- Baby bird video.
He's probably not gonna stay.
Bo, you look like you're gonna go to the foraging tree.
Ooh.
Dinosaur tail.
Yeah, not gonna stay.
Well, hi everybody.
This is Jamieleigh from BirdTricks and that was Bo,
a baby blue and gold macaw that I'm currently working with
for a client and raising.
Oh, you're back.
And, and today's video is about
how to get your baby bird to bathe.
And believe it or not, Bo is a baby bird.
Even though he looks big and he's full grown, he's a baby.
He's still young and he is fresh off of trying to wean.
So he's not even weaned yet.
That's how much of a baby you are.
But as you can see, he is fully feathered.
So he's got all of his feathers, and that's a big part,
and plays a huge role in getting baby birds
to be able to take a bath.
You want to stay here?
Oh, real nice.
(upbeat music)
- Did you know that there's several dozen things
that you can do in the birds first year of its life
to put these beautiful things into rescues
for the rest of their life?
- We just created a baby bird course.
So check out a link in the description.
If you feel like you need help
setting your baby bird up for success.
But in the meantime, enjoy this baby bird related video.
Do you want to play with a toy? Or you gonna go fly around?
You look like you're gonna go fly around.
(Bo squawks)
You got a toy?
Playing with toys.
He'll probably drop it and then fly.
Yeah, okay.
Bo, Bo.
Awesome.
This is what it's like having a baby bird.
Do you want me to hold you?
Want me to hold you?
You want to go play on a tree?
Why don't you play on a tree?
Ready?
No, no, no. We're gonna go to the tree.
Ready?
Good boy, good job.
So he'll probably be back, but hopefully for a little bit
he will fly between trees for right now.
So, fingers crossed.
Alright so there's some key tips to succeeding
with teaching a baby bird to accept bathing.
Now there's not much to this
because naturally and instinctively,
birds should enjoy bathing outside and in nature,
it's something that they would like doing.
Ah, so unless they've had a traumatic experience about it,
they don't just hatch hating water
or thinking that water is evil.
A lot of the times it's been misused,
which is why people are trying to get
their birds to like water.
But if you're starting with a clean slate and a baby,
they're not gonna think it's evil unless you present it
as scary or anything but nice and comfortable.
Now the one key thing when you're conditioning your bird
to first accept bathing is not to do it every single day
and not to do it all the time.
So end goal is yes, your bird ideally is bathing every day,
but that's not where you start.
That's the finish line.
So don't put pressure on yourself
of having to bathe your baby bird every single day.
For example, I've had Bo for two weeks,
and he's had two baths in that amount of time.
And that may seem like really minimal.
And the reason it's been so few and far between
is just because I'm waiting for an ideal opportunity
to present the bathing.
And both times I have, it's gone exceptionally well.
So I've decided to go take a shower with Bo.
So I'm gonna video as much of it as possible.
You already know what's up.
There we go.
(Bo squawks) I know, what's going on?
Okay so, I am going to start him
actually further away from the water.
Yep, you're gonna go on this side
'cause you've never done this before.
(water trickles)
Alright, so he's not getting hit with water.
This is his reaction.
I'm gonna come in there with you.
What do you think?
He's like, mm I don't know.
I don't know about this human.
Not a huge reaction, so pretty cool.
(upbeat music)
Bo, are you taking a bath?
(Bo squawks)
(upbeat music)
Oh my goodness.
All that flapping.
(upbeat music)
Good job.
Alright, very successful shower.
Only one little mishap, which was hard to tell
if he was like getting anxious about the whole thing
or if he's getting more into it.
So anyway, that was good.
It's all good.
And he's pretty wet.
So he's definitely not soaked, but he's wet enough.
For a first go it was pretty awesome.
You did very good.
I'm very proud of you.
See if he'll be more content to hang out
while I get dressed for the day.
Alright.
What do you think?
Can you do a little shake?
Yeah.
- [Kid] Did you give him a bath?
- Yeah, I took him in the shower with me.
He did pretty good.
So I want to keep that streak going
and keep the quality of those interactions as awesome.
And I don't want to over do it and have to undo stuff.
Okay, why don't you go play?
Go play, baby.
Ready?
The tree tree.
Ready?
That wasn't the tree.
Okay, we're just gonna do boomerangs instead.
You just want to stay here?
(soft kiss sounds) Love you.
You can stay here.
I think you don't know what you want.
I think he wants me to stop filming and go play.
(Jamieleigh laughs)
That's what I think.
By play I mean fly.
Are you gonna fly at my face and my head?
Oh look that step up.
That was a good step up. You guys going outside?
- [Kid] Yeah.
- Okay.
Okay, so we just had Bo on the other tree and I was
bathing him and I was getting a really good response.
So I'm gonna see if I can recreate it.
Maybe it'll be better on the other tree.
Alright.
So as a baby, it's natural for them to want to bathe.
So I was using praise.
Good boy.
Good job Bo.
So anytime I get a bathing response, I'm like,
woo, what a good boy.
He's a little bit confused, he seems like.
The lighting would probably be better from this way.
Oh yeah.
(Bo squawks)
Bo, Bo.
Good boy.
Good job Bo.
Oh good boy.
Good boy.
Good job.
Does that feel good?
Oh, good boy.
Good job.
Oh, good boy.
So all that bathing response, you really wanna-
He's trying to get super close to the bottle.
You really want to find a reinforcer
you can use since babies-
Oh my goodness.
You can't use the treats.
Holy cow, my hand hurts already.
(Bo squawks) But he seems to be liking it.
And then bathing just becomes self-reinforcing.
We don't necessarily have to use treats
or anything like that.
But if you do it where you're conditioning it
from when they're young, they'll just enjoy it.
Good boy.
Good job.
What a good guy, look at you.
You are all sorts of wet.
Good job.
And then I want to end the bath before he does.
That's some good stuff.
(Jamieleigh giggles)
Trying to step up?
(Bo squawks)
Oh no, wet bird, I know it felt so good, right?
(parrot squawks) Yeah.
Good stuff.
I've got baby humans, I've got baby birds flying on my head.
Oh my goodness, okay.
We should maybe see if you're receptive
to a bath for this video.
What do you think?
Would you be okay with that?
- [Kid] Mommy, I don't have an extra one.
Can I borrow one of yours and you can use this?
- Don't you have the green one?
- [Kid] No. - Where is it?
- [Kid] I don't know.
(kid laughs)
- Yeah, hold on 'cause dad's asleep.
Okay, we got rid of little humans.
Let's try this.
Okay, so I'm just gonna demo what this is gonna look like.
And if he's receptive, cool.
You get to see a baby bird accepting a bath.
And if he's not receptive, then you're gonna understand
what not receptive behavior looks like.
Yeah, you got me.
He's been trying,
and then you wiped your baby weaning food on my ear.
Okay, I'm gonna go get the bottle.
Oh sorry, excuse me sir.
Do you want to take a bath?
Now you gotta keep in mind with baby birds,
you gotta find other reinforcers other than food usually.
'Cause food is not that powerful,
but praise is, petting usually is.
You want to take a bath?
Want to take a bath?
What a good boy.
So that could have been shaking it off, an irritant,
or it could have been a first fading response.
And he has the ability to fly off
if he's really uncomfortable.
What do you think?
Oh, what a good boy.
What a good boy Bo.
Good boy Bo.
You outta here?
Yeah, he's outta here.
So, what I try to make sure that I do
is heavy on the praise when I'm getting a bathing response.
The tricky part is trying to tell between their shake,
if they're irritated and they're like,
ooh gross get this off me.
Or if they're trying to get accustomed
and starting to like the bathing.
The first time that I got him to respond
to the spray bottle, it was a little confusing.
Like he was somewhat like, I think I like it.
And somewhat, I'm not sure if I like it.
And it eventually turned into loving it.
And you can see it used almost my entire bottle.
The first time that I introduced him
to the shower was a little bit iffy.
He wanted it to be with me,
but he wasn't sure what was really going on.
But he also didn't get that wet.
So, there's a little mix.
Do you want to come back?
Do you want to come back? You want me to come over there?
Bo Bo.
Another thing is going back to what was last successful.
I've never bathed him on this perch before.
The last time I successfully bathed him was actually
when he was high up on one of my foraging trees.
So I might actually go back to that.
Except he looked like he wanted to come.
Bo, you want to come over here
or do you want me to come to you?
So I'm gonna see if he's receptive to it
on the, on the foraging tree.
And this'll probably be my, might be my last attempt.
He wasn't on this exact foraging tree when I last tried.
He was on this one.
So if he flies over to that one,
I might try one last time before giving up.
Can I give you a bath?
Nope.
So I'm gonna take that as a no.
Alright, I'm gonna take that as a no.
That you don't want a bath right now.
You don't want a bath right now.
And that's okay.
He is a little, a little bit wet.
So I would still count that as having a bath
because of how much I was able to spray him.
Like his whole head and his body here
and even as tail's a little damp.
But because he's flying off and uninterested,
I'm gonna respect that and not push it.
Now if I were to-
(Bo squawks)
Yeah, yum yum.
If I were to just chase him around and be like,
no you have to bathe be anyway.
That's what will condition him to start associating water
and bathing with something terrible of an experience.
And that will make it something that you
have to untrain later on and make sure that he likes.
So you want to be really, really respectful
of whether or not they're receptive to it.
And accepting of that.
(Bo squawks)
Okay, so since you guys got to see this body language
and see what it looks like for him
to not really be receptive to bathing,
I'm gonna show you what it looks like
for him to be receptive to bathing
and show you what happened a couple days ago
when I offered to bathe him on the foraging tree.
(upbeat music)
Yum, yum.
What a big weaning bird you are.
What a big boy feeding yourself.
(Bo squawks)
(Jamieleigh laughs)
So this is just him eating my seasonal feeding system.
Which is held together with a sweet potato
as its binding ingredient to kind of give that,
give that familiar texture to his formula.
So he's really receptive to it, but this is cold.
So unlike his formula, which is warm when he eats it,
this food is straight out of the fridge.
So it's good for him to get accustomed
to eating colder in temperature food.
So if you have tiny baby birds,
you may not be relating to this so much.
Tiny birds or really small birds such as,
conure size, budgie size,
lovebird size, parrotlet, when you're getting teeny tiny,
those birds tend to naturally bathe against wet grasses.
So if you can get wheat grass,
and just give it a spray mist bath,
and get it nice and wet for your bird to enjoy,
usually they'll rub themselves over it or run across it.
You can do it with any wet leafy greens.
And that's kind of an easier way
to bathe those smaller birds.
Also a shallow dish,
they're usually a lot more receptive to that.
I've had my budgie run around in the sink.
You can pretty much try an array of different things
and see what your bird is most receptive to.
And then stay away from the things
that it's not immediately receptive to.
For example, I was talking about earlier
how Bo wasn't as receptive in my shower.
So that's something I will revisit and come back to,
but I'm gonna focus on the spray bottle in the meantime
because he's incredibly receptive to that.
So the more I can work on that,
and the more positive interactions I have that way,
I could eventually put him in my shower,
and use a spray bottle until eventually I can turn on
the water and have him be more receptive to it.
So just be really respectful
of what your bird's telling you.
And don't take it as a, no I'll never bathe my bird
in my shower again because he didn't like it.
It's more of okay, I need to work on that,
but not in the immediate.
I can work on that down the road and know that
it's something that I need to combat, but I'm gonna,
I'm going to work on these other things
coming a little bit more naturally,
so I can use them as a tool to get where I want to go.
If that makes sense.
If you guys happen to cross this video,
but you have a bird who already has had
a traumatic experience with water,
and needs to be formally trained to accept it,
please check out the playlist I'm going to link
in my video description on all the videos
that I have teaching birds that have had
those bad experiences to accept bathing
and even come to like it.
Now keep in mind, you can use different reinforcers.
You can use praise, petting, treats,
all the things that you need to for your baby bird,
but eventually bathing should be the reinforcer.
It should just feel nice.
The bird wants to do it,
and it doesn't necessarily need it,
except for randomly for a secondary reinforcer.
(upbeat music)