- Hey everyone.
Jamieleigh here from Bird Tricks
and welcome back to fixing my subscribers'
most common pair at behavioral problems part two.
(upbeat music)
My next subscriber that I'm gonna be helping
is named Mary and she wrote in about Maggie, her cockatiel.
It reads, "This is Maggie a 15 year old male cockatiel.
He currently eats a blend of Harrison's Maintenance pellets
mixed with a sunflower seed free seed mix.
Along with that, all my birds are offered fresh fruits
and veggies throughout the day.
Usually pureed into a baby food consistency
since they liked that texture more.
Maggie is epileptic with seizures triggered from stress.
Multiple times we've tried to transition her
or him into a healthier diet but even a normal conversion
over the course of a month stressed him out enough
to trigger a seizure.
What would be the best way
to transition Maggie into a healthier diet
without the stress?
As requested I included a video clip
with Maggie post seizure that we filmed for the vet.
This was about a week ago into an attempted diet change.
He's gone back to the seed and pellet mix."
Whoa, this is difficult.(chuckles)
The good news is, as she did mention
that they follow my homemade seed mix recipe
that is featured here on my channel.
So that's awesome 'cause I know it's a quality seed mix
that he's actually getting.
However, obviously having 70% pellets
and then the rest is seeds is not super ideal.
You wanna get those fresh foods into the body.
But, this is a pretty unique case with seizures.
I don't think I've ever dealt with this specific
of a scenario with the diet transition
being such a stressful transition.
Again, kinda going back to one of my previous answers.
I find that social eating works really, really well.
And just including your bird in the food prep process.
When I make my seasonal feeding system,
it takes six hours you guys (chuckles).
It's a process.
And I'm tripling my normal recipes.
So I'm like, I'm making a huge batch for my birds.
I'm also feeding a lot of birds.
So I go through it a lot faster than the average person
but I find that including the bird
in the process is really helpful.
Also, I think there's a misunderstanding
about diet conversion being making your bird hungry.
That's not what it's about.
It's about constantly offering healthy foods all the time.
So your bird always has the opportunity
to explore awesome good nutritious foods.
It shouldn't be going hungry.
It should always have the opportunity
to check something new out.
I think one of the tools that a lot of people overlook
is using what your bird already likes
as a tool for diet conversion.
So what I mean by that is if Maggie
is taking on these pellets amazingly well
and it sounds like he is, use those pellets
for diet conversion by powdering them
and mixing them into things to kinda give
that same flavor that he's used
to while also introducing a brand new food.
You can use that kind of stuff in birdie bread
or in recipes, especially with fresh food
with just that dusting or you can even push those pellets
into fresh foods so that he kind of has to dig them out
and in the process he's tasting these other foods.
It doesn't need to be something that's stressful
where food is ever withheld.
It should just be that all these good foods
are always offered.
The other misunderstanding, I think there is about diet
is that fruits and veggies go hand in hand.
I think a lot of people always say like
I offer fresh fruits and vegetables.
And I always hate hearing that because they're not equal.
They're not equal in nutritional value or anything else.
So set the fruits aside and use it
as a high value treat reward instead
of as a daily part of your bird's diet.
Awesome.
So this next submission is from somebody
who lives in Boise, Idaho.
So yes, fellow Idahoan.
Let's go ahead and read it.
"Hello from Boise, Idaho.
My nanday conure probably isn't overly dependent on me
but his behavior makes me gravitate
towards this thought process.
My name is Lindsay and I have a question
of how to remedy a certain behavior from my nanday conure.
Here's a little info on him.
His name is Gizmo, he's six months old
and his diet is a birdie Schmo's board
a.k.a can pick what they want from what I set out."
So her question is, "Gizmo tends to follow me everywhere
throughout our home, and rarely spends independent time
with outlets that I offer him such as homemade playground
with assorted toys, foraging kebabs
with sunflower seeds inserted in them, et cetera.
More often than not even after having routine
training sessions, he will fly towards me coming in fast,
always lands on my head even when my hand is offered.
Uses my hair as a slide or escalator to come down
and then begins aggressive behavior.
Not sure what I'm missing in order to raise him properly.
For context, he was purchased through a bird store
owner who had hand-fed him since hatching.
He already has gone through his first molt
and hasn't shown signs of hormonal behavior right now.
Thanks for the opportunity to have this riddle solved.
Love what you guys do."
Woo, okay. (chuckles)
Let's check out this video.
Oh, okay.
So she gave me a link to this video.
So I'm actually gonna show it to you guys.
- That right there.
And this restarts the preening stuff
and they'll pull out hair.
Aw, like he is right now.
It's almost as if he treats me like a mom bird.
I dunno it's hard to describe.
- So this one I have kind of a few different avenues
that I'm thinking about going with it,
depending on the exact situation.
The first thing is obviously the diet is lacking.
Again, this is just a common thing.
I find so many people are just not giving the right diet.
So I'm going to just like skip over that
because I feel like it's been a theme throughout
all of these and I don't want to
just like go say it 10 times.
So go research your diet guys. (chuckles)
There's links in this video description for sure now.
If there wasn't there definitely is now.
So one of the things that I see is when people
wanna have their bird out a lot of the time,
like out of the cage and just hanging out with them
but there's no structure to it.
There's not really a goal with it.
And so what ends up happening is it's just kind of chaotic
and the bird is looking for stuff to do
looking for stuff to get into.
And all the interactions tend to switch
to having fun with my human, to you can't do that.
you can't touch that, can't have that.
can't do this, can't go there.
And it turns into kind of like these negative interactions
between you and your bird, because there's so much
that they literally shouldn't get into that could hurt them.
And so a lot of the times we can't help
but keep that away from the bird, take that away
from the bird, keep the bird away from that, move the bird.
And what ends up happening is we're just doing a whole bunch
of interactions and experiences that the bird doesn't want.
And it ends up making our overall relationship
with our bird go downhill.
So even though you feel good because your bird
was out of the cage for a long time,
overall your interactions were actually bad.
Versus if you would've had your bird
out for a shorter amount of time, been 100% focused
on your bird and had amazing interactions
that in the long-term would make your relationship better.
That's kind of where the quality
over quantity thing comes into play.
I will say, though, in this particular situation
it sounds like a lot of the treats are in the normal diet.
So just having that seed mix or whatever it is
in the evening, I feel like is making
this conure a little bit more high energy
instead of using it as a tool for like foraging
and expanding that energy that way
or specific functional flight training
and getting physical energy out that way,
you know there's two different types
of energy that we wanna get out with our birds.
One of it is, one of them is mental.
We want our bird to problem solve and think about things
and think through things and really use their brain.
And then the other one is physical.
We want them to be active, whether they can fly or not
we want them to be moving and getting around
and expending physical energy as well.
If they don't, they're pent up both mentally
and physically and they usually take it out on us.
I will say, I saw a little bit of hormones.
Conures are kinda notorious for cuddling
and snuggling into little nooks and crannies.
Phoebe, my son conure loves nestling into people's necks
where the hair is and stuff, especially on flight trips.
She usually gravitates to the photographer
because the photographer isn't running around like crazy.
They're just staying mostly in the middle of everything
and she'll just nestle in and be like, "Cool, I'll be here.
Let me know when you're all done."
But conures tend to love to nestle
into little areas like that.
The best thing to do is to kind of avoid it.
You know, that is a problematic area
where you're gonna get bit on the neck, put your hair up
because that might be one of the things
since this conure is using it as a slide
or escalator I think she said.
You just know that it's problematic
put your hair up, avoid that situation.
You know that 98% of the chant,
the time your bird gets into your hair,
it's gonna be a fail.
Try to avoid being in that situation
and letting your bird fail.
Also give your bird something else to do.
So instead of having to remove him or force him down
or anything like that, help him make the decision
to get out of there.
Use target training, or even luring if you absolutely
have to.
Target training is better that way your birds
really making the decision to come out
and do something else, which is an incompatible behavior.
The bird cannot target the end of the chopstick
on the table and bite your neck at the exact same time.
So think about those incompatible behaviors
that you can cue or offer an opportunity for
where your bird will choose what you're wanting it
to choose.
A lot of the times with bird training
and just bird behavior, we're trying to find ways
to make what we want worthwhile for the bird
and make them want it.
So getting creative with that is really, really important.
And it sounds like using the seed mix
that's in the evening for better things
is really the way to go.
Another thing with flight training is that
when birds are flying to shoulders or heads,
it's usually avoidance.
They're intentionally avoiding landing
on your hand because they don't want you
to choose where they go or have 100% control
over where they're at.
They do this so that you can't get them
and they're avoiding you.
The main thing that you need to do is make sure
that you always deliver reinforcement from your hand.
So if the bird, if you offer your hand
and the bird lands over here or lands on your shoulder
just simply target down until you get them to your hand
and make sure reinforcement only ever comes from your hand.
Keep in mind if a bird is going here
there's some sort of reinforcement just naturally there.
So you might need a larger incentive to get them
to do the behavior you actually want them to do.
That comes back to treat and value.
I hope not going too far with all of this.
We explain these concepts in great depth
and detail in our family-friendly parrot formula.
And I think I'm used to doing consultations
where people have watched that and understand
the language that I'm just like, bam, bam, bam going there.
So if anything seems like, you guys
aren't getting it or there's holes in,
in the answers I think that you will find those
filled in from my family friendly parrot formula videos.
Okay.
The last part of this is that this conure
doesn't seem to play with toys.
So I do have a couple of videos, one demoing
with my budgie Blueberry and one demoing
with Jinx, my macaw on how to train your bird
to actually play with and start destroying toys.
Now the good news is eventually you don't always
have to use treats.
It becomes self-reinforcing for birds to destroy things.
(exhales) The interesting part is you kinda have
to find what your birds niche is
and find what toy is gonna be the one
that you end up training with.
It might be different for your bird.
Jinx was very receptive to the toys I used in that video.
But later I found he's even more receptive
to like vine balls and things that he can hold
in his foot and have stuff in them.
He was totally into that when we did this promo
with Parrot Joy and she made this specific toy
for my three sons but I actually ended up using it
as a foot toy for all of my macaws
because it just worked so much better.
So, think outside the box.
Think foot toys.
Think maybe training your bird with toys inside the cage
or on the outside of the cage or on a tabletop,
whatever might transfer best for you or work best for you.
You know, with Jinx I actually did an O-flock episode
over on Patreon where I worked with him inside
his aviary as well.
So for those of you that feel like working on a tabletop
with training your bird to play with toys
won't translate to the cage, think about
doing all that training inside the cage.
There's a lot of different ways to get creative
with convincing our birds to be a little bit
more independent and learn how to self entertain.
So the last submission I'm gonna take
is from one of my subscribers named Kirsten.
She wrote and said, "Hi, Jamie, Dave and Capri.
Roscoe is an eight year old green cheek
that I have had since he was three weeks old.
His diet is a pellet formula from a pet store
along with fresh vegetables, fruit, et cetera.
He hates shaker cups.
We always tend to forget.
So whoever is holding the bird at the time
someone else takes a drink, gets a nasty bite.
It's abnormal for him to bite.
Attached is an example of the conure versus cup.
Any recommendations are appreciated."
Okay.
Again, (giggles) last time I'm gonna mention that
the foundation of diet needs to be in place to be able
to to make like the most amazing progress
ever with training.
So please look into the right diet.
Fruit shouldn't be a normal part of the everyday diet
for your bird, just FYI.
(sighs) Oh, please use a really good pellet,
mine on my website.
Please understand more about diet.
Okay, I'm just gonna keep skipping over all that.
But anyways, if that proper foundation
was in place what I would recommend
is when whenever your bird really dislikes something
you wanna find a way to associate it positively.
So something about that cup is driving this bird
up the wall, but there is a safe distance
at which the bird is accepting of the cup
and won't overly react.
Obviously, it's not a few inches like
in this video where the bird just kind of attacked it
and then moved on.
Ideally, what you wanna do is reward the bird
for a non-reaction, a disinterest.
Not caring about the cup, basically.
So having it at a distance, almost like a show
with a power pause with being here on my channel
and having that cup and having that bird
not care or do something else.
Cue a different behavior, cue targeting,
even target around the cup eventually
and work your way closer and closer to that cup
with this disinterest, this non-reaction,
this I have something better to do.
But in order to do that you need to have something high
value you can use as your tool
and as your reward.
And based on this diet it doesn't sound like
you have something super duper awesome
that over does or overcomes the hate for the shaker cup.
And that's kinda where we're at
and that's why we push treat value so much
is because yeah, your bird might do just fine
on a crappy diet working on some training
that it really enjoys but what about when you need it
to do something it doesn't necessarily want to do.
That same treat will no longer be worth it
because of that treat value and that foundation
not being in place.
So that's why I really urge people to do the right diet
so that your treats matter and you can actually use them
for these more complex and unique behaviors
that you need from your bird.
Thank you guys so much to all my subscribers
who submitted their questions for including the photos
and the video.
I feel like it really helps the essence
of what your issues are and trying to explain them
to a broader audience.
If you like the style of this video
and you wanna see more please let me know
in the comments below.
I'm really interested to hear you guys' feedback
since I've never done a video like this before.
Can't wait to hear from you guys
and I hope that you have success moving forward
and fixing all of your bird's problems.
If you need more help check out my training
courses at birdtricks.com and also look
into one-on-one consultations with my husband and I.
We offer consultations year round
depending on what your needs are.
We have one-off consultations or consultation packages
which I find do really well because then we act
as your accountability partner.
So not only do we give you advice
on that first consultation, but we also hold you responsible
and accountable for implementing that advice and getting
to the next step and so on and so forth.
So I look forward to working with you guys in the future.
Thank you so much for watching and thanks again
for subscribing and submitting your questions.
Thanks so much guys.
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