Hi!!!

[Parakeet Girl]

Hi I'm new and would just like to introduce myself.I have 3 keets named Trust, Buddie and Mellow. I love them all!Trust and Buddie are trained and i am working on Mellow.

Question:My training with Mellow is not going very well.She just wont go on my finger.Any suggestions?THANX!!!!!:budgie:

[jayjay]

how long have you had Mellow and how old is Mellow? if you just got her or she's old, than it may be harder and take a bit longer for you to train her. let us know what you have been doing to try to train her and im sure you'll get a bunch of feedback from everyone about what you can try. welcome to the forum

[Tiki<3Polly]

I am her friend and she had Mellow since June 10th 2005......the only way she will sit on her finger is if she has some seeds in her hand.......they even think she has them in her hand even if she doesn't...its funny

Mellow is i think a green and yelow pied

Trust is a blue-ish purplish color with a tiny tint of grey and a white face

Buddie is almost like Tiki but with yellow and black wing markings

well i gave u bit of info on her keets but she can tell u more!

:budgie: :budgie: :budgie:

[Rosie]

Welcome to talkbudgies, your budgies sound gorgeous!

[jayjay]

green and yellow pied huh? sounds like my jay haha. well how often are the interactions and training sessions? i would say do a few minutes ever hour whenever possible would help immensely. she's had her for a year now so mellow should be a lot more use to being around her so constant training should move pretty fast. is she using the step up command or just putting her finger out and hoping mellow will step up? what i have done with jay is to first show him that i have millet then show my finger and then tell him to step up with a gentle rub of his belly. then i let him eat as much as he wants. when he's done he'll sit there for a bit or just jump off. talk to him for a while and then leave him alone. and repeat later in the day.

when he seems more eager to get on your finger when he sees the millet, then remove the millet from sight and just get him to step up by rubbing his stomach and saying step up. move slowly and if he seems agitated, stop for a few seconds talk to him, look away for a few seconds and move closer. once he is on the finger, bring the millet into site and let him eat. continue this until he is comfortable getting onto your finger in this fashion and when he seems comfortable, alternate times when you give him millet and not give him millet. doing this enough will eventually get him use to going on your finger without food.

jay followed that type of training and was stepping onto my finger within a week's time. he was sitting on my shoulder just last night, and that marked about the 2.5 week point.

if you can provide a bit more info on what you have tried and stuff, i'll write some more, but i must get some real work done now. hahah.

[Tiki<3Polly]

she doent have millet...only special millet seeds she buys...and whenevery she has seeds on her hand, they will just jump on her hand (She feeds them only pellets but gives them seeds alot of times during the day ):D

[jayjay]

well if the special millet is working for her, then i dont see any reason to stop using it. how long has she been getting her budgie to stay on her finger while eating the seeds ( i mean when did she start training her to do this, not how long the bird eats for each time)? if she only started to do this recently, then she is on the right track to hand taming, if its been a while , she may have to up the training a bit more.

[Tiki<3Polly]

i dont know when she started????:cool:

[Parakeet Girl]

Thanks, i feel welcomed

[Rosie]

Oohhh!! I love your signature, very impressive!! :D

[abel]

Hi, welcome to the forums. Give her time and patience. Offer her millet treats way more often, but when she starts to eat them move them a hair out of reach so she has to follow. As time progresses she'll trust you more and more, and eventually you can get her to follow the millet onto your finger! Budgies will almost sell their souls for the millet treat!!:rolleyes:
Anna Belle

[Tiki<3Polly]

mellow will hop on her hand if she has the treat!! so will the other budgies!!!:p

[abel]

OOps,:o then chalk all that and just give her time. Eventually she'll get on just because she sees the hand.

[Tiki<3Polly]

she already does that !!!!!but after shes done eating she flies off

[abel]

Try getting a real millet-- the kind on the branch, and try holding her with one hand and treating her with millet with the other, while raising her to eye level. Once at eye level add some eye contact and talking into the training routine. When you have good eye contact, move the millet a little further away, while continuing to hold eye contact and while still talking, if she looks like she's going to hop off, bring the millet closer. Use the millet like bait, to keep her interested in the trainer, but withdrawing it , and bringing it back-- just enough so she doesn't fly away. Eventually the trainer will get response to the eye contact and voice tones. Birds like to "talk"! Before you know it, she'll be almost as interested in talking, as she is in the treat! Oh, and cock your head a lot-- to show you're listening to her. Birds like that!;)

[jayjay]

dont move around too much after she is done eating. movement will make her nervous. once she has some time to just sit on your hand without worry, then try moving her. just be persistent with the hand feeding and eventually they will stay on.

but give this a try, make her step up with the command and a gentle belly nudge. once she does, she will probably step back down. that is fine, just repeat the step up. she will go up and back down. do this as many times as she will tolerate. then talk to her soothingly and let her be for a bit. repeat this whole process after a while and eventually she will realize that if she jumps off, she'll be forced to do this annoying routine hahaha. it also works to teach them the step up command quite fast as they don't care to be nudged everytime by the finger; they will in fact just jump up on it after a while. once you get them to stay on, just talk and sit there a while. here is where the real millet sprays come in handy as you can offer it with your other hand to them as a reward for staying on.

[Tiki<3Polly]

i think mellow flies off because she holds her hand out right by the cage so she probably is just like all budgies by their cage !!!!

[jayjay]

this is perhaps off topic a bit but tiki has a beautiful color to her

[Parakeet Girl]

thanx. i like it to. sorry i havent answered your questions. well i started the seed thing, maybe around 6-7 months ago?so all of my keets come and eat the seeds from me. the thing is, i tryed to train mellow with seeds but i only got as far as that she only hops on once in a while.maybe like, 2 out of 5 times.so i tryed to train her out of the cage. it worked but only sometimes.but still better than in the cage.so then i put her in the cage after one of the trianing sessions and i didnt work. she was the same in the cage as before. i still keep trying but am getting nowhere.also i started trianing mellow about 5 months after i traing trust.so thats probably when she was7-8 months. i started trianing at that point because every other time i tryed she just whent crazy. but after 6 months she was used to my hand coming in the cage . exept she knew it was for Trust not her.

[Dave]

Hey Parakeet Girl! Welcome to the site :) .

[jayjay]

well slow progress is still progress. do you try to train mellow when the other budgies are around? if it is the case that you train in the same room as the cage and the other budgies, i would definitely try moving her to another room like a bathroom and training her there. just make sure you put the toilet seat down first. go into the bathroom with her and sit in the middle (if this is a small bathroom) and just let her run around for a few minutes on the ground, then approach her and do the step up thing with the belly nudge. and the moment she gets on, try raising her up. she'll like the fact that you are bringing her high. then let her back down and repeat a few minutes later. at the very least the nudge on the belly should get her to step up on your finger. im not sure if you are at least doing that much with her since you said she wont eat from you all the time. if she still isn't really getting onto your finger at all, i would do the nudge on the belly to get her up. its really a gauranteed way of getting them onto your finger even if they dont want to. if you just keep getting her onto your finger for a few days, she will come to not be so afraid. and dont worry about what seems like backwards progress. some times, when they arent in the mood, they will refuse to be as cooperative. its jsut hwo they are. but in a few minutes or hours, they are more than happy to do what they did for you before again. occasionally with jay, i wondered if i was making progress. at one point i thought, he is never going to be comfortable with me and leaving the cage and the very next day, he came out of the cage on my finger on sat on my shoulder for about half an hour. the next day, i gave him a tour of the house and the back yard and he stayed hugging my neck the entire way and looking around.

so give the step up and step down thing a try that i described earlier and the bathroom thing a try if the step up and down thing doesnt work. give it a day and see how it goes. depending on how that goes, we'll discuss alternatives . good luck.

[Parakeet Girl]

thanx i will try.

[Amy]

Hi welcome to Talk Budgies! I love your signature as well! I think everybody else has answered your question!

[Parakeet Girl]

ok,well i tryed what jaja sayed but it did not work.Mellow was to scared. but i tryed to get him on my finger anyway. he did not want any seeds because he was to scared.so i trye it without the seeds and it didi not work either. but thanx for helping.

[jayjay]

when you said that it did not work, what exactly happened? did she run away before you could nudge her belly or what?

[Parakeet Girl]

acully she kept flying away. then once she was tired i tryed again. this time she kept on moveing and i couldnt get her. i tryed this three times a day. i really want to get her trained but i had a bad start with her. when i first got her i couldnt do anything with her only trust wasnt so scared. but once trust was trained mellow was still scared of the hand. she was used to it coming for trust not her. now she HATES the hand. and bights really hard to.

[Parakeet Girl]

please help!

[jayjay]

when she bites, do you flinch or retreat your hand? if you do, you are re-enforcing her behavior and she will continue to bite. just let her bite your hand and she will eventually stop when she realizes you just arent bothered by it.

as for training, perhaps we should take a few steps back. get her comfortable with your hand. hold it in the cage near her for as long as you can while talking to her. dont move towards her at all and do this throughout the day. then the next day, try moving slightly closer. if she doesnt retreat keep getting as close as possible. once she does retreat, stop and hold your hand there and just talk to her for a bit and then try again. keep doing this and eventually, you should be able to get your hand to her without her flying away. but again, the slower you take the training the better the results. i know its been a long time, but right now you need to take it slow to gain her trust which is the most important thing.

[Amy]

I agree totally with Jay Jay. When I began to tame Billy and Lily whenever they bit, I just ingnored and said no. Now they have learnt that biting doesn't mean anything to me, and eventually stopped biting altogether.

The training method that Jay Jay explained worked for me from the beginning. Now I have 2 happy budgies that, with a bit of encouragement, will gladly sit on my finger and preen me!

Hope everything goes alright for you, but remember, patience is the key. :)

[Parakeet Girl]

i dont move my hand when she bites me only when i feel that she is about to bite my finger off! i hurts really bad. thankfully she barly bites that hard when i am trying to trian her.i am worryed that she will never trust me. she did not like me in the biggining so me might not like me now. the reason i want to trian hor so bad is because these are my first pets and i dont know if i am taking the best care of them that i can.so i want to have some time with all my budgies trianed.

[jayjay]

ok, if her bites are hurting then you need to train her to first not bite and here is how i did it with jay. it took less than a day, but your results may vary.

bring your finger close to her beak with your nail side facing her beak. position it so that when she does bite it will only get your nail. most of the time, the bites will just glance off the smooth surface of the nail, other times, it might catch, but you shouldn't feel much of it if at all. do this a while and eventually she should stop. again, it may take a few days. but just keep trying. i havent been beaten hard by jay since the first day really since i did this.

another thing to avoid is towering over your bird, they dont like things coming down from above so your hand should move at level with her or slightly lower. never come from behind her when she isnt expecting it (just make enough noise that she realizes you arent trying to sneak up on her by talking to her or something).

a good thing about this method of training against the bite is that it shows them that you arent trying to hurt them despite their aggresiveness towards you. and before long, you'll be scratching her chest for her and she'll be purring. i brought jay out yesterday while my gf was over and he was willing to step up from my finger to hers and let her stroke his chest with her finger. he chirped his happy chirp everytime and my gf asked if he was being tickled hahaha. but that kind of trust didnt come in one day. budgies i believe naturally hate to be touched at first. its just not natural. i mean by people of course. they love being touched by other budgies. but if you persist, they will grow to trust you and humans in general.

again, i worry that the reason you are failing at the moment is that you have had her for so long and you are now trying to tame her too fast. the methods i have described might fail the first time but you need to just keep at it for a while. get some spray millet, it will help. believe me, i thought about giving up on taming jay many a times when things just didnt seem to go the way i wanted, but persistance paid off and in the end, he came around and i believe mellow will too. good luck.

[Parakeet Girl]

thanks i will keep trying!

[Parakeet Girl]

bump. i just want to keep it on the top:D

[Parakeet Girl]

bump, agian