back to the cage.
His home, maybe, someday his nest.
So we want to avoid that altogether.
- [Jamieleigh] One of the new things we're now dealing with,
with Sebastian now that we can actually
get him perched on Jessi's finger,
is that he's wanting to retreat
and go hide up in her hair on her shoulder.
So one of the things that I saw
was a lot of nasty type behavior.
So I did warn her about that.
She might wanna put her hair up.
She might want to just avoid
getting in that situation altogether.
And so Dave starts working with her
on trying to keep Sebastian more towards the end of her hand
versus trying to retreat up to her shoulders.
So we try to make sure that she understands,
all that reinforcement from those food rewards,
needs to come from the hand.
And really luring him either back there
with, seeing the treat is going to be delivered there
or by targeting him down.
I try to make sure everybody always understands
that as much as you work on the bird stepping up,
coming to you.
All of that stuff that we so much love and adore as humans,
that you equally work on hands-off things.
And so for Sebastian,
we're putting him back on the T-stand
and just working on some basic targeting.
Something that, he's very confident and comfortable doing.
So that he doesn't feel like,
we owe every single interaction is gonna
revolve around having him or making him come
and be around us all the time.
Because Sebastian is so receptive
to training today at this class,
we decide to work on the spin.
It's something that Jessi hasn't been able to do with him.
And it's something that we absolutely love training
and can usually train in a single training session.
So, we go ahead and start teaching her
how to train, her bird to spin.
(instrumental music playing)
As you guys saw, we were able to make,
quite a bit of progress with the Nanday Conure, Sebastian
and his human Jessi in this video.
- It's really important to note that,
the people that have the highest success rate
in our masterclasses come fully prepared
by having the bird on the right diet.
That I can't say enough how important that is,
cause we can deal with the treat value.
Instead of trying to work under the misconception
of a bird being so starved,
we're able to make a ton of progress through proper diet
and using the proper treats.
- But wait, there is more.
We got an email update from Jessi and her Nanday Conure.
And I wanted to go ahead and read the email to you guys,
and then show you the video that she sent as a follow-up,
about how great they're doing,
and the progress they made
in just a couple of days afterwards.
So, Jessi wrote and said,
"Hi, Dave and Jamieleigh.
This is Jessi, from Saturday morning's mini masterclass
in Medford, Oregon,
with Sebastian, the Nanday Conure.
I wanted to send you a message
and thank you for all the guidance and help you gave
me during our mini-session.
And I wanted to also update you,
and show you Sebastian's progress with stepping up,
perching and doing the spin like a champ.
He even flew himself to the training T-stand to do tricks.
And it's amazing how just a couple hours
with you guys make such a difference.
I really appreciate all your guidance and advice
towards building a better bond with Sebastian
and starting our trick training journey."
Thanks, Jessi and Sebastian.
So check out the progress they have made since,
our two-hour class with them over the weekend.
- Honey, step up.
(Jessi clicks tongue)
Good.
There you go.
Yeah.
You gonna do a spin for me?
(Sebastian chirps)
Spin.
(Jessi clicks tongue)
Good job.
(Jessi chuckles)
You doing it.
You're too smart.
Spin.
(Sebastian chirps)
(Jessi clicks tongue)
Yes.
He's doing it.
Spin.
(Sebastian chirps)
(Jessi clicks tongue)
Bravo!
Spin.
(Jessi clicks tongue)
Good job.
Yeah.
Spin.
(Jessi clicks tongue)
Yeah.
There you go.
Oh, it's right there.
Ready?
Spin.
(Sebastian chirps)
(Jessi clicks tongue)
Spin.
(Jesssi clicks tongue)
You're too smart.
What're you doing?
- Lastly we wanted to give a big shoutout to,
Heather of Crawling Critters Zoo.
For hosting our masterclasses here in Medfrid,Oregon.
Thank you so much Heather,
we appreciate it more than you could know.
- Thank you, thank you.
- If you haven't already,
check her out on Instagram and Facebook.
And think about hiring her for your next event.
She works with an array of different variety of animals
and critters,
and she does right by animals in our eyes.
And I think you guys will be very impressed.
(upbeat music)