# Budgie Taming Advice



## Beardy Boy97 (Dec 13, 2011)

Hi, I have a one year old budgie andI have been trying to make him tamer for a while. He was fine for a while and was tarting to sit on my finger but then he started to bite. I am not sure why because nothing happened that could have caused him to do it. Since then I have tried putting my hand in the cage with a bit of seed on my hand but it doesn't make a difference because he would rather try to bite my hand than eat the seed. 

I would like to try to make him tamer so that I can bring him out and let him fly around the room, but it doesn't seem like it would be possible to try to tame him down. Does anybody have any advice on what I could do?

Thanks for any replies


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## Kiwibird (Mar 27, 2014)

He probably started to bite because he hit sexual maturity. You probably reacted to the bites by pulling your hand away or saying "ouch" (which I totally get, it's the natural thing to do), however, reacting only ENCOURAGES THEM TO BITE MORE OFTEN! My guess is all progress halted after the first few nips? 

I would suggest starting fresh with target training and using a verbal or food-based reward system. Target training is essentially using a small stick (like a chopstick) and using a cue word (such as "touch"), then when the bird touches on cue, he gets a reward. Once this behavior is mastered, you can use your target stick to target your bird to start stepping on your finger, to do little tricks, to stay where you want, even to fly back on command. And don't underestimate the intelligence of a budgie, they are capable of some pretty amazing things! The key with birds is to build trust slowly, BE PATIENT and reward positive behavior consistently. I would recommend searching "The parrot wizard" on youtube, as he provides free, easy to follow videos that introduce you to the concepts of target training and taming your bird OR just search "target training" on youtube and you'll get a million different videos showing the method (I just find the parrot wizard guy the easiest and most reliable to follow personally, but there are certainly hundreds of excellent trainers out there to follow along with). I wish when we had gotten our bird we knew about target training and positive-reinforcement based training (he's an amazon, so quite a big bird). We went about taming him the hard way (i.e. the "old school" methods which resulted in lots of bites) and it took a long time to build a trusting relationship with him. Best of luck!

Our boy is tame enough to come out with us and thoroughly enjoys doing so (He's 16 y/o, we adopted him as a never been handled adult 6 1/2 years ago). You just have to not give up on them when they're being difficult no matter how large or small of a parrot they are:


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## Beardy Boy97 (Dec 13, 2011)

Thanks for your help. I have watched a few of his videos and they have been quite helpful. My main priority at the moment is trying to find a treat that he likes so that I can start the training. It did kind of surprise me when he started nipping because he is the first bird I have had that I had actually tried to train


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