Potty Training

Recently I have had a lot of people asking me if this particular species of parrot can be potty trained or if that kind of parrot can be potty trained, and the answer in most cases, if you have the patience is yes.  Now, I am not saying that all species of parrots will pick up on the idea, or that it will be easy to teach your parrot potty training.  When thinking about parrots, you basically have to consider them as little children.  Each one has his/her own unique personality and their own intelligence.  They each learn at their own pace.  I think of all of my birds as toddlers, they are always inquisitive and willing to pick up on new things that will get Mom and Dad's attention and praise. I try to train my birds just as I raised my children, with lots of attention and praise when they did something correctly that we were trying to teach them.

That being said, I will share with you the steps that I used to potty train my Jenday Conure, Mischief.

I started him when he was young and it was a fairly easy process.  I can not really tell you how long it would take with an older bird, but I do know that with any age bird, it requires a lot of patience, praise and rewards.

As babies, you can figure that they are going to potty on the average of every 20 minutes (give or take).  They will also normally potty when you first take them out of the cage.  So, be prepared for this.  Have your paper or whatever you are going to use handy for the bird to poop on.  We use a
wicker basket with a handle, then I attached a ladder going up to the handle.  About every 20 minutes we would set him on the basket.  Decide ahead of time on the key words that you want to use when you are telling him/her to potty.  With Mischief we say, "Be a good boy."  Then when he uses the potty we praise him and give him a treat.  Eventually, we were able to phase out a treat everytime, but you always praise them when they follow the rules or do what you want. (Just like children.)  Now, he just climbs the ladder and goes to potty on his own without being told to. 

But, like I said, you have to remember to be patient.  All birds are not going to learn at the same pace.  It will take some longer than it does others.  The basics of this can be used to teach your bird other things as well.  For instance, pick out your key words that you want to use to indicate to your bird to do a trick, then stick with it.  When the bird gets the idea and starts doing it, always praise it, then give it a treat that it likes.  Be sure to pick out treats that are healthy though, we don't want to get fat unhealthy birds in the process.