By Linda Morrow, all rights reserved.
(First appeared on Clickbirds List).
For Rande and other newbies, wanting to know how to manage food better for
training.
Try training first thing in the morning before you feed your birds. With hold
that special treat(s) and only use them for training. For those of you
that don't have that extra time in the morning, remove your birds food bowl from
his cage about an hour or two before you want to train. Be sure and leave
the water in the cage and make sure to put the food bowl back in when you are
finished with your training session.
We don't use fasting for our birds, but we do cut them back slightly during show
season, no more than 10 per cent, which is made up by the extra treats they are
given throughout the 3 to 4 shows a day they do. We also feed fruit and veggies
early in the morning and the "heavier" seed diet in the evenings.
We do feed more fruit in the summer because of the heat during the day and
feeding the seed at night helps to keep them warm for the cooler evenings as
they are outside most of the summer months. All of our show birds are
slightly over weight, which goes to show that we aren't depriving them of food,
but do need to work on their diet more.
A birds digestive system works very fast, approximately every three hours.
(average droppings of 30 to 50 a day). So if you take their food away from
them an hour or so before training, and use special treats, I believe you will
get better training results. You may also consider cutting back about a
tablespoon from each feeding, to help with motivation.
When I was at the AVMA meeting a few years ago, it was reported that most pet
birds are at least 10 to 15 per cent overweight, because of lack of exercise and
too much of the wrong foods. A little research on diets and new food
management skills can not only benefit your training sessions, but can also
benefit your birds health.
Linda