I know while some birds can pick up human speech on their own, in most cases they need to be trained.
How do you train a bird to talk? I have heard it is not easy, and special attention is needed to get rid of bad habits they develop during the learning. (hint: bad words lol).
I have also seen a neighbor parrot completely incapable of talk.
Anyone have experience or know how exactly to get started to train a talking bird who hasn't spoke yet?
When it comes to parrots, it's often said that males usually pick up speech better than females, but of course, there are plenty of exceptions to that rule!
To train a bird to talk, the best thing to do is to consistently repeat a phrase or word for several minutes, several times a day. Some people play recordings of speech to their birds to help speed up the process.
My cockatiel finally said his name yesterday, after almost a year and a half of practice! I haven't really been consistent with the speech training, though. We've been working more on the whistling.
I haven't really reared any talking birds before but one of my brothers-in-law is very good at this kind of thing. His favorite is the mynah.
He would raise it from young, handfeeding it until it can eat on its own. Then he would start by teaching it to whistle. From that, he goes on to simple phrases. However, the mynah is a good mimic so it also learned, by itself, to make noises like the passing ducks and hens. It can even imitate a crowing cock. The funniest thing it learned is the screech of the brakes on my brother-in-law's old motorbike.
My mother has taught the parrot in my home.I know this is no extraordinary as most parrots do pickup snippets of human conversation.But we are able to get him talk "welcome" and "bye bye" we we have guest at our home.