# Kiger surprised me



## sdodo (Jun 7, 2016)

So I wanted to share with others who get how awesome this is...
Kiger has been with me for 7 months and is relatively tame. He will step up and down, isn't afraid of my hand but that's about it. He is also a recovering seed addict, so those special treats of millet are the best thing ever since an occasional extra half teaspoon of seed in the food dish.
Anyway to get kiger back to his cage after out of cage time I've found having millet in my hand and having him step up is the best way to get him to stick around long enough to get to the cage. The other night I noticed he would jump up to my hand when offered even without millet. So I let him fly off, got a bit of millet and said 'here'. I had to be relatively close to him at first but he flew to my hand and pigged out. we kept doing this at slightly farther distances for a bit before I felt he had had enough millet for one night.
I am still amazed that he will fly to me. It's probably just the millet but I want to think some level of trust is there. 
Anyway I wanted to share my excitement somewhere that wasn't Max's health thread.


----------



## StarlingWings (Mar 15, 2013)

Congratulations on your progress with Kiger! That is a very cool bit of taming for him to fly to you on command now


----------



## BlueBirdNYC (Aug 26, 2016)

That is so cool...! If you keep working on it... he will continue to do it and he does seem to trust you.

I work on this same trick with my budgie.... and so far it is very millet-motivated. (He's converted to pellets, so he does love millet.) When we work on this ... I have to work on him not flying to me before the command. Once he knows I have the millet he has a hard time being patient. But it's coming along. I say "come on" and he flies to my hand to get the millet and then we repeat it a few times.

Like you, we had to start out from closer distances. But once he got the hang of it, if he wants the millet badly enough, he will fly from far away.

He will also go along with the "come on" sometimes without the millet... but that's at about a 20 percent success rate. He really has to be in the mood. ... I have seen some budgies though that appear fairly reliable with this trick and maybe you'll get to that point.

Congrats! It's very exciting when these milestones are hit. Also, congrats on reforming him away from seeds. That's a _huge _accomplishment and not very easy. Budgies seems so stubborn when it comes to diet and not wanting to give up the seeds.


----------



## FaeryBee (May 9, 2011)

*Positive Reinforcement Training is excellent which is exactly what you are doing with Kiger at this time. :thumbsup:

http://talkbudgies.com/taming-bonding/237105-using-positive-reinforcement-training.html*


----------



## sdodo (Jun 7, 2016)

thank you everyone
BlueBirdNYC: That is Kiger in a nutshell. He still gets quality seed mix but its only a teaspoon a day (maybe a little extra if its cold or I'm feeling nice) and pellets and veggies otherwise. So as long as he is hungry he will do just about anything for millet. Max does need to be in another room so Kiger can kinda focus but if seeds are involved...

one of the things I love with teaching Kiger tricks is watching his little mind work as he learns the trick. Once we get the 'here' trick down I kinda want to teach him other tricks but I don't know where to start. Any suggestions?


----------



## FaeryBee (May 9, 2011)

*Take a look at some of Wiki's threads as well as her stickies in the training and bonding section of the forum. 
She does "clicker" training.*


----------



## BlueBirdNYC (Aug 26, 2016)

I agree with FaeryBee re. Wiki. I love Wiki's tricks! My current favorite is lifting her wings on command. (It's on youtube as "Wiki gets her wings"). I'm trying to do this with Biz (my budgie) however it's early days... and I don't think I'm doing it quite right so I'm going to work on this differently.

Very cute about how when Kiger "gets it". They do get a knowing look on their face sometimes.


----------

