Basic parakeet training | Tips and tricks

A lot of my friends ask me about parakeet training since my bird talks and comes to the finger to play. I guess this is the right time for me to write how I do it, so you can train your parakeet too.

The very first question is what is the goal of the training you wish to do?

Do you want your parakeet to talk? Get him to stand on your finger? Do tricks?

Most important steps in parakeet training

I have divided my way of bird training into a few steps. Note that each step can take days and do not skip to the next step until you are sure the parakeet learned the current one.

First step in training your parakeet will be getting him to be calm when you are close to the cage. You will accomplish this by talking to him as often as you can. Your voice needs to be soft.

Try to do it every day to have better results. It would be great if you can do it more than once a day for a few minutes every time. The more you work with the parrot the faster he will learn.

When you see he has learned to be calm around you the next thing is to get him used to your hands in the cage. You will put your hands there anyway when you put food and water. But this is a bit different.

When you change food and water at the beginning he will fly away and be scared. So get the hands out as soon as you are finished.

But after he learns the first step this will be the second one and you will not take out the hands as soon as possible. You will keep your hands in the cage longer.

Talk to the bird when ever you put food and water in the cage. Once you are finished keep your hands there a bit more.

Talk to the bird in calm voice all the time. Don't make sudden moves or even worse, try to catch him. That would be a mistake.

After a while (mostly a few days) you will see that the parakeet training is bringing in the first results. The bird will stop reacting to you and you will be able to keep your hands in the cage for a long time.

OK, we are finished with two steps. Let's see what comes next.

Step three would be to train the bird to step on the perch on demand. Now this part of training differs between parakeet owners. You see, what usually happens to me is that I do the step 2 for a longer time and then I can basically skip straight to playing with the bird.

Let me make this clear. After holding my hands in the cage, after the bird is not bothered with me any more, I continue doing it for a few more days. What happens then is that the bird just jumps on my hands.

So now I have a bird on my hand and hands in the cage. I continue like that for a few more days. As long as the bird appears not to be disturbed there is no need for me to change anything.

After a few days I would just take my hand out of the cage while the bird is on my finger. Of course, the first time the bird is out he flies away. So make sure every window is closed. You don't want your bird to fly away.

To give you some confidence boost, watch the video below to see how parakeet can learn a trick.

My two favorite tips

• Put a perch on the outside of the cage. I always put it so when the bird is sitting on it it can just walk straight in the cage. It makes it easier for the bird to get in and out and my parakeet actually loved sitting on that perch.
  
  The best thing is that he loved sitting there so much, I didn't have to potty train him, I would just put a piece of newspaper on the floor.


• First few days of letting the pet out of the cage I start in the morning. Why? By now the bird knows where the food is and when he gets hungry he will go back to the cage. That way there will not be the need to chase him around the apartment. Starting parakeet training earlier in the day gives me time to let him do things in hiw own pace.
  
  I have seen several times a little bird being let out of the cage before it was trained and then the owner trying to catch it to put it back in. That is a big stress to the parakeet and will result in unsuccessful parakeet training.

What I managed to do with my parakeet following these simple steps was all I have ever wanted (that was my goal I have mentioned at the beginning). He would always come to me when he wants to play and if he didn't, I would not try to play with him. He is not in the mood anyway, right?

There are more steps you can take to get to the point of getting your parakeet out of the cage but this is the way that worked great for me. I have never wanted to train a parakeet to do things on command.

However, for all those that want to train their parakeets step by step with hopping on the finger on a command, subscribe to Small Pets Mania e-zine, you will get a copy of the guide.