After letting Kiki exposed to so many advance and difficult tricks, I’ve decided to take a step backwards in teaching Kiki something relatively simple and straightforward. I introduced to her a simple trick called Through The Hoop Trick. It’s a really simple trick that Kiki took only a couple of minutes to understand and master it. It’s a simple trick and anyone can try (including you, the fans of Bryan’s Angels and Kiki, of course) training your birds, and all is needed is just a Hoop. A hoop that is just big enough for your bird to go through. As for me, I couldn’t find a decent hoop in the market for Kiki, so I ended up DIY a customized hoop for Kiki using plastic coated metal wires from hardware store.

Kiki in action…

How do I teach her?
It’s a relatively simple trick for Kiki, as I said she mastered it all within minutes. But time spent on the training might varies on any other birds, especially birds that have never undergone any serious training before. As per normal whenever before I start introducing new tricks, I will let Kiki attend some warm-up session (running through some basic commands and tricks like Turn-A-Round, Wing Flapping & etc). This is to ensure that I gain full attention from Kiki, and it does make training session easier and manageable. Usually the training progress seems to be much more better and effective.

Once Kiki is ready for the new lesson, I start off introducing the new prop which is the hoop to her. For this trick, I used my target stick to introduce the hoop to her. She immediately accept the hoop, and started playing and nibbling with the prop. I started my actual lesson immediately after the introduction was completed. First I placed the hoop on one hand and the other hand holding my target stick at the opposite exit of the hoop. This is to lure Kiki to go through the hoop and touch my target stick. Every successful try through the hoop, I will praise her and reward her with her favorite “candy”. There will be situation where instead of going through the hoop, she went over to nibble the hoop. When I see this, I immediately remove the hoop, this is let her understand refraining from biting the hoop for this trick. I repeat the procedures for a couple of time, until Kiki is totally familiarize with the proper behaviour for the trick.

Finally is add in the cues and fade off the presence of the target stick in the trick. For vocal cue, I used “Hoop” and my visual cue is basically done by knocking the hoop to the ground. You can consider other cues for your birds, as long they recognize and are comfortable with. I still get Kiki to perform the trick with the presence to the target stick but with the add-on of my vocal and visual cues. This is to let Kiki understand whenever she sees these cues, she will have to go through the hoop. I repeat the procedures for a couple of time again. Soon after she’s comfortable, I started removing the presence of the target stick, and Wallah! She doing the trick upon my cues.

During your training, if your birds aren’t ready to response just to your vocal or visual cues. Don’t worry, take a step back and repeat the procedures with the presence of the target stick. Then try fading off the target stick again in the trick. Always remember the thumb rule – Patience!

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