Manipulating Reinforcer Size and Type for Success
One thing that can help in training your animal is manipulating the size and type of reinforcer you use to get behaviors you are wanting faster. We all know that giving a treat after a behavior is completed will increase the rate of the behavior happening again. That is positive reinforcement! It is a simple concept, but can get quite in-depth as you continue to learn more about behavior science.
Utilizing the size of the treat can have a big impact on behavior, and when applied correctly, it will help you speed past behavioral challenges. Generally, I always say use small pieces of food, like small nut chunks or safflower or millet seeds. For dogs I recommend like a kibble or marketed “training treats.” For my more exotic animal clients, it’s the same concept just with your animal’s preferred food. This is because an animal can get satiated, or filled up and tired of, a food item if you keep using a lot of it. This will decrease motivation. So, by using small food pieces, we can ensure that we can train longer. For parrots, it also allows us to accomplish more behaviors without them filling up on too much fats, which may increase hormonal behaviors.
Small pieces of food are a great baseline to follow, especially if training is already complex to you or you are struggling with keeping the consistency of it. If you want to continue to grow your training, try using different sized pieces of food for different behaviors. For example, we have a small nut piece or seed, like a safflower or pine nut cut in half. Then we have a normal nut chunk that is about the size of a pine nut or a sunflower seed. Lastly, we have a larger nut chunk, maybe even half of a nut! Having these three distinct sizes will help us apply them to specific behaviors. When you are working on a big behavior, something very new, and the animal completes the behavior, then they would get the biggest chunk of food. This is helpful to communicate that it is the behavior you are after and reward them heavily for doing something new and adventurist. You would use the average sized food for behaviors that are being perfected and mastered. The behavior is no longer new, but the behavior is gaining consistency and perfecting any small flaws through a concept called shaping. For the smaller pieces of food, you would use this for behaviors your animal has already mastered. This will help keep the behavior consistent while not filling our bird up.
Similar to the size of the reinforcer, you may want to give more pieces. This is helpful for those training smaller birds with millet. It is a bit difficult to divide millet up appropriately, so increasing either the amount of time the bird is allowed to eat at the millet stick/cup, or giving specified amount like little ball pulling from the stick. You can also increase nut chunks if you want to keep the training simpler but implement this concept. One nut chunk for mastered behaviors, two pieces for shaping behaviors, and three for the new behaviors.
To increase the depth of your understanding of food reinforcers, utilizing different food items can also be helpful. For behavior clients, at the bottom of your behavior plan sheets, there is a table that talks about the types of food your animal likes, as well as if you will be delivering the food directly through your hand or other way like a bowl, tongs, throwing onto the ground, etc. I always encourage clients to fill it out, and list the food item from your animals most favorite food at the top, and at the bottom lesser valued foods.
Knowing a list of food that your animal really likes can help you number them by significance to the animal. The top ones would be food that your animal will work for every single time. As you continue through the list, the bottom would be items the animal would work for, but not doing any behaviors that are new. These are items you would likely use for things like foraging or to reinforce behaviors the animal already knows. I always have three treats in my treat pouch to be able to utilize and swap out depending on the behaviors I am working on. That’s one of many reasons why I love Fluff and Feather’s treat pouches because it will hold EVERYTHING you need!
By combining utilizing different food sizes, as well as the different food items the bird enjoys, you can have an increase in success with training, and behaviors being completed faster. Using the animal’s favorite food and a larger amount of it when they do a new behavior would speed up your animal’s motivation and understanding of the behavior. Again, this is not necessary in order to have success. On the other hand, if you are stumped in your training, your animal is not progressing as quickly as you have hoped, or you want to progress your skills as a trainer, this would be a good way to start!
If you ever have questions or are struggling with the training you are doing, always feel free to contact me! I do not bite! Usually, a quick email or phone call will resolve any concerns that you are having.