Parrot Won't Step Up For Anything! How I Train a Nervous Pink Cockatoo

This Major Mitchell's Cockatoo won't step up on my hand for anything! Even showing him the biggest tastiest treat I know he loves, he still won't go on my hand for it. The Cockatoo leans, backs away, even shows his beak at the sight of my approaching hand.

Luckily, I know not to push any further but many people do not. Being any more demanding about making a parrot step up in this circumstance will lead to a bite! And once they learn to bite, they are more likely to do it next time too.

It is a bad idea to nudge or force the bird onto your hand. It will make the parrot nervous and likely bite. If not the approaching hand, the parrot may bite once on the hand. Either way, it is not improving the relationship and only making it worse.

https://ParrotWizard.com/Clicker_Target

Instead, I use my Clicker and Target Stick to direct him to walk onto my handheld perch instead. This also took time to teach and it is something we gradually worked on in the cage so that I would be able to take him out. See my prior videos of how that was done. The Pink Cockatoo feels a lot safer stepping onto the handheld perch than my hand. After all, he has a few just like it in his cage! He has had several weeks to get used to the same perches in his cage.

https://ParrotWizard.com/Perch

Once the Major Mitchell's Cockatoo was good at stepping up onto my handheld perch and I was able to gently take him out of the cage, I started bringing him over to my nearby Training Perch. This is a much better place to do training. It is height adjustable, comfortable, and distraction free. This way we can focus directly on training and not have distractions such as toys and other places to go.

https://ParrotWizard.com/Training_Perch

We continue practicing our target training and handheld perch step-up exercise from the Training Perch. As the Pink Cockatoo gets more accustomed and comfortable with out of cage training, eventually we'll be able to accomplish stepping up onto the hand and not biting. It has to be at his comfort level. So follow along and see the progress we continue making and go back to my prior videos to watch how we came this far:

https://ParrotWizard.com/Videos

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