Looking after our Parrots can be hard. Ensuring they have the right diet, enrichment, out of cage time and giving them a clean environment can be really intimidating to many companion Parrot keepers.

However, one element of looking after any Parrot always scares people more than others; the dreaded vet visit. Things such as trimming nails, administering medication or routine check ups can be very worrying. Even the process of going into a travel carrier can stress both you and your Parrot.

Often, taking your Parrot to the vet for any reason can be not only expensive but difficult, as our Parrots don?t know it?s for their own good and find the whole experience stressful and confusing. Even getting nails trimmed can create aversive links to visiting the vet, making it more difficult to do in the future.

What if there were another option? What if we could actively engage our Parrots in the process and avoid most of the difficulties with a little prep work and training.

Encouraging your bird into a travel carrier can be daunting. Some birds are happy to go into them with no issues, others have one bad experience at the vet and never want to go near one again.

Some birds happily hop inside, while others see them as a doorway to evil and avoid them at all costs. Regardless of which your bird is, picking the right carrier and doing lots of work to help them understand it?s a great place to be can really help set you up for success.

The first step involves ensuring your travel carrier is appropriately sized for your bird to help them feel comfortable. Imagine yourself sitting in a cramped train or airplane - that?s exactly the same experience your bird has to go through. The only difference being they don?t understand what?s going on and the destination seldom involves sun, sea and fun!

After you?ve got the best carrier you can, the next step involves getting them used to it being around. Long before you try to encourage them inside, you should just have it in the room with them so they can see it, get near it on their own terms and learn that it?s nothing to be scared of.

Once they are more confident around their new means of transportation, you can begin linking it with good things. Set up foraging near the carrier, put high value snacks inside it, bring them closer to it and reward your bird for being near it. You also want to always allow your Parrot distance from the carrier if they look uncomfortable.

It?s so important to let your Parrot move away when they want to at this point. It can be tempting to bundle the bird in and close the door, but doing that will just make them want to flee and feel trapped. Giving them the choice to back away means they will be more confident approaching it in the future.

The next step involves actively encouraging them inside and shutting the door for short periods, then letting your bird back out. This again helps to link the carrier with good things while slowly getting them used to being inside it. The length of time the door is shut and they are inside can then gradually be increased so they are happy being in there for longer and longer.

Then, you can practice moving it around while they are in there. Pick up the carrier, pop it down, gauge their behaviour and then either do it again or let them out. The important thing is doing all of this in small gradual steps and always linking the experiences with positives over time so your bird learns it?s all safe and has good results.

This kind of training is also useful for any kind of trip. It can help get your bird used to travelling in a carrier for any reason, be it a stroll in the sun, a business trip or even a holiday. But, it is especially useful for vet visits.

Going to the vet is very likely going to be stressful for your bird, it?s unavoidable. However practicing the process of going in the carrier and even practicing the trip itself can really help take the sting out of it all for both you and your Parrot.

Something else worth considering is training your Parrot to voluntarily accept medication from a syringe or even to voluntarily accept nail trims. While I will discuss nail trimming in a future article, medication training is too important to leave out here.

The best way to start the process either involves natural fruit juice in a syringe for the sweet beaked Parrots out there or millet for the less sweet loving birds (Looking at you Cockatiels & Budgies!)

For the sweet loving birds you use your basic target training skills and encourage them to take small licks of the undiluted juice from the syringe, ensuring to offer a reward for it afterwards on top of the tasty juice. Over time you dilute this juice with water while still rewarding your bird for every interaction with the syringe. This helps to train the behaviour that licking the syringe always leads to a tasty reinforcer.

For the less sweet beaked soaking millet in medication can often avoid the need for catching the bird up to administer orally. This will still take practice and introduction and you will need to ensure your Cockatiel is used to eating millet served in this way can really help avoid stress down the line. Just be sure to check with your vet if administering medication this way is ok before doing so.

Vet visits generally are not fun. They worry both us and our birds. But doing some preparation work before hand along with ensuring your bird is willing to accept medication voluntarily can help make the process much less stressful and more positive for all involved