Merry Christmas to everyone! It’s a festive season when everyone get to enjoy and relax during the holiday, but someone refuse to let me ease off during the day. Surprisingly when I got back home after lunch and going to the room to check out how’s Kiki doing, soon I noticed something is not quite right. Look at what Kiki had done!

I found the 2 parts of the chains and the bell handle were detached and dropped to the bottom of the cage. I have to admit Kiki is really getting on my nerves, she really testing my patience! Getting it fix was a challenging task, the chains of the bell are way too tiny that neither my tools in the toolbox are able to fit. I had to end up borrowing a tweezer from Mum’s sewing kit. What a Christmas gift from Kiki!

Lately, I have been moving on introducing real basic tricks to Kiki. Earlier on was the “Through the Hoop” trick and now the Bell trick. I just don’t want to make things hard for Kiki, but still let her constantly learning new things and enjoying the moments with me. The thought of bell trick recently just come across in my mind, when I was packing Kiki’s extra toys and spotted this untouched little bell in a plastic box.

It’s a real simple trick that Kiki learned almost immediately. She has to shake the bell a couple of times and land back to the ground properly and not toppling it. I’ve only demo in front of her once, then later whenever I cued for bell, she’s able to pick that up and shake for a few times before letting go. I really enjoy seeing her doing that. I was wondering getting her to perform to my friends during our Christmas events. Who knows she might end up getting a couples of Xmas “Candies” from my friends? *Haha*

Kiki in action…

How do I teach her?
As I said earlier on, it’s a relatively easy trick all is required is a normal bell with a simple notch (this allow Kiki to use it as the handle of the bell) on top. First the objective is to introduce the new props to Kiki, possible techniques are placing food treat near the prop to encourage her to touch. For Kiki, I used the target stick instead as she had been target trained. I used my target stick to tap on the bell, whenever successful touch or grab the bell, I will praise and reward with her favourite “candy”. Once she’s totally comfortable with the new prop, I started to move on with my actual training.

First I did a demo in front of Kiki to let her understand the purpose of the game. The moment I placed the bell in front of her, she immediately grab hold and shake it. I’m totally amazed she make a successful attempt on the first time. I praised and reward her to let her understand that the behavior I wanted for this trick. Whenever she threw or drop the bell immediately without any shakes, I will ignore and refrain from giving any treat until she achieved the action I wanted. I continued these procedures and still yet to perfection, but overall I’m satisfied with her performance in her first training. Good job, Kiki!

If you met training scenarios that your parrots doesn’t pick up the bell shake, be patient. First encourage them by praising and rewarding them when they touched the bell. Then after a few rounds, try hold off the treat alittle longer until they started picking up the bell. If they achieved that, praise and reward them accordingly. Soon after a few rounds, you will be seeing them shaking the bells before letting go to the ground. Thumb rules: Give them time, have patience!

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