All About African Grey Training

If you’ve looked into African Grey training you’ll know just how trainable these wonderful little birds are – there are tons of videos online of peoples parrots doing the most amazing things. Performing tricks, solving puzzles, imitating a myriad of different noises and sounds and talking so clearly that you could almost mistake it for a person! I know I often think I’m hearing things when my own parrots start chattering away!

African Greys are such intelligent birds, it’s difficult to find a trick or skill that they can’t learn, I keep expecting to see a video on the net of one playing the guitar next!!! If you’re not yet aware of the work of Irene Pepperberg, a professor of psychology and lecturer at Harvard, who has done a great deal of research in animal cognition, you really should check it out.

One particular subject of hers, a parrot called Alex who she obtained from a pet shop for a study and ended up working with for over 20 years learned more than 100 different words which he would use to refer to things or answer questions, for example answering correctly when asked how many objects were on a tray (he could count up to 6) or when asked to count the number of wooden objects, or to say which object was both made of wool and red for example.

Such mastery takes much work and training of course and Dr Pepperberg and her team spend hours a day interacting with Alex and teaching him for many years – with parrots being such intelligent animals it’s only fair to devote time and energy like this to making life fun and entertaining for them, with lots of new things to explore and new games to play.

I know from personal experience though how even spending the time you have available with your parrots every day and ensuring that they spend lots of time out of their cage enjoying life pays big dividends in terms of your African Grey’s enjoyment of learning new things and willingness to play along with games and activities that teach them tricks.

Once you’ve got the right relationship with your feathered friends half the battle is won and with all the great African Grey training materials that are out there you’ll soon have your birds chattering away, rolling over, playing dead and more. It really does come down to it being a team effort and knowing that your bird will readily co-operate with you when you make things fun and enjoyable for both of you.

Training with simple reinforcement can be very effective and just making sure that pretty much whenever you’re around your parrot you’ve got a pocketful of nuts, dried fruit or another one of his or her favourites will go a long way to getting the relationship you need to take your parrots training to the next level.

Talking to your parrot a lot is a must too of course, how do you expect your bird to want to talk to you if you’re not regularly chattering away to him or her? You definitely don’t want your parrot getting the idea that talking is something that’s limited to certain times like “training time” because that can create a negative association in the birds mind that makes talking work.

Everything is so much easier when you make it fun so make sure you always sound upbeat and excited when you’re around your bird, and that you don’t make talking conditional on the bird replying, putting too much pressure on the situation – just relax and chatter away to your bird and soon enough you’ll have a talkative new friend around.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea – keep it fun and fresh and I’m sure your African Grey training sessions will be a pleasure for both of you for many years to come.

By: Paul A Bradley

About the Author:
Here at African Grey Training we love all things African Grey. For more parroty goodness visit [http://www.africangreytraining.com]