- Hey, everyone, Jamieleigh here from BirdTricks,
and today I'm going to be talking about how to create
a cuddly and affectionate pet bird.
(cheerful electronica music)
I think it goes without saying that most humans
are pretty cuddly. (laughs)
I know that my husband is a hugger.
One of my BFFs is a hugger.
There's lots of cuddles in the human world.
And although a lot of times we try to say
that certain species, I'm going to pick on cockatoos,
are cuddly, it's really the humans that are cuddly,
and I find this among all species of parrots.
So there's a great book called "The Five Languages of Love."
And one of those languages is physical touch.
Now, a lot of men actually give and receive love
in the variety of physical touch.
Now it is, (laughs) just TMI,
it is last on my love language list, pretty much,
so I don't actually struggle with this predicament.
But what I find is that a lot of people
want to show that they love an animal
with physical touch, by petting.
Obviously, dogs and cats tend
to be very receptive to this type of love.
They'll lay on your lap, they'll cuddle with you,
they can be very physical,
and it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Birds, not so much.
Now you may see the random viral video
of the budgie being pet on the cheek,
or, you know, the bird just really
cuddling into somebody and it's adorable,
and yes, parrots can be a certain level of cuddly,
but what really makes them cuddly, Velcro,
needy birds, and this is especially said
very commonly with cockatoo species,
is really the human projecting that onto them.
You could kind of say that out of our need to feel loved
and to give and receive affection,
that we really put that demand
on our animals a lot of the time.
And so it's actually a pretty unhealthy
thing for the animal.
It makes them needy for pretty much their whole lives.
You have to remember that parrots
have the intelligence level of a small child.
And so if you just have a small child forever
and you just make them needy and dependent,
that's what they're gonna be for the entire
duration of their lives.
But what we actually wanna be doing
is encouraging them to be brave and independent
and adaptable with their environment,
because most likely, they're gonna outlive us,
and have to adapt to a new home once we're gone.
I know it's not the most happy-vibe-feeling video,
and that a lot of you are wondering
how to actually specifically get your bird
to accept petting and touching,
but the realistic answer to this is that some birds
are gonna be more affectionate than others,
and more tolerant of affection than others.
So for example, I have two male Camelot macaws,
Comet and Tusa.
Comet's more my bird, Tusa's more my husband's bird,
and lo and behold,
Comet is definitely the more affectionate bird.
He will tend to get up really close to your body.
Sometimes he'll put a wing over you.
He's more receptive to head scratches,
whereas Tusa could probably go his entire life
without being pet and be perfectly fine. (laughs)
So actually, conditioning my husband's macaw
to accept and tolerate touch
was something that I worked on specifically with him,
because I knew that it meant a lot to my husband
to be able to give him a little pet on the head.
Now I will say, nowhere in nature
does something else affectionately
stroke down a parrot's back or just pet them all over,
like a human really wants to do to a bird.
That doesn't happen in nature,
and that's why it leads to a lot of hormonal tendencies.
So when you start petting your bird
under the wing or on the chest,
and really getting up in there
and doing stroking over and over again,
and it becomes, you know, 70%-plus your interactions,
of your interactions, I should say,
that's when it really leads to problems,
where maybe the relationship with you and your bird is great
but your bird starts hating everybody else
and fly-attacking other people or becoming aggressive
anytime somebody gets near you.
That's because you've really indicated
to the bird that you are its mate,
and so the bird is fending off everybody else
and becoming really aggressive.
And any time you trigger hormones,
you run the risk of getting
that response, that aggressive response,
whether it's towards you or the people around you.
So it's something that, when I hear somebody say,
like, "Oh, yeah, you know, he regurgitates on me.
I know he's hormonal, but he doesn't bite me,"
you're really not looking out for the benefit of the bird.
That's confusing! Humans and birds don't mate.
I know that that's shocking news to everybody, (laughs)
but you shouldn't be sending those signals
from human to a bird and vice versa.
So you're just confusing nature,
and it's really not fair to the bird,
and then you can't expect it
not to lead to hormonal problems.
There's a fantastic article written by Pamela Clark
that I'm gonna leave a link to in the video description.
I just think that she says everything really perfectly.
And one of the things I wanna quote about her article
that I'm leaving a link to, is she says,
"The reality is that we set cockatoos up to become cuddly,
needy birds by breeding and rearing them in such a way
that their early needs are not met,
and then by encouraging neediness their whole lives long."
I think that's so powerful
to actually take responsibility
for encouraging your bird to need you.
I think that there is something inside a lot of people
where you need to feel needed,
and we can get that through animals,
through caretaking for people or animals.
And I see this really projected heavily on animals.
I think it's a major problem, actually,
and if you can acknowledge that that's happening
and acknowledge that you are doing the things
that you're doing to make it so that your bird
or your animal of any kind needs you,
I think that you need to change your thought process,
because if that was a person, if that was a human child,
you would want them to be a brave, independent, strong,
you know, person that's ready to take on the world
and is adaptable, and again,
it kinda goes back to what I said in the very beginning,
we need our birds to be adaptable.
We need them to be okay with a variety
of different types of people.
I remember the first time my African grey
met somebody with dreadlocks.
She was terrified and I just thought,
wow, you know, she hasn't been exposed to that.
So exposing your bird to new people, places, and things
all the time in a positive way,
where they're building those positive interactions
and enjoying those interactions
is gonna go much further for your bird long-term
than keeping to your little bubble and making it
so that your bird only likes you.
So I know I've done a lot
of discouraging of the cuddliness,
and I wanna make sure that you guys understand
the difference between a petting on the head
and a full-on stroking of the underwings of the body
and just everything and really getting in there.
Now, I love being able to hug my birds.
I will hug my birds randomly. I think it's adorable.
I love showing them affection.
But it is very controlled, I guess,
in the sense that it's not a majority
of my interaction with my birds.
A majority of my interaction is not completely
hands-on petting, stroking, and all of that.
I wanna encourage people to keep petting
just to the head and neck of your bird.
You know, Blueberry, my little budgie,
loves being pet on the little cheeks, is super-duper cute.
My galah likes that as well, sometimes.
So some birds really, really enjoy the cheeks,
but try to stay away from things
that are stimulating that a mate would do,
like grabbing the beak
or holding the beak, rubbing the beak,
that all can be kind of a gateway to hormonal behavior,
petting and stroking under the wings,
petting and stroking the chest.
You know, you should be able to touch your bird all over
and feel everything to make sure that there's nothing wrong,
but there's a big difference between feeling
and making sure everything's good
and a full-on stroking session of 30-plus minutes.
So just keep in mind, if it's leading to hormonal behavior,
then yeah, you're doing it wrong, (laughs) don't do that.
If it's not leading to hormonal behavior,
then you're probably okay.
So now, to the part of the video
that all of you are probably waiting for,
and that's conditioning your bird to tolerate touch.
So this is really for the birds that do not want
to have anything to do with being pet.
Conditioning touch is a great way to go about it.
Now I've done this in a variety of ways.
One way that I really highly encourage
is for you to find a way for the bird to come to you.
A lot of the times, birds are turned off
from physical interaction because they feel
like their space is intruded upon.
If you can find a way to get your bird
to come to you to initiate the interaction,
it's gonna go a lot further
and training sessions are gonna go faster
than if you are always initiating.
One of the ways that I did this is actually
on a series of "Oh Flock" episodes over on my Patreon.
I trained my budgie to come into my hand
and go through it just like it was a little tunnel.
So I started with actually training her to go
through a toilet paper roll.
Then I expanded that to a paper towel roll,
and then I transitioned that to my hand,
and training her to just go in one way,
and that's so that I can grab her if I need to,
without actually having to grab her.
I can just train her to come into my hand
if I need to hold her for some reason.
So that's kind of an example of training the bird
to come and initiate the interaction with you
versus having to go the other way around.
Now how I actually did this with my macaw,
since (laughs) he's not gonna fit in my hand,
I had him on a T-stand,
and I would simply put my hand over his head, he would look,
I would wait for kind of a nonreaction or a disinterest,
click my clicker and give a reward.
Now, if you don't have a clicker
or you're not familiar with clicker training,
you should definitely train other things
before you go into trying to get your bird
to accept physical touch.
This isn't a trick that I would necessarily start out with.
It's a trick that you should do down the line
once you already have a positive relationship.
If your bird doesn't trust your hand over its head
and is completely fearful, tries to flee, tries to bite,
it kinda tells me that your relationship isn't on a basis
to be able to even start thinking about training this.
You might need to go back to some simple behaviors
where you guys are just getting to know each other,
and do a little bit more permission-based training
before moving on to something like this.
But how I started with my macaw was just simply
having my hand over his head,
and once he stopped reacting completely,
initially he would watch my hand, then lose interest.
And eventually he got so used to it
that he wouldn't even watch my hand go up there,
he would just be anticipating the click and the reward.
So that's really the reaction you want,
because once you get there, you can start working
in slow approximations of getting closer.
And eventually I was able to touch his head
and give a treat at the same time
so that he actually anticipated
and looked forward to touching his head,
because he knew that it meant getting a treat.
So there's a few different varieties
of ways that you can go about this.
All of them do work, they just are meant for different
sizes of birds and birds that are at different stages
in what they're most receptive to, so like I say,
there's a million different ways to train a bird.
All of them will most likely get you there.
It's just kind of dissecting which way is best
for your particular bird's characteristics and attitude.
Once you can touch your bird's head,
it's just all about extending that behavior.
And what that means is, don't suddenly think
that because you can touch your bird's head,
you can go in for petting and scratches. (laughs)
That's way too big of a leap.
What you wanna actually do is just slowly expand on it
to where it's just barely noticeable for your bird,
just barely pushing beyond that boundary,
but something they're still comfortable in accepting.
So for example, if you're able
to just touch your bird's head,
you might hold it for one, Mississippi, treat.
The next one might be one, Mississippi, two, treat.
One, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, treat.
So just things like that, where you're slowly building up.
And if you experience failure,
go back to where you were most successful
and keep building up from there.
The more you try to jump ahead and just start saying, like,
"Oh, he was good with two Mississippis.
I'm gonna try five Mississippi's!"
That's where you'll usually experience failure,
and you might break a little bit of trust,
because you're not receptive to the bird
not being ready for that step.
Can you do a spin?
(feet tapping)
(clicker clicks) Good job.
(birds chirping)
Good, I forgot to click, but...
Okay, and do a wave? (clicker clicks)
Good, can you spin?
(clicker clicks) Good, and one of these.
(clicker clicks) Good job!
There you go, ending on that.
(feet tapping)
So hopefully you guys can tell from his body language,
he actually still wants to train,
which is when I wanna end,
'cause I wanna make sure he's not ending the session
and gettin' over it.
I tied in other tricks so that he could do
some things he's confident doing.
And then next session,
hopefully I can get longer and longer pets.
C'mere! (clicker clicks)
(wings flapping) Good boy.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
Good luck in training this.
Let me know how it goes in the comments below,
and let me know also if your bird is naturally
a cuddly and affectionate bird,
or if he just likes to hang out in your space,
but not necessarily be touched.
Also, in the video description,
I'm going to leave a link to my hormones course.
It goes over how to avoid,
what to do when you've already triggered hormones,
and what some funky hormone triggers are out there,
(laughs) and I demo this with my own birds,
because Cressi, my African grey, of all things,
gets turned on by blowing air in her face.
Who would have thought?
So there's some definitely like little niches in there
that you might wanna be aware of,
including foods, and how to...
Really, how to avoid it is the best form of training
when it comes to hormones, so knowing what you can do wrong,
and how to avoid it in the first place
is gonna get you the furthest.
So check out my hormones course in the video description.
Thanks for watching.
(cheerful music)