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What is it and how can we use
it? Food management is a tool that can be used
for training, regardless of whether that is trick training or for resolving a
problem behavior. I think it's an
important enough tool that we should all understand it and understand how it
works. Food management simply means how and when a
resource (food in this case) is delivered; nothing less, nothing more. It is
when we look at the how and when that we run in to a variance in methods. It is my opinion and that of many
trainers and behaviorists, that you can use food management to increase
motivation without any need for weight loss. Actually, in some cases, the increased
motivation will cause an increase in weight and you may have to adjust your
feeding amounts down. Food
Management does not mean deprivation! Most of us right now, have our birds on a
free feed schedule. There is almost
always food in front of them or available to them if they desire. Nothing is required of them to gain this
food. Heck, they barely have to move to even reach it. Would you think this is what their
natural biology has prepared them for?
On the contrary, they are built to forage, flying distances to find food,
manoeuvring through tree branches and leaves to get to the food. In our homes, they lean their head over
and take food out of that ever filled bowl. Food management is about allowing them to
work for SOME of their food, rather than none of their food. It's about letting them fulfill (in
part) an instinct they were designed for.
It's about challenging their minds a little, keeping them active. But
through it, we can also reap some good consequences with
training. There is a great article available on the web
that describes a very positive type approach to Food Management. The article, written by Cassie Malina,
is based on the training methods of Steve Martin from Natural Encounters, Inc.
http://www.naturalencounters.com/mouse.html
. I've tried in this little article, to break
Cassie’s article down into steps to make it all easier to understand. If you decide to implement this plan, it
will take a bit of work on your part, until you know the weights and
amounts. It would be nice if you have a fairly
accurate scale to implement this plan but any scale will do if it weighs the
same each day. It doesn't necessarily matter if it gives the correct weight,
just that it's incorrect the same amount each time its
used. So to start you should have a gram scale and
a little book to keep track of weights and use as your
journal. Weigh your bird in the morning, before he has
eaten, preferably after he has had his morning poop. This is his ad-lib weight - his weight
while being on free feed. Actually,
its not totally necessary that it’s in the morning, but do weigh at the same
time each day. The advantage of a
morning weight is that there will be little food in the system to change the
results. Now when you go to feed his normal rations,
weigh this. If you are feeding a
mixture of fresh veggies, fruits, pellets and seeds try measuring each
individually, the actual true amounts you are putting in the dish. Let your bird eat until it is done
eating (15-20 minutes should be plenty of time). Remove the remaining food and weigh
it. Again, if it’s possible to
separate the different categories of food, do so and weigh individually. Note the amount EATEN. Don't forget if there is food thrown on
the bottom of the cage to also weigh that.
It is part of the uneaten amount. Do the same at the next feeding. At this point I might add, you don't
need to feed 3x a day. Morning and
late afternoon/evening is fine. If
you normally leave pellets/seed mix in the bowl between the two main feedings,
fine, but weigh them when putting them in and weigh what's left when you feed
your second main meal. If you think about it, we don't sit in front
of a plate of food all day, nor does your bird need to. It's a difficult concept for some pet
owners since we've all been taught that they need this huge variety of food all
the time or we are neglecting them.
Also, most food bowls are very large and make us feel we need to add more
food. This doesn't appear to true.
In the wild they exert a lot more energy than in our homes, and appear to
survive fine on less food. Weigh your bird again before he has eaten or
at the same time as you did yesterday.
Look at your figures for what actually got consumed in your morning
feeding yesterday. Only feed this
amount. If you fed 60 grams of mixed food yesterday for breakfast but there were
20 grams left after the bird had quit eating, today only put 40 grams into the
dish. When the bird is done eating,
remove the remainder and weigh it again.
If you put pellets/seeds in the bowl between main feedings, only put in
the amount that appears to have been eaten yesterday. Our goal is to see how much is actually
being consumed to MAINTAIN our starting
weight. If the weight appears to be
down one day, up the food to what was used the last day without a weight
loss. A few grams fluctuation in
weight either way is fine. No
weight is consistent to the gram each and every day nor each and every hour of
the day. Once you know how much food is required to
maintain our original starting weight , we can begin our plan. You should probably notice by now that
the food being offered is being eaten rather than wasted. Again, we want the original weight
MAINTAINED
so if you notice a drop of 3% or more of the
original weight, you need to add back in some food. Implementing Food Management for Training So
we have now learned how much food we need to feed our bird each day for it to
maintain the exact same weight it was at when we were free feeding before. We've cut down on waste and haven't
deprived our bird of anything. It's
now time to implement our plan to try and achieve our training
goals. The
plan, as I see it, is very flexible from here on in. It can be changed very
easily incorporating the few facts that we know: the weight of the bird and the
weight of the food eaten daily and your schedule. If
your schedule is such that the best time for doing any training is the morning,
withhold serving breakfast. Prepare
your bowl of food for breakfast and before training, allow the bird to pick a
few tiny morsels out of the bowl.
Notice what it picks. Take
bowl away and remove those things the bird picked. i.e. if he picked a grape and
picked a pellet, remove some the grapes and a few pellets from the bowl. Cut these into small, reward size
pieces. Do your training using
these bits as the rewards. When
training is done, give the bird its breakfast. Any of the pieces that you removed for
rewards and weren't used, can be put back into the dish. If
afternoon training works better for you, the ideal time would be before that big
supper meal, whether that is before or after your supper. I would suggest removing the pellets and
seeds (if you have them in the cage) a few hours before training. Again, present the dish of food to the
bird and allow it to pick what interests it the most. Use these for rewards. Once training is done, feed your bird
its supper. Since
we aren't depriving the bird of anything, this plan can be changed many
ways. If you want to do several
little training sessions in a day, take the early rewards from the breakfast
amount, the later training rewards from the supper amount. You
could also use those seed or pellets that you have in the cage most of the
day. Take the amount out of the
total for training. You could use
other special treats, ones that aren't in the normal daily diet. The whole idea of this plan is to
utilize part of the actual food the bird eats in a day, as the
rewards. If you know your day will be a busy one, and
there will be no time for training (hence earning the food) just feed the full
amounts. With this plan the bird won't be hunger
driven, but it will have learned that this food resource has value. It has learned that the bowls aren't
bottomless. It has learned to work
for some of it's food. It has also
learned that you are the dispenser for some of this
resource. Remember, this is just one more
tool! Again, I would like to acknowledge Dr. Susan
Friedman for teaching me and reviewing and critiquing my explanations. http://www.behaviorworks.org/ |
