Harness Training

The acceptance of the harness needs to be trained with birds. They aren’t like dogs where they will just be fine with you putting it on randomly. They are wild animals and a prey species, and you’re putting something over and around all their vital organs, which can be intimidating and frightening.

This is what it should look like when putting a harness on a bird. They are calm. They are free to move away but choose not to. They aren’t restrained in a towel. You don’t have to hold their beaks to force it over their head.

I trained Alfie (moluccan cockatoo) to keep his head down on my lap or on a table to help better communicate to me his discomfort instead of biting me. Alfie has a history of severe aggression, so I want him to always be able to clearly tell me when I have over stepped so I can take a step back to ensure his comfortably. Then, at the end, he raises his head so I can work. This took a lot of training for him to accept this and put the harness on this way.

When we take it off, he prefers to be on my arm standing up for some reason, so I roll with it. He keeps his beak on my forearm the entire time until I need to bring it over his head again.

The harnesses I use are the aviator harnesses, since they are the strongest and safest for a flying bird on the market, since I take my birds outside and fly them often

To learn how to train your bird to accept the harness, feel free to contact me to set up an online training session to learn how to do it!