Teaching your bird how to pronounce some words can be quite an exciting task, especially if it is your pet. Even if it will end up just saying one word you will be contented. Below are tips on how to teach your bird how to talk.
-
Know more about your bird
Before you can engage in teaching your bird how to talk, you need to be sure that your bird can actually talk. Not all bird can learn how to talk; some bird species that can talk include Cockatoo, Cockatiel, African Grey, Hill Myna, Eclectus, Quaker Parrot, Indian Ringneck, Amazonian Parrots, Monk Parakeet and Budgerigar. Once you have known more about your bird, ensure that you build a relationship with it. A bird that can talk is a social animal. For you to build a relationship with your bird, you need to frequently speak to it so that it can get used to your voice and slowly warm up to you. It is also advisable to use gentle tones so as not to frighten it, frightening your bird can hinder its speech ability. Make sure you speak and play with your bird on daily basis as this is the only way to build a good relationship with your bird.
-
Train your bird
When it comes to the main task of training your bird on how to talk, you need to ensure that you start with simple words. However, it is not only about selecting simple words you need to select words that you and other people around your bird say often. Words like bye-bye, hello, goodnight as well as your birds name can be a good starting point. Remember, your bird has a higher chance of learning words that it frequently hears, so you need to ensure that you frequently say the words you want your bird to learn. It is also essential that you hold your bird right in front of your mouth when training it how to talk. This ensures that you get your bird’s entire attention and it also makes sure that your bird clearly gets all the required sounds you want it to learn. You can also involve a third party since some birds are known to learn fast when more than one person is involved. Make the training more fun by rewarding your bird whenever it pronounces a word. Subconsciously, this encourages the bird’s brain to learn and pronounce more words.
-
Be patient
Finally, you really need to be patient with your bird during the entire process no matter how long it takes. Some birds can take months while as others can take years just to pronounce a single word. So long as your bird can eventually talk, then all you need to do is be patient with it and you will eventually have the expected results.
