Lately I received couples of feedbacks and emails asking me what kind of food that I offered Kiki as treats during her training session, and leads me to a decision to write a post on incentive treats. I do hope it will be a useful information to all parrot owners.

First to begin, I need to define what is a treat and make it clear to everybody the purpose of a treat. A treat is something out of the parrot’s daily diet, which means it’s not a common food that he or she can find it his or her food dishes. Next the treat to be simple and small in servings, why? Small servings will not make our feathered friends feel too full, and making them yearning for more! Parrots are like humans, just imagine when you have lots and lots of packs of French Fries at one go, and later on someone offered you another pack. I’m sure you will definitely stop and not go on as you are full and rather sick of French Fries at that very moment.

Treats to be simple as in the parrot doesn’t have to waste time and effort to hull or crack open the treat (like nuts, sunflower, safflower seeds, peanuts) to enjoy. I’m sure you will not want to see your feathered friend losing interest in your trick training program and indulged in cracking open the treats, this way most of the productive and quality time spent in the training will be wasted. To avoid this from happening, and if you need to use sunflower, safflower seeds or nuts as treats, do ensure they are hulled or cracked open.

Most parrots, in fact I should say ALL parrots preferred seeds as their favorite food. They are naturally “programmed” to like seeds, I guess is probably part of their instincts. Thus selecting seeds as incentive treats will ensure that you will never gone wrong. Type of food possible as treats: Millets, Sunflower Seeds, Safflower Seeds, Peanuts, Peanut Butter. Most importantly is to find out what your feathered friend likes to eat. Kiki enjoys millets, it’s like candy to her. She can never find millets in her daily food diet, she can only expect them from me either through tricks training sessions or when performs a positive behavior. This way it creates a form of motivation for our feather friends to work hard in order to exchange for the treats. They soon will know that treats don’t just come in easy, there’s always a price to pay.