🤪😁Laugh, Play, Bond: The Secret to a Happy Parrot😁🤪
🦜Building a strong bond with your parrot isn’t just about training—it’s also about having fun together. Play, exploration, and shared experiences strengthen your relationship and create positive associations.
Whether it’s a game of peek-a-boo , dancing to music, or engaging in a foraging activity together, these moments build trust and confidence.🎶
✅️When interactions are enjoyable for both of you, learning naturally follows, and your parrot becomes more engaged in everyday activities.
Sometimes, the best progress comes when you set aside expectations and simply enjoy each other’s company.🥰
🙃In this video, Jasmine, our Melbourne consultant, is playing with Luna on her rope swing. She gently pushes the swing as Luna happily hangs upside down, enjoying the movement.
Share a short video or picture in the comments of you and your parrot simply hanging out and having fun!👇
🌿Foraging Friday 🌿
🌞Here’s a great foraging idea to keep your bird cool on warmer days while encouraging natural behaviours.
Simply fill an ice cube tray with your bird’s favourite fruits and vegetables, cover with water, and freeze for a few hours.🫐
🧊Once ready, place the ice cubes in a baffle cage or foraging bin and offer them to your bird.
It’s a fun, enriching way to help them stay hydrated and engaged!🦜
🦜💻Online Consultation - Turning Challenges into Progress 💻🦜
🩸Rachel reached out to Jasmine, our Melbourne consultant, after bringing home her two new feathered companions, Ruby and Archie. Archie was experiencing a significant breeding flush, leading to heightened aggression towards Rachel and resulting in a few painful bites to her face. Understandably, Rachel felt disheartened and a little apprehensive about engaging with the birds.
Jasmine addressed the situation by implementing substantial changes to the birds' diet and environment to help manage the breeding flush. She also introduced hands-off, protective contact training sessions designed to rebuild trust and confidence between Rachel and her birds.🥦
✅️Fast forward to today, with Archie now completely out of his breeding flush and thanks to Rachel’s dedication and consistent efforts, both birds were able to come out of their cage for the first time in weeks. Archie calmly participated in target training, practiced cooperative hop-offs, and engaged in foraging activities, even while Ruby remained in the cage and wasn’t by his side. Meanwhile, Ruby also enjoyed focused one-on-one training before they both spent time out together engaging in some foraging activities.
Well Done Rachel, Archie & Ruby 👌
💻Parrot kinder - Our 5 week online course 💻
✋️If you've been thinking about joining our Parrot Kinder classes, now is the perfect opportunity—there's just one week left to sign up!
In this course, we’ll cover a wide range of topics, including diet and enrichment, environmental setup, socialisation protocols, building healthy relationships, foundation behaviours, cooperative care techniques, and addressing common problem behaviours. 📖
🦜This comprehensive class is designed to set you and your parrot up for a happy, enriching, and long-lasting life.
As part of our Parrot Kinder package, you can choose to add a private consultation at a discounted rate, offering additional tailored guidance to support your parrot's growth and development.✅️
🖇Sign up today, link in comments🖇
🏡Foundation Behaviour Consultation 🏡
🥰Maddison, a long time bird enthusiast, recently fulfilled her dream of owning a baby Sun Conure. After encountering conflicting information online, she decided to book a foundation consultation with Jasmine, our Melbourne consultant.
During the session, Jasmine guided Maddison through essential topics, including setting up an ideal environment, establishing a nutritious diet, forming a healthy relationship and incorporating enrichment activities.🦜
✅️They also practised foundational behaviours such as point to point training, step up, and recall, ensuring Maddison Chilli started off on the right wing.
Well done Maddison & Chilli! 👏
🔎Encouraging Exploration 🔍
😱Introducing new items can sometimes be intimidating for our birds. While we might be eager for them to engage with these items, it’s crucial not to force or pressure them into situations where they feel uncomfortable.
Instead, we should focus on presenting the new item in a less threatening way, or by incorporating familiar and comforting elements to ease the transition.🧸
🦜For example, these two baby sun conures were initially wary of this travel bag. To help them feel more at ease, Jasmine placed the bag on a familiar table, added a towel they recognised, and included some fun foot toys they enjoy. Soon enough, the birds began exploring the bag with curiosity.
While they didn’t go all the way inside, they confidently played around and perched at the bag’s opening. This positive experience provides a solid foundation for further progress.✅️
🌿Foraging Friday 🌿
✅️Having versatile items like Hol-ee Roller balls or foraging bins in your collection is fantastic, as they can be used in countless ways to create a variety of enriching activities.
In this particular activity, Jasmine placed small almond pieces into wooden blocks and then placed the blocks inside a Hol-ee Roller ball, turning it into a fun and engaging foraging challenge for Luna. 🥜
🏡In-Home consultation🏡
🦜Jasmine had the pleasure of catching up with Marilyn and Billy for a follow-up session. During the initial consultation, Jasmine introduced a stationing technique that enabled Marilyn to enter the aviary safely to feed Billy and clean his space. Previously, Billy’s aggressive behaviour had led to several bites, making these tasks quite challenging.
With significant progress already achieved, Marilym expressed her goal of bringing Billy into the house for closer interaction.🏠
🪄To support this, Jasmine introduced target stick training as a foundational step towards crate training, starting with protective contact to ensure safety and build confidence.
Remarkably, this was Billy’s first experience with target training, and he showed impressive engagement right from the start!👏
🏡In-home consultation🏡
👌It’s always fun having some spare time during an in-home consultation after addressing some problematic behaviours.
Aggy and Adam had shown a strong interest in harness training Pinky and had already begun some desensitisation work.✅️
🦜With the harness ready, Jasmine guided them through the next steps of the training process.
If you're interested in learning how to harness train your bird, we have the perfect course for you! It's self-paced and completely online, allowing you to progress at your own speed. Find the link in the comments.👇
🌿Foraging Friday 🌿
👉Paper finger traps foraging activity 👈
💡Here’s a creative way to turn paper finger traps into an engaging foraging activity for your birds.
Start by filling the finger trap with a portion of your bird’s food or favourite treat, to keep the food from falling out, crumple small pieces of paper to block each end of the finger trap, adding an extra layer of challenge. 🥜
🧠This will encourage your bird to pull apart or manipulate the barriers to access the food, making it a mentally stimulating and rewarding experience.
Place the filled finger traps in your bird’s play area, foraging trays or just hand them to them. 🦜
❓️Is crate training really that important❓️
🦜Consider scenarios like picking up a bird for the first time or taking your bird to the vet—both can already be quite stressful situations. Now, imagine adding to that stress by forcing your bird into something they aren't familiar with.
This can lead to a cascade of negative outcomes, including a strained relationship and the crate becoming associated with negative experiences and fear. Over time, this negative pairing may result in escalated behavioural issues, making future interactions with the crate even more challenging.😱
Crate training, when approached slowly with positive reinforcement and patience, helps your bird feel comfortable and secure. A bird that willingly enters their crate experiences reduced stress during necessary travel or vet visits, making the process smoother for everyone involved. ✅️
🎥Video Description
There is a small blue and white crate with the door open, resting on a white towel on a bench. Jasmine cues Poppy, a baby male Eclectus parrot, to enter the crate. Poppy walks along the towel and steps inside, perching on the branch perch inside the crate. Jasmine reinforces Poppy’s behaviour with fruit purée from a syringe, then cues him to exit by pointing to the bench. Poppy hops off the perch and eagerly runs back along the bench towards Jasmine.
🌿Foraging Friday 🌿
❓️Did you know that slow feeder bowls can make fantastic foraging tools for birds
In thid video Jasmine sprinkled a small amount of pellets into a slow feeder bowl, encouraging natural foraging behaviour. 🦜
🧠To add an extra challenge, you could add a foraging substrate. This variation increases the difficulty, keeping birds engaged for longer.
