- Hey everyone, Jamieleigh here from BirdTricks.
And today I want to talk to you about a little technique
that is very universal for all animals,
but especially amazing with birds
called targeting or touch training.
It's basically where you teach a bird
to put one part of its body and touch it to an object.
Usually this is most commonly seen with touching their beak
to the end of a target stick like this
and then you follow it up with a tree.
Now, this is a clicker that you would usually use
and you would pair all that stuff cool stuff together.
But I have big news for you guys
who have either never done this before,
or are struggling with trying to implement it
and have given up too easily.
You don't have to use a stick
and it doesn't have to be the bird's beak
so you can use other things.
(upbeat music)
So before I get started in this video,
I would love to hear from you in the comments.
If you've already trained your bird to touch train,
or target train, please let me know
what type of bird you have and what your target is,
because it can be different and it might be really helpful
for somebody who has the same type of bird as you
to read what worked for you and try to do it at home.
So make sure you share that information in the comments
and like and subscribe if you haven't already
and you enjoy bird info.
All right, so the main reason that I love touch training
is that it's a hands off technique.
You don't have to worry about getting bit
and the bird doesn't worry about having
to feel the need to bite you
to communicate that you are being a bad human.
So let's talk about why this is a good thing.
This is a good thing because it puts you both
in a more relaxed state to actually work together.
You don't have to be high strong and worried about
can the bird bite me from here?
Is it gonna just turn around and get me from there?
Is it gonna be mad about the presence of my hand?
This is hands off.
It has nothing to do with your hands.
It's more about the object of the target
and the object that you're using
as far as part of the bird's body.
So usually it's very easy to teach a bird
to target with its beak,
because that's what they explore with.
They're most likely to check things out with their beak.
So that's kind of what's easiest.
Whereas you see dogs,
normally they're trained to target with their nose,
same with dolphins, same with horses
anything that might sniff something to kind of
explore what that is.
So you don't have to use the beak, but it is most common,
'cause it usually is the easiest.
Now with large animals like elephants or tigers
or things like that in zoos,
you'll often see them teach these animals
to target with their behinds,
and put it up against a fence
or put part of their body up against the wall
so that they can do these type of exams or injections
or things like that.
So you'll see zoos and animal parks
get really creative with this technique
based on what they have to do with the animals there.
But with birds, and since I focus on birds,
I wanna keep it down there.
But I want to tell you guys that it is a universal technique
and it's used for so many good things.
I know it doesn't sound really fancy
to get your bird to touch the end of the stick.
And it seems really dull and stupid, but it's not.
It's one of your foundations for training your bird
and it can help in so many aspects.
It teaches the bird to go from point A to point B.
So point B is the target.
This means that you can get your bird back into the cage
without using toweling or any sort of cruel techniques
of trying to scare your bird back into the cage.
You can get your bird back into the cage nicely.
You can get your bird out of the cage great,
and very hands off again.
And you can even use target training to
go further into flight training.
So you can actually teach a bird to fly
through just using target or touch training.
So it's a really amazing technique that I absolutely love.
Okay, hold on a second.
And then can you come up here?
(Blueberry clicks)
Good job.
(Blueberry clicks)
(chuckles)
Just to get him in and out of the cage.
You did it Blue.
Can you go over here?
(Blueberry clicks)
Probably, my favorite thing about touch training
is that it allows you to get to know your bird
or your animal, in that case, I was gonna say animal,
but it allows you guys to get to know each other
and kind of a safe environment
where you aren't worried too much about
what the other one is doing.
You get to learn their body language
and they get to learn yours
and get some positive reinforcement in the meantime.
So it's a really, really cool and fun training technique.
And one of your foundational tools
that I like to teach early on so I can see people use it
in a variety of ways.
Well, let's start over, Blueberry.
- [Child] Blue
- [Jamieleigh] Here we me go.
Okay now, hold up your hand with...
give me the tree, hold up your hand
with the target behind it,
- Blue
- [Jamieleigh] Back up your hand.
I want him to fly to you.
- [Child] Blue.
(Blueberry clicks) - [Jamieleigh] There you go.
Can you do that again?
- [Child] Blueberry.
- [Jamieleigh] One more time?
- I wanted to kiss him.
(speaking in foreign language)
Blueberry.
Okay, so some of the uses that I wrote down
for getting a bird to target train
and what the benefits are, would be crate training.
So if your bird has been scared of a crate prior,
you can use target training to crate train your animal.
Now, this is often used for horses
who are scared of going into trailers.
Once you ask them to target,
you're no longer asking them to go into a scary trailer,
you're asking them to do something
they're already confident doing,
which is touching the end of a target.
So the behavior becomes almost like this
mental misdirection of hey, just touch the target.
It happens to be in the trailer, (chuckles)
but the animal is just kind of conditioned of,
oh, I know how to do that behavior.
I'm willing to do that.
I know that I get a positive reinforcement after it.
I get my favorite treat reward.
So I'm gonna go ahead and do that
and they just don't even mind that the trailer's there.
I've also seen this come into use
with my business as far as birds getting out
when they weren't meant to get outside,
getting stuck in trees and they don't know how to fly down
because they've never learned how to descend.
Target training is a great way
to be able to get your bird out of a tree
by simply targeting them down branch by branch
to get them out of the tree.
So we've had a lot of clients do this
because instead of being terrified
about how to jump out of this tree and descend,
'cause they don't know how,
they do know how to touch a target.
And so it becomes again that mental misdirection
of I'm confident doing this behavior, but not that one,
but actually they ended up kind of doing both
or they just climbed down the tree branch by branch
and come and get the target. (chuckles)
It's also great for getting your bird on a scale.
A lot of you say that your bird isn't tame enough to step up
or come out on a scale.
You can again, use target training
to get your bird where you need it to go.
So training it to go into a scale is awesome
and you can use target training as a means to do so.
Let's do it again.
One more time, ready?
Wait wait wait...Blue. (chuckles)
Blueberry.
(chuckles)
Blueberry.
Come here Blue.
Here.
Come over here.
(Blueberry clicks)
Good job.
Oh my God, that was still impressive.
(Blueberry clicks)
Another one of my favorite uses for target training
is the socialization aspect.
Because it's a hands off training technique
and you guys are just more calm and cool and collected
when you're using this technique,
it's something that friends and family
or people that just haven't been around birds
and maybe they make them nervous.
I know a lot of people like that,
they can also use target training
as a means to introduce themselves and say,
Hey, I speak the same language as you.
But they're both getting a positive interaction out of it.
So the more positive interactions you build
with different people,
the more social your bird will become
and the more desensitized it'll become
to different types of people.
So it's a really great way to introduce socialization
to your bird.
Another thing is once you teach target training
and your bird understands it 98 to 100%,
it's a great lead in to teaching other behaviors
such as the spin, like I said before, flight training
and all sorts of more complex and more fun behaviors.
It's also a great warmup behavior,
so I love target training
because I can ask my bird to target train
and see if they are even initially interested
in interacting with me by doing a little,
what I call a warming up the bird.
And this just means seeing if the bird will respond
and is enthusiastic about a training session
to easy behaviors.
So asking targeting for that is a great way to get your bird
into training mode and see if they want to interact
and have a session with you.
So the thing that I really want this video to accomplish
is to encourage you not to give up so easily,
if you haven't already trained this behavior.
Now a lot of the times what you can do
that is the easiest is birds are naturally curious
and are likely to touch the stick because one,
this is wood and wood is natural.
So them, and then would naturally be chewing it up.
Now the big thing is that you don't want them
to actually chew or bite this hard.
You merely want them to touch it,
which is why often refer to it as touch training
as to remind people it's just simply a touch
and it just tends to resonate with people
a little bit more than a target.
So, a naturally curious bird will just come up
and investigate with their beak like they would in the wild,
and naturally touch it.
And when they do just follow it up with a tree
and soon they'll learn to anticipate
when that treat is coming,
because they'll make the connection
that every time they touch the end of the stick,
a cool little hefty treat is coming.
Now, if your bird doesn't naturally take
to just checking out the stick,
if your bird has international fear to sticks,
maybe it had some really bad past history with sticks.
If kids ever tormented them in the cage
or did something that made it so that sticks are scary,
you can try using a different object.
I've had people use the butt of a pen,
I've had people actually use
a variety of different chopsticks
'cause they make them a lot differently.
I've had people use even skewers.
You might be able to find a different object
that you know your bird is not fearful of,
and then slowly transitioned to one
that is more ideal to use.
So it doesn't have to be a stick
you can totally use something else.
I've also seen really cool and nifty targets on Amazon
where they're more metal, they're extendable.
And some of them even have a ball on the end,
which is really common with other types of animals
to use that.
So if you think that that's something
that your bird would be more receptive to
try to set them up for success
and use something you know we'll go over well.
The other technique you can use for fearful birds
is a little bit of luring.
Now luring it's ideal to phase it out as quickly as possible
because the animals just following the food,
it's not quite learning anything.
So it's really important that you make that transition
and you make that connection for the bird to understand
what it's doing to actually earn the reward.
But what you can do is hold a lure or treat reward
really close to the stick
and if they just happen to bump it when going for the treat,
go ahead and give them the treat.
And you're slowly gonna phase out the lore
and try to bring it further and further away
so that the animal finally understands
that touching the stick is actually what gets the treat.
And ideally they perform this behavior
without needing a treat in view at all.
And that will really tell you that they understand
the behavior that is getting that reward.
And that's what we want.
We want birds to actually learn.
We don't want them to just be mindlessly following food.
So if you have an aggressive bird,
who's actually you're listening to this and you're like,
I have the opposite problem.
My bird just wants to mall the target.
What you can do is just get in a situation
where you're set up for success again,
and you hold the target further away.
So if you have a perch that's about this long,
make sure that you come in with the target pretty far away,
you can always come closer and as they're reaching for it,
make sure that you click and reward on the reach
instead of the grab or instead of the touch.
You never want the bird to actually be able to grab
and just chew and break the stick.
Less is more in this case.
So if they're just reaching,
I even worked with a hyacinth macaw,
whom I trained it to touch the target with his tongue.
So if you need to do something like that,
just to ensure a gentle touch, you can go ahead and do that.
You just need to figure out what works for you
and your bird, but holding it far enough away
and then coming in slowly
to where you know your bird can just barely reach
is kind of the ideal way to work with aggressive birds.
Also, you definitely want to find a target
that they are least aggressive with.
So as I said, you can shape it
as far as holding it further away
so that they can not be aggressive with it,
it's just not possible.
But if you notice that your bird just has really extreme
behavior response to whatever you're holding,
you might want to try changing the target altogether.
We worked with a macaw
who unfortunately was mistreated with sticks
and would not respond well to a stick
in the presence at all.
So we just put a ball on the end of it
and that bird did fantastic with the ball.
There was zero aggression there.
So don't be afraid to use different objects
that you find that your bird really responds better to.
You want to set your bird up for success for this
and really make sure that you're enabling
a great training session.
(upbeat music)