JoJo has a grey who amuses himself by grunting with exertion when she bends over to pick something up off the floor. JoJo didn’t plan on teaching her parrot to do this, but hey, it’s kind of funny. Why not get it on a verbal cue?
Okay, lets say you want to get your parrot to grunt on cue. You know that there is a good chance you can get him to grunt when you bend over to pick something up. So pair this with a verbal cue. Let’s say you want to cue to be “Oh my back”. Bend, say “oh my back” in front of the parrot. Hopefully he grunts. If not. Walk away, come back try again later. At some point he’s going to grunt. When he does, say “good” and give him a treat. (Almond slice, pine nut, walnut piece…whatever your parrot finds to be yummy.)
It may take doing this a few times, but at some point the light will come on in your parrot’s head. I grunt I get a treat. He’ll likely start offering the noise without the cue of bending over. Now phase out the bending and only reward the grunt when it follows you saying “oh my back”. With repetition and time, you’ll have a solid behavior.
And likely you’ll end up with a bird that cues himself and offers the behavior. “Oh my back…uhhhhhh.” Fun to train and good for laughs. Who doesn’t love laughs?
You could do this with quite a few behaviors that already linked to physical cues. “Good bye” when you pick up your keys. “Wanta go for a walk,” when you pick up the dog leashes. In my house, picking up a bottle of Corona elicits a burp from the grey. (I’m not getting that on cue, thank you.)
What if there’s no obvious antecedent for the choice word or noise? It’s a little more challenging, but you just have to listen and catch your bird saying the word. Call “good” bring a treat. Once he’s offering the behavior consistently you can link it to a cue.
Now go capture that behavior! I can’t wait to see your videos up on YouTube…
2 Comments
LOL… glad i didn’t give you an example of something in the bedroom. ha!
actually really cool. and I never thought to try and control it, before. I have so many of those moments. When i’m about to yawn, he beats me to it and goes haaaawwwww! he sees my facial expression changing before i even realize what i’m doing. The burp? yep he does it to my beer drinking neighbors. and we all laugh at that. Obviously his reward on that one.
I’m convinced he’s doing it amuse himself though when he does these things to me…
I really like your writing style. And Thanks for putting me on your link list. I am a crazy animal lover!
Haha!! My mom and are sitting here coming up with the top 5 sounds NOT to teach your parrot and that was one of the first. A post for later…
Thanks for being my Guinea pig. It’s much more fun to talk about training with real world examples, especially when they have fun applications. Look forward to more stories about your grey.