First of all, we need to be specific. What do you want to train your parrot to do? Train your parrot to do tricks, teach them to talk? Or perhaps tame them and stop them from biting, screaming or feather plucking.

I cover how to stop parrots from screaming, biting and feather plucking in a 3 day parrot training course so I won't be covering that in this article. If you want to get hold of that, enter your name and e-mail address in the box on the right and you'll receive Day 1 of the training series: "How To Stop Your Parrot From Screaming"

In this article I will talk about how to train parrot to talk. The characteristic of a parrot to talk makes it a very interesting & fun pet. You need to know some background before you train parrot. Firstly, it's easier to train parrots that are comfortable around humans because they think themselves as one of the humans. Secondly, the younger you can get them started, the better (usually 4-6 month at the latest). You can relate that to human children; younger children tend to absorb a lot of things very quickly.

Patience is an absolute must on your part. You can train parrot to start talking within a few weeks or it might take months. Make sure you're consistent. Do 15-20 minutes training session with your parrot everyday. It's important to keep the sessions short to avoid boredom. It might not be possible some days to train parrot; in such cases, play a recording of words that you want to train parrot to learn for 15 minutes.

When you train parrot, make sure to position yourself in front of the bird so you have his/her attention. Train parrot to speak simple words like "Hello" or "Bye" or "Good Morning" then advance to longer sentences. To encourage your parrot, always treat him/her with a favorite treat whenever s/he makes an attempt to mimic the word. Once you train parrot to speak simple words easily, you can advance onto longer sentences. The initial words take longer to learn but then you can train parrot to pick up subsequent words much quickly.

When you train parrot to talk, use excitement and enthusiasm in your voice when pronouncing the words. One word of caution though, parrots are likely to pick up words that are expressed with emotions so avoid saying swear words or any words that you don't want them saying around people. To discourage unwanted words, simply ignore your parrot. Don't forget to give him/her favorite treat when s/he behaves well!

Good luck training your parrot!