By Leslie Moran
Last month we talked about the value of talking with your parrots as if they were small children. Due to the similar brain wave patterns shared by children and animals (the alpha-theta childhood patterns), our parrots have a natural predisposition to automatically absorb new information and any labels (positive or negative) given them. This also means they can readily learn new behaviors.
With these progressive ideas in mind let’s put them into practice by discussing how to teach a parrot to cooperate with a typical normal maintenance procedure - having their nails trimmed.
It’s always bothered me the way some people turn a simple nail trim with a hand tame bird into a chaotic, ear splitting, stressful experience, requiring two people with one person often being bitten. If your bird has had this type of traumatic nail trimming experience, and they are hand-tame, it is possible, and time, to teach them how to graciously cooperate for a boring and routine nail trim.
Read more in the magazine…