Where the heck have you been ?!

As someone that loves to write it isn't surprising that I have 3 blogs now, what IS surprising is that 2 of them have sat "un-messed-with" for months now. With the new baby, running back to Las Vegas (my old home) to tie up some loose ends, and working full time with animals here in Hollywood, CA it just seems like I have been too super busy to sit down and write the full-length, in-depth, scientific-based training stuff I usually write. So, until things slow down (or enough people come to me complaining and threatening bodily harm) I will just write HERE (http://chrisharrisadventures.blogspot.com/) about the animals I encounter on my adventures and generally just random stuff that I feel like writing about.

This blog will also be different from the other 2 because this one will NOT be solely about birds. Yes I might show plenty of hawks, ravens, parrots, flamingos, penguins, and other winged-creatures (or in the case of my Cockatoo Rio, one-winged creatures haha)....but this one will highlight more of the diverse (and very cool) exotic and non-exotic animals I run into in my day-to-day life. So if you wish to continue reading my words just click HERE (http://chrisharrisadventures.blogspot.com/), then just sit back, enjoy the adventure, and try not to get too mad if I post a creepy-crawler here or there. I know many people get a case of the heeby-jeebies at the first sight of a bug or snake or something - but I believe they deserve to have a space here in the world and in my blog! And rest assured, even if one of the animals scares you away I will probably have some new cute and cuddly little critter before you know it, so check back again soon. :D

Thank you so much for reading, I look forward to this journey together.
http://chrisharrisadventures.blogspot.com/

Taming & Training Rescue Birds

In a society where instant gratification runs rampant, many people want “McTraining” methods that resemble a fast food establishment. The majority of DVD’s, online experts and chat room parrot gurus feed this craving with one-size-fits-all approaches to parrot problem solving. The truth is, some birds have had a very hard life and for them stepping up or being handled is more of an “advanced” behavior to train. Today I will share what has worked for me. This is called Food Management and is a great starting point for novice trainers.

The first thing we need to ask ourselves is what kind of relationship do we have with the bird already? When we walk in the room, does the bird exhibit fearful body language? Does he run to the back of the cage and hide?

FOOD MAGAGEMENT
If the bird sees you as something to escape or avoid that is the first thing that needs to change. When we walk in the room we want that bird to be eager to work with us, so this is where we would begin to manage the animals’ diet in a more productive way that will allow us to gain his or her trust. Make no mistake, not all parrots have to be trained using food rewards – some will work for “secondary reinforcers” such as praise, affection, a favorite toy and so forth but these birds are not what we are here to discuss today. The birds we are talking about are the “rescues”.

To manage the animals’ food we need to first observe him/her to see what their favorite food items are. Give them a large bowl filled with plenty of variety in food choices and see what they pick 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and so on. Do this over a few days offering different foods each time and soon you will have a very good idea of what foods your bird loves and which foods it seems indifferent to.

Now that we know what the birds favorite foods are we ONLY feed them those foods as rewards during training sessions when they have performed correctly or taken a step towards your goal. Now, for many people this raises an emotional issue because they feel like they are withholding food from their birds and they feel it is “wrong” to deny him or her treats or make their bird “work” for food. The truth is, all we are doing is MANAGING the food, we are NOT withholding it. Think about it like this: If we feed the parrot one bowl of food every day the only food he has is in that bowl. If his favorite food is peanuts, he can only eat as many as you put in his food dish. So everyday he gets 2 or 3 peanuts. But if he is working to earn those peanuts as a reward during training sessions he can have AS MANY AS HE WANTS! He could have 10 of them if he performs well, so are we really withholding food if he was only receiving 3 a day? The birds I work with where I have managed their food typically get much more of that favorite food than they used to get when they were free fed.

The easiest birds to train have all been seed-junkies:  Take a 30 year old parrot that has been fed sunflower seeds his entire life and convert him to an all pellet diet supplemented with seeds as training rewards - you have never seen such a motivated bird!

 The best way to have success with food management is to set up a training diet. Many birds will eat about 20% of their weight in food each day. Parrots typically eat 2 times per day in the wild, so this can be mimicked in the home by feeding the bird 2 meals daily instead of one large meal. We would then schedule training sessions around those meals so that we have the biggest impact on our birds because they are more motivated for food if they are trained on an empty stomach. I typically feed a “salad” in the morning made of vegetables, fruits, sprouts and so on and in the evening they get pellets. Before we feed those meals we would train the bird – so if you are feeding the salad at 8am and the pellets for dinner at 6pm we would train at 7:00-7:30am and also at 5:00-5:30pm daily.
*NOTE After about an hour you should remove the food to prevent spoilage and also to keep the bird on schedule. Leaving the food in the birds cage or enclosure is the most common mistake I see beginning trainers make. If you leave the bowls until the next session/feeding you will not have very productive training sessions.

So, to recap what we are doing here is motivating the bird a couple different ways: The first thing we are doing is making his 1 daily feeding into 2 smaller feedings. The next thing we are doing is taking the food he sees as the most “valuable” and giving it even more value because it is harder to come by.

We should start to see an impact in the birds behavior right away because we are making him want to do what we want him to do. What we are trying to accomplish is getting the bird to do things we want by choice. These things could be entering the cage or carrier willingly, stepping up, interacting politely with different handlers or multiple family members and so on. We are finding the most positive, least intrusive solution. I hope you give Food Management a chance; I’d love to hear how it has helped your bird and your relationship with him.

-Chris

The Magic "8" Tricks

   When I was young I got a parrot training book. My mom worked at an all-bird pet store and I used to scrape cages just to be around the birds and learn more about them. This book amazed me and I thumbed through its pages each time I got the opportunity – it contained at least 100 tricks within its pages and the possibilities for parrot intelligence seemed limitless. So when the store owners’ daughter saw me cleaning row after row, cage after cage of bird poop, she jokingly asked me “What bird are you working towards”? When I replied “Not birds…books!” She laughingly told me to pick any one in the store. Of course I immediately ran straight for the only trick training book and even though it turned out to be the shops most expensive title she let me take it home.

   My point here is not to explain the complex tricks within this book however, because you see, the book taught me a very important lesson as I trained different tricks to different birds as a young adult and soon as a professional avian trainer: It taught me that the different tricks were very similar and could be approached or taught in the same way. And now that I have spent years of my life training birds for casino shows in Las Vegas, working for rescues and sanctuaries, training birds for movie producers and so forth, I learned just how simple the “tricks” could be.

   What if I told you that basically every bird trick in every bird show in the world was only a combination or variation of eight basic tricks and that no matter how complicated a behavior may seem, at its foundation lays one or more of these “simple” yet profound actions? Someone could spend a lifetime creating different ways to do these same tricks but no matter how hard someone might try, this is basically all there is. You see, as I read the book I didn’t realize it but a pattern had begun to play out in my brain and as I taught the same behaviors over and over for a period of years and shaped them to become “other” tricks it became a clearer picture for me. I have been able to break down the complex behaviors into a more simplified and easier to teach approach.

These 8 “tricks” or behaviors are as follows: Targeting, Retrieving, Stationing, Vocalizing, Flying, Memory, Body Manipulation, Prop Manipulation.

TRICK #1: Targeting

   Targeting is training the bird to touch his beak or other body part to a designated point, such as the palm of your hand, a chop stick, or any other “target” you choose. Giving a kiss is a form of Targeting: the bird simply touches his or her beak to your lips. I often use targeting to teach card tricks, I alter the card imperceptibly and teach the bird to spot the difference. After he learns to select the “correct” card you can mix and match as many cards as you wish and the bird will still choose the right card every time.

   This same trick could be used to teach the old gambling game where a ball is placed under one of 3 different cups and they are mixed around to confuse the participant. The bird learns to spot the difference, he touches the target, and picks the right cup every time! This doesn’t only work for tricks, indeed, many “trick” behaviors such as Targeting translate well to training abused or neglected birds and also helps to teach basic husbandry behaviors thereby making life easier for the bird and owner. For example, we teach the bird to touch a chopstick with his beak…well, where the beak goes to touch the target the body follows: As the bird attempts to touch the target he could be going inside his cage or a carrier willingly, he could be stepping up onto your hand without realizing it (in fact, stepping up onto your hand is Targeting, except instead of touching their beak to a stick they touch their foot to your arm!). The bird could be trained to wear a harness for safety outdoors by luring him with the target so he sticks his head through the straps of the harness. Over time you simply add more snaps and buckles and leave it on for longer periods of time.

   You could teach the bird to run through an obstacle course, come to you on cue (this is called the Recall and we will discuss another way to train it later) and so much more. Have you ever seen a bunch of children all lined up holding each other’s hands on a field trip? They were targeting of course! I hope you give this a try, if you do I’m sure all your tricks will be right on target! (Try this for fun, teach your bird to target and after they can practically do it in their sleep put them on a pair of Roller Skates! They will be skating circles around the other birds on the block in no time!)

TRICK #2: Retrieving

   We’ve all seen someone’s pet dog play fetch and our birds are no different. Retrieving is any transporting behavior, where an object moves from A to B, or A to B to C and so forth. You can make it as complicated as you wish and you can spice up other behaviors as well by adding this to it. For example, we discussed card tricks already where the bird selects a card by Targeting, well you can chain a Retrieving behavior onto that trick so the bird brings the correct card back to the spectator to end the trick.

   This is also how the “Dollar Bill Tricks” seen at nearly every bird show and zoo is done – it is simply a flying retrieve! The object that the bird carries and where the object goes doesn’t matter: The object could be a scooter that they “ride” (or more accurately carry) back to you. This also goes for Bicycles, Unicycles and so on. Playing Basketball has never been easier, teach them to bring a ball back to a cup or the palm of your hand and then simply cue them to perform this while you hold the cup under the hoop!

   I will be using Retrieving for my next project: Teaching a bird to pick pockets for a Las Vegas entertainer. The trick is just a simple retrieve, but I can chain multiple retrieves together so the bird will check the shirt pocket, coat pocket, back pocket etc! Stacking rings on a peg, the “teach and talk bank” and other tricks are all Retrieving behaviors and the possibilities are endless. I have even been present when a wedding proposal was made possible with the help of the retrieve:  a simple “Dollar Bill Trick” was made life changing for someone when a Goffins cockatoo returned a different dollar bill to the spectator than the one she had originally had – this new dollar bill had a diamond ring folded inside of it!

TRICK #3: Stationing

   Stationing is great any time you want the bird to be somewhere at a certain time. It is very similar to the old dog training command “stay” but it is so much more. When I am flight training a bird I am training the bird to Station 99% of the time. Where I want the bird to go is different every time, but even though it may look like a completely different behavior, if you look closely you will see it isn’t all that complicated.

   When I train the Recall or when I want the bird to come to me on cue (which we taught another way by using Targeting), I am training it to station on my hand, arm or shoulder. I give it the cue (a whistle or upturned palm etc) but I can also train it to station on a perch or stationing platform away from the stage. This can make your shows a 3D experience and people will be amazed at the precision with which your birds perform as they fly from one platform to another, then back to you on stage. Many shows such as the LA Zoos “World of Birds Show” have assistants placing tidbits of food in different places throughout the shows, and the birds have been conditioned so that they ONLY eat from these platforms, so when they are released they fly from point A to point B then back behind the stage. They reload the stationing platforms and repeat this several times during the show with many different birds and the crowds are always surprised to have birds coming from all sorts of unexpected places.

   This was also done in Las Vegas with the Superstars of Magic Show. Doves were conditioned so that they ONLY ate from a specific perch each day and then the perch was placed on stage. When the cue was given during the end of the show the box behind the stage was opened and a gorgeous flock of white doves flew over the crowd to the front of the stage. Stationing can also be used when a bird picks up the pesky habit of running straight to the shoulder each time: Simply feed his favorite treats when he sits on your hand and make the hand more rewarding than the shoulder. This way, you’ve made the bird want to do what YOU want him to do.

TRICK #4: Vocalizing

   A parrot’s ability to mimic human speech is one of their most endearing qualities and oftentimes it is what first sparks someone’s interest in these intelligent animals and makes them consider parrots as pets for the first time. When somebody is in the room with a smack-talking parrot for the first time they can’t help but have fun! The secret to most speech training that I do however lies mainly in capturing behavior. I capture behaviors all the time: Yawning, jumping up and down, nodding the head yes or no – all of these are natural behaviors for many birds and all we have to do as trainers is put it on cue. I do the same with talking. Most people know that to train birds for free-flight and other high-profile stunts I prefer working with younger birds but this is not the case when a talking bird is needed for a TV show etc. For times such as when the History Channel called me and needed a talking bird for a stand-in on a TV show I immediately knew it would be a 30 something year old Yellow Naped Amazon.

   You can teach birds to say things the hard way (by repeating the same thing over and over) but oftentimes parrots learn to imitate the fire alarm and telephone a long time before they start repeating after you. For this reason it is much easier just to capture a word or phrase the bird already says and just put it on cue. For example, those weird sounds your bird learned when you watched Star Trek could be a Laser: If I wanted him to do this noise on cue would wait for him to make the noise, then I would click and say “laser” as I handed him the treat. Soon he will get the idea and you can say things like “What sound is laser” and so on so it is more of a “performance”. You can use whatever cue for whatever sound(s) you want!

TRICK #5: Flying

   Now we have already discussed the most important behaviors of flight-training earlier with Targeting, Retrieving and Stationing but as I also said earlier, a person could spend a lifetime coming up with new variations for each trick and Flying is no different. These other tricks usually start on the ground. One example is when the bird flies through different hoops. The bird can be lured with the target or a food treat to walk through one or more hoops and then back to you. Over time you simply phase out the lure.

   When I am training a bird to fly one or more circles before landing on me I start on the ground and teach them to spin on cue (this is a Body Manipulation trick). I start by training them to complete only 1 complete 360 and then move on to 2 and 3. Then when I am working on free-flight I cue them while they are in the air and many times they do at least a half circle the first time if you have drilled it enough on the ground. If they do anything like that reward them lavishly! Magicians have taught this another way for centuries: They have special noose-harnesses made of a nearly invisible thread that the bird wears and when they toss them into to air the bird has no choice but to fly in a circle right back to the magicians hand. Another way is to clip one primary feather at a time on one wing only. Eventually when they have clipped around 3 or 4 feathers on one wing the bird starts to fly circles. When working with an older bird many people find it is safer to give the bird a “flight-training clip” where the first 3-4 feathers or so are clipped on BOTH wings. This way the bird can still fly back and forth but they are not as maneuverable and they can’t really fly up or down or right or left quite as proficiently as before this light feather trim.

   Clipping your parrot is an individual choice to make and it is up to you to decide what is best for your bird. Many people think of this as a sort of “training wheels” for parrots and they use this to shape desired behaviors such as the Recall while the birds’ choices and ability are temporarily limited. The truth is, much of the ground work can actually be taught to a bird that has been severely clipped and you can just work flight in as the wings re-grow. A clip is only temporary…what you train can last forever. There is so much to discuss with any of these 8 tricks but flight-training is a very big topic in recent years and much of my writing has already been dedicated to this if you wish to learn more. One game I like to play is to teach a bird to retrieve a small ball etc and really drill it until the bird can practically do it blindfolded and then I start tossing the object in the air - Audiences love this trick!

TRICK #6: Memory

   Most parrot owners will agree that parrots are smart and science is finally coming along to back them up. The truth is, parrots have an excellent memory and we can use this to create some very interesting tricks. Remember the card trick and the old gambling game we discussed earlier? Targeting is not the only way to teach the trick. For many years people simply taught the bird to remember what order the cards would be in. For example, the first time the cards are laid out the correct card is 3^rd from the left. Now, to make it appear impossible to cheat the entertainer would lay the cards out a 2^nd time so now the card was the furthest on the right. The only limitation is your imagination - Parrots can even learn to play the piano!

   The LA Zoo has a raven that “searches” for hidden objects and it is no surprise that he finds them every time because they are always hidden in the same place. The bird just has to remember where the objects are and it’s not hard if he’s done 2-3 shows a day for 5 years. Psittacines probably adapted such a good memory because of the intense 3D world they evolved to live in and the same would be true for all birds possessing an “above average” intelligence. It’s not surprising to me that they have a large IQ, rainforests are a big place and they had to remember what trees flowered or gave fruit at what time of year and so forth.  

TRICK #7: Body Manipulation

   The majority of cute behaviors I teach where people think the bird is “almost human” are tricks involving the bird moving, manipulating or in other words animating some body part or in some cases multiple body parts or the entire body. These are tricks such as spinning on cue, waving “hi”, nodding yes or no on cue, rolling over onto their backs, doing flips or summersaults, extending the wings, shaking hands when they meet someone, hanging from the beak on a finger or perch, dancing and on and on. These are some of the easiest tricks to teach but some of them can be quite difficult for even the best trainer because many of them involve capturing, shaping, physically manipulating the body yourself and so on.

   Some tricks like waving or turning around can be taught in 5 minutes if you have a good relationship with the right bird but some tricks take days before the bird starts to get the idea and even then you might be shaping or fine-tuning the behavior for quite some time. Just start slow and shape the behaviors over very small approximations until you reach your goal. For example, to teach the bird to spin on cue you will only ask it to turn halfway a few times, using a treat or target to lure the bird. After he gets going good move on so that the bird must now complete a full 360 degree rotation. Then you can start phasing out the lure and moving the cue farther away from the bird with each repetition.

   Every bird will be different so move at the pace of your bird and if they just can’t seem to move on don’t be afraid to go back a step for one or two reps. I can go on and on with instructions for training more Body Manipulation tricks but I simply don’t have the room to write about them all here, you will just have to read my other articles (hint hint).

TRICK #8: Prop Manipulation

   The final behaviors all involve working with props and like the other tricks there are many variations you can work on to make your tricks that much more complicated and harder to reproduce…if that is your thing. Sometimes it might be easier to start at the end of the trick and work backwards, starting with the finished product first. Opening containers, turning latches, and many other such behaviors are included in this branch of the 8 basic tricks we call Prop Manipulation. Riding a bicycle might be a simple retrieve, but the bird also needs to learn to manipulate the prop with his feet for him to be able to ride it back to you. Many shows begin or end with a parrot unfolding a scroll or banner with “welcome” or “the end” written on it, to do this the bird just needs to untie a knot.

   One of the biggest secrets to being successful with any prop is conditioning your bird to it so that he enjoys it and doesn’t fear the prop or try to avoid it. Many of the birds I supply for shows are raised from infancy to be show birds so I am fortunate enough to begin conditioning them at a young age. If the bird will be riding roller skates and playing basketball I am exposing him to these things before he even has all of his feathers, but don’t worry if you don’t have this option, you can still systematically desensitize your bird to any object it fears over time. It just might take a while. I suggest you also do this with any costume accessories you plan to wear to your shows, for example, if you will be dressed as a pirate the bird needs to become accustomed to your change in appearance and all the pieces of your costume. This is also a smart thing to do if the bird will work on a television set etc., there are plenty of “scary” things like cameras, wires and cables, flashing lights, pyrotechnics, the audience, cast and crew and so forth. Just be sure that no matter what the bird will be interacting with, whether it is a prop or a piece of costume jewelry, you give them ample time to get used to it.

-Chris Harris   

   

Weight Management Training Demystified

Weight Management (WM) and Food Management (FM) are used by animal trainers every day; however, this is something many experienced trainers only understand the basics of. This means that when newer or lesser-experienced trainers set out to train an animal using these techniques they often do not fully understand what they are doing right or wrong, why it is or is not working for them, and how to improve their training skills altogether. I train many birds for free flight each year and often times when training an older bird, wild caught, or parent reared bird, I will utilize WM, because the animal with a challenging background normally sees you as something to avoid in the beginning and this helps to change that and allows you to build a trainer/student relationship, as well as properly motivating the animal to respond to your cues and actively seek direction as a way to earn rewards. Both techniques are using Primary Reinforcement so I will not discuss Secondary Reinforcers here.

Simply put, the most common form of Food Management (FM) is either 1: making it so that the bird ONLY eats during training (popular with early Behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner while he trained animals in a laboratory setting, they would become conditioned to perform a certain behavior such as pushing a lever which would earn them a reward - this was NOT normally requested of the animal by the trainer or done on cue), or 2: you discover the animals’ favorite food items and only offer those during training - meanwhile the bird is given less desirable food items that it can eat at its leisure. A good example where #2 is useful is when we begin training a bird who was previously fed an all-seed diet, we would convert the bird to pellets which it would view as less desirable than the seeds and therefore it would then value the seeds as a reward during training. The animal would ONLY get the seeds during training sessions. They can still have all the pellets they want and can eat all day, but when done properly they are still sufficiently motivated to earn the seeds even with a visibly full crop in some cases.

Weight Management (WM) on the other hand is FM taken a step further; the trainer carefully maintains the animals’ weight within a certain range, often called a “target weight”, “working weight”, “fly weight” or “flying weight”. It is hard for novice trainers to imagine working with a freshly caught bird of prey for example, but professionals deal with these birds all the time. The animal might have been flying wild only a very short time ago and often has a natural fear of humans. Weight Management is crucial to those practicing Falconry or working with performing birds that will perform high-profile behaviors where the bird is given lots of choices as to whether or not they will continually behave the way we desire them to. If you are giving a presentation and the bird flies off, the entertainer or trainer giving the presentation can call the bird back at will if the animal is trained properly. They willingly return because doing so earns them a food reward. The goal of a trainer who uses WM should always be to fly or work the bird at the highest weight possible while still maintaining good responses from the bird. A bird flown at too high a weight may become unresponsive. They can start doing their own thing and ignoring the cues we give them which is bad for all involved.

There are many opportunities to make mistakes and the most common is to underfeed or overfeed the bird. Disaster can occur either way so attention to detail is key. Smaller birds especially will need to be weighed as much as 3 times per day in some cases to accurately gauge and control the weight within a certain parameter. Sometimes maintenance within a 10^th of a gram is required for smaller species, so it can be very intimidating. Do not make the mistake of thinking the fly weight will be the same with every member of a species, for example, many people see me flying a bird and wish to do the same with their pet back home and I get asked questions such as “What is the flying weight for a Galah”? The answer is that it will be different with each bird and even changes from time to time with an individual animal as we “fine tune” them to perform the best they can (which is a constant process). A bird flying at 86 grams at one point in time might be flying at 78 grams later on and again at around 93 grams only a few months later. Fly weights should never be static. Again we should always be working towards flying or working at the highest weight possible. Once we find out a good working weight we ever so slightly begin to raise them up until eventually they can be flying well above the weight they would be at even if they were allowed unlimited access to food all day every day.

Before we begin training a bird using WM we first have to record their “ad lib” weight, which is the weight of the bird if it was on “free-feed” or “feed-up” (free-feed is allowing the bird unlimited access to food and feed-up is when we allow the bird to eat as much as it wants a few times per day but we remove the bowls to prevent spoilage etc in between feedings.) Measure the weight of the food the bird is eating each day so you know exactly how much he is eating to maintain the ad lib weight. Once we determine the ad lib weight and the amount of food required to sustain that weight we can begin training using WM.

When we first begin the bird will typically shy away or bate or even nearly injure itself trying to avoid you in some cases. This is normal when working with wild-caught birds, fearful birds, rescues and so on. At first they might not even take a treat from your hand when you offer one freely but this is normal when working with challenging subjects and you shouldn’t let this discourage you. As the days progress the animals’ natural motivation for food sets in and this becomes a thing of the past as they come to see you as pleasant (a food source) instead of something they need to fear or avoid. It is amazing to have a bird take its first hops to your arm when they were viciously attacking you only a week before.

The following is a demonstration of Weight Management with a Greenwinged Macaw

Say the ad lib weight was 1000 grams when you first start. The bird is fed equal portions of seeds, pellets and vegetables, yet when given a choice he prefers the seeds and eats them first – so these will be reserved for training only and he can have the pellets and fruits/vegetables left in the cage or aviary to eat at will. The bird tries to avoid you as soon as you walk in the room and it won’t even take a food treat from you even though it has not been fed yet this morning. You immediately drop a treat in the bowl and leave the room which ends the session on the best note possible. The birds’ weight is dropped 15 grams by reducing the amount of food given (pellets and vegetables are reduced, the seeds remain the same amount) leaving his new target weight at 985 grams. That might seem excessive but bear with me; the drop in weight is only just over 1% (and usually the bird is a bit overweight before training begins). After trying this weight again next day it is slightly more responsive but only for a moment so the weight is lowered again by another 15 grams to a target weight of 970 grams that the bird will work at the following day. That is exactly 3% reduction in weight from the original ad lib weight where the bird was allowed to eat as much as it wants but the results are already very noticeable the next day. You are able to begin training the flying recall indoors for a short time before it becomes full. Since the bird only remained responsive for a short time we again decrease the weight by 10 grams leaving his new target weight at 960 grams. Now the bird is performing reliably for short sessions flying Point A to Point B Recalls on cue (flies to you when asked) indoors for a few days and he really seems like a new bird. The animal has transformed from fearful or aggressive bird into a bird that reliably performs a behavior on cue. We have achieved this by simply reducing an already overweight birds’ body mass by only 4%.

We maintain him at this weight until eventually the bird is introduced to a new handler. Upon introduction of the new person the bird becomes unresponsive and we observe a breakdown in his behavior. We again reduce the weight, this time by 10 grams leaving his new fly weight at 950 grams. He does poorly over the next few days so we once again reduce the weight by 10 grams leaving him at 6% less weight than free-feed and weighing 940 grams. He improves remarkably and even when we move outdoors without restraints he is reliable. We teach him to fly from A to B on cue, Station on a platform above the stage, fly from trainer to trainer and he is right on target learning quickly and becoming increasingly confident when exposed to new and different objects and situations.

Here is where the more experienced trainer will begin slowly increasing the birds’ weight, while the new or inexperienced trainer keeps the bird at his target weight of 940. If you paid attention you will notice we dropped the birds weight in chunks of 10-15 grams each time – but now that we are raising it back again we do this very slowly and meticulously because we increase the body weight at a much slower rate than when we decrease the weight. You do not want the increase in food/weight to be noticeable to the animal. So we only raise the bird 1-5 grams a day. We have him working well until we get all the way back up to 985 grams, when we begin to train a new behavior and the bird needs a bit more motivation. We reduce him to 975 grams and the problem is fixed – but the lesser experienced trainer is still working the bird at 940, so he drops the weight to 925 grams while my bird is performing the same quality at 970 grams . That is a difference of 45 grams and we have only just begun. Now we introduce the bird to crowds, cameras, lights and so forth. I had increased his weight over time to 1005 grams and he was working fine until now. I reduce his weight to 995 and the problem is fixed for my bird – but the other trainers bird is still at 925 and is still reduced further to 915. Now we are at a difference of 80 grams between my bird and the other trainers’ bird. I slowly increase the weight over time all the way until the bird is flying at 1025 when he finally gets unresponsive and/or responding too slow to my cues so I cut him back 10 grams and he is performing superbly at 1015 – 100 grams heavier than the bird trained the old fashioned way and 15 grams ABOVE the ad lib weight that he would be at if he were just left in a cage eating all day. How is this possible?

The secret is that there is a “mental hunger” that can be used. The birds’ weight is reduced in quick, noticeable increments but when we increase the weight it is not noticeable, so even though the bird weighs 1015, he is still mentally working and flying at 940 grams. This psychological hunger was first used by trainer Steve Martin to my knowledge and is very important to use because having the animal at higher weight means the bird is healthier, less prone to disease and infection etc. I can’t stress enough that we want the bird flying at the highest weight possible. Flying at the highest weight possible is the most positive, least intrusive solution and that should be the goal of all animal trainers across the globe, regardless of the species of animals you are working with. From raptors to penguins to parrots, all of these will respond to this technique. It was my hope in writing this that the people wishing to train birds using WM would have a decent starting point explained by a professional member of IAATE (International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators) and for those of you who are already utilizing weight management I hope that the idea of psychological hunger finds its’ way into your “toolbox”. Food Management, Weight Management, even food rewards themselves are not the end of the road for the avian trainer. Always strive to explore new territories and grow.

Happy Flying!

-Chris Harris