[JamesH]

I purchased my first two budgies a little over two months ago. About two weeks ago, I began training them to "step-up," based on the ridiculous amount of reading/video watching I had done.

Tom and Jerry are in a fairly large cage (read: plenty of room to get away from me), and it has made it very difficult to train them. No matter how slowly I go, they always fly away from my hand.

After almost 2 weeks without success, I decided to try something different. Three days ago, I removed Tom from his cage and put him in a much smaller cage. After letting him acclimate for just a few minutes, I began "step up" training again. He took to it like a boss! After just a few hours, spread out over the last three days, he's nearly 100% consistent. I applied the same method with Jerry (smaller cage) and it worked as well.

Here's the problem: Outside of the little training cage, it's like my finger doesn't exist. They have no interest in stepping up. They typically fly away from my hand and act very afraid. The strange thing is, they aren't at all afraid of my hand when training in the smaller cage. They step up and sit there without any problems.

I'm new to budgies and budgie training (my horses and dogs were much easier), so I don't know what I don't know. Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[JamesH]

Thanks!

Thanks everyone for all the helpful information. I feel like I have a better understanding of what's going on.

Since posting my original question, I've stopped using the smaller cage. Tom & Jerry love hanging out on top of their cage, so I use that as an incentive to get Tom to "step up" inside the big cage (Jerry is less receptive and I need to spend more time with him first).

Normally, Tom steps right up and then rides my finger to the top of the cage.

As requested, here's a pic of Tom & Jerry: