English Parakeet Training

Species

• Many people do not know that the common parakeets found in most pet stores come in two types. The English parakeet has more feathering around its face and is bigger than the American parakeet. The English type is used more often in bird shows. English parakeets come from Australia and are green and yellow in the wild. Hundreds of years of selective breeding has resulted in a variety of English parakeet colors, such as mauve, violet and blue. The birds are highly social and enjoy being with people.

Requirements

• There are a few requirements when beginning to train your English parakeet. Make sure your bird is healthy and well-fed. English parakeets bought at a pet store may be harder to tame when compared to hand-raised parakeets purchased from a breeder. You may want to get a pair of English parakeets so they can keep each other company, though solitary parakeets will bond with their human owners better. You need to place the bird's cage in a busy location in your home where it will have plenty to observe and have more opportunity to interact with people. Clip the flight feathers on your bird's wings to aid with training and to prevent the bird from flying out a window or into a fan. Finally, make sure you have time to devote to training your bird as it takes consistent repetition and patience to fully train an English parakeet.

First Steps

• Once your bird is used to being in your home, spend time talking softy to it in its cage before you attempt to hold it. Keep your bird calm with low lighting and soft background music. Your movements should be slow and deliberate. Coax your English parakeet out of the cage over several days. Some birds like stepping into cupped hands because it gives them a hiding place. Softly stroke the parakeet's head and neck area. Birds cannot reach those areas and enjoy it when humans "preen" them. Learn to recognize your English parakeet's body language when it is agitated and does not want human contact. Spend as much time as you can holding your bird and bonding with it before teaching it any commands.

Subsequent Steps

• After your bird is used to your presence and being held, the most basic command an English parakeet should learn is to "step up" onto a person's finger. After that, the bird can be trained to calmly sit on your shoulder, eat food out of your hands and perform a variety of entertaining tricks, like "play dead" and riding on a toy car. You can also train your English parakeet to mimic human words, but be aware not all parakeets will turn out to be talkers and their tiny voices do not enunciate human words clearly. To promote more talking, keep mirrors out of the cage because a parakeet will attempt to bond with the "bird" in the mirror. Repeat slowly and clearly the words you want the bird to say every day. English parakeets can most easily say words that start with letters like K, B and T. The birds also learn to mimic noises around them, including telephones and other pets.