Distance Influencing Motivation

Crazy bird, my blue front amazon, is always such an interesting bird to work with. His behaviors are very extreme and everything has to be on point always. He’s highly sensitive to a lot of factors.

One thing from day one we have always worked on his distance to him. I see a lot of fear in crazy and lack of confidence which brings out his extremely aggressive behaviors. He attacks before you get too close because history has shown when he attacks, people move away and leave him alone. I’ve been always working on at his pace that I am no threat and I follow his lead.

He used to be “not food motivated” because he didn’t want to eat when I was within a certain distance. I used to have to walk to the other side of the room so he would eat the treat I dropped in his bowl. Overtime, I could stand next to him and he nicely takes food from my hand and eat. This really jump started our training to be more consistent and rigorous working on husbandry behaviors.

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