Working with Zip and Jinx
Added 2025-01-21 23:00:02 +0000 UTCI thought you guys might enjoy seeing a training session where there’s a lot of imperfections…
Jinx not being the nicest towards Zip which affected her response time and response in general.
You get to witness the extreme twitchiness of the blue throated macaw in distraction action!
I’ve also been working on capturing Zip’s “hi” as right now she typically does it when I have my hands full so now I’ve been trying to entice her to do it so I can reward for it. It’s soooo cute.
These two are definitely happiest outside on flight trips together. I can't wait to see them out together again and I know I need to get an update to all of you about the last trip still. I haven't forgotten...
Comments
the blue throat gang! love the real life its not all perfect uploads. Always makes me feel a bit better about our less than perfect sessions too!
KayLa Forret-Munoz
2025-01-22 22:17:23 +0000 UTCIt’s interesting to watch training with 2 birds at the same time. I Challenging training scenario! Fun to observe and reflect on so thanks for the transparency in posting so we all can learn. I wonder if you are occasionally accidentally marking undesirable behavior in one bird while clicking the other bird for something you wanted. Since you are facing 2 birds who are placed very close to each other and they are both offering all kinds of behaviors, do they clearly understand who got the click? If a bird thought the click was for its behavior, does the click lose some value when no reward followed? Might be fun to analyze for this. Do you see degradation of cue value when you have to keep repeating a cue for one bird because of distractions from the other bird being present? Another fun analysis. I’ve trained a lot of dogs as a certified trainer- working with multiple animals at one time is hard! Would be fun learning for all of us if you try some modifications to this training session and then do a before and after comparison with your reflections. Would getting each bird’s behavior solidly on cue in individual training sessions improve the “group training” results when they are trained together? Would separating the space between birds during training improve results? Training each bird to “station” for short periods so they understand that the click for the bird who is “up” is not meant for the bird “on station”? What would change with placement of stands at right angles to each other so you can turn back and forth to face the bird you are cueing + individual training with each bird to clarify that the mark is only for the bird you are facing? Might be a fun year long series of training exploration, especially since so many people also have multiple birds. Always love seeing these beautiful macaws!
Trish B
2025-01-22 18:13:10 +0000 UTC
