Teaching your parakeet to talk
Parakeets are fun little pets. They have a long life span for a small pet, easy to keep and they can talk. What, you didn’t know that they could talk? Yep, they can be taught to talk and even sing. I have a parakeet and my uncle use to breed them as a hobby. So I have some first hand information that I can tell you about teaching parakeets to talk.
First of all, don’t believe everything you read about teaching your parakeet to talk that you read online. I just did a brief search on the subject and could not believe the mis-information that is out there. One of the pieces of information that I found to be false was that is better to have more than one parakeet when teaching them to talk. That is full of BS. I have known 2 talking parakeets and in both cases they were both single birds living in a household with other pets. While the non-talking birds that I have known are kept with cage mates.
So having 2 birds does not help a bird to talk, but what does help? I have put together a list of things that I have found to influence a parakeet to make sounds.
- Turn on the TV, your parakeet will whistle or sing along with the TV
- Having your parakeet well fed and access to fresh water – in other words keeping your parakeet healthy
- Keeping the bird warm. Parakeets are from Australia so they enjoy warm (above 70 degrees) temperatures. A cold bird is less likely to talk.
Parakeets are known to be very vocal when they are hungry. I know that my birds loves to let everyone in the house know when she needs to be fed. Lastly, does repetition help a bird to talk? Yes and no, repetition does not mean listening to a few short words or phrases over and over again (yes it does work but only for short periods of time, of less than 3 minutes a day). Longer periods of repetition does not seem to make the bird want to talk at all but tends to want to make the bird shut up all together.
While teaching your parakeet to talk is not and easy task, try teaching them not to bite you when you are cleaning their cage, that is one trick I want to learn.
