How Long Should Your Training Sessions Be?
I have been busy working with a lot of my bird’s and trying to train them twice a day. With 10 parrots, that can take up a good chunk of my day! But really, it does not.
Training sessions should not be long. The average training session for any species is about 5 minutes of working. It is good to keep sessions short because it allows for the animal to not become worn out and mentally drained. Training sessions should be short and upbeat. We want the animal to enjoy the training, which is why countless studies have shown that training is an animal’s most preferred method of enrichment! If the session lingers on too long, the animal will associate working with you as something exhausting, which may increase frustrations and behaviors that follow.
Short sessions also allow for the animal to keep themselves engaged in the training. There is always newness and unpredictability from us when we start a training session. The animal is waiting to see what we are going to work on, maybe they are anticipating something new; the animal is always excited to start working. We want to ride that excitement before it fades out. If it becomes too repetitive for too long, that gets boring!
Our goal is to have as many positive interactions as possible with our animals. In training, we want as many successful behaviors as we can get. This means the animal will get more reinforcement, which the animal also enjoys beyond our interaction and the mental stimulation, and will continue to positively associate training with great things. If the training goes on for too long, we are allowing more time for possible mistakes to happen, either on our end or the animals. I know that even the best of trainers can still have mistakes while training. I know I show mine off on Instagram and Patreon all the time! That’s just human nature. We do not want to pile on more possibilities for mistakes on top of ones we cannot necessarily control by extending the training session.
Since I am talking generally, this five-minute rule does not always work on every animal or every training plan. I usually speak with clients directly during our sessions and let them know that the five-minute rule may not be the best for their animal’s training, or just specific individual animal. For when you are working on stationing, and your animal is sitting on the station for over a minute each time, then your training sessions may be longer. If you are working with a slower moving animal, then it also may be extended. When I worked with sloths, the training session was 15 minutes long because the animal moving took up most of the time.
If your animal really loves the training and has the drive for it, like a cockatoo, a working dog breed, primates, etc. then you may be able to remain successful with a longer session than five minutes. I always use my two birds as examples to this. Crazy Bird, my blue front amazon, will only train for 3.5 minutes between 5-6pm. Alfie my moluccan cockatoo will train for 20 minutes 20 times a day and still want more. My one basset Tootsie will also train all day everyday and is very motivated. My other basset Ramona likes the shorter sessions and not too many of them. She would rather forage more. This shows that making the generalizations like all cockatoos or all working dogs or all primates does not mean all. Remember to treat your animal like the individual they are!
I get questions a lot about how to determine what is too long for a training session. The best thing to do is test it out and gain data from your experience. The goal behaviors we are looking for are the animal is still actively engaged with minimal distractions, they are eager to complete the task we are asking (which may also be dependent on our approach and how small of approximations we are using), and that they are still taking reinforcers. So, put a timer on your phone and start training! Once you see one of these three start to slack, stop the session and the timer. Do this over the span of a week with every training session you do. Then, compare the times and get the average. That is where you know your animal likes to be within.
Do not be concerned if your animal trains less one day, or does not want to train at all. Just like us, we do not always want to go to work. Sometimes changing the time of day can help increase your animal's motivation to interact. Sometimes they just ate before the training session, so taking away food about 30 minutes to an hour before the training session is a good idea! Ideally, animals would have meals, or you train them for their meals, which allows for better training scheduling. But it is not entirely necessary; you can modify training to fit everyone’s needs.
Bottom line is train as much as you can with your animal between your schedule and theirs. Even a two-minute training session is better than none! This can be a bit tricky to get a grip on when you are first training, so if you need extra assistance, or have questions about this topic, feel free to reach out!