Playing Parakeet Sounds to my Parakeet

User Question
When I play the file of your parakeet chirping my parakeet follows... When the file stop, it stops.. Is it better to let the parakeets respond to the file of your parakeets chirping or should i talk to it more often.

Lisa's Answer
Parakeets LOVE music and hate silence. Be sure to play them music daily! Also be sure to talk to your parakeets every chance you can get. The critical part of training a parakeet to talk is that they learn that words are a way that you say things with meaning to them. They need to learn that words are not random noise. For example, if you always say "good morning" in the morning, they learn that's a morning greeting. If you always say "good night" when you put their cover on, they learn what that means. Parakeets are VERY smart. But if you just randomly play a tape of words for them over and over, they're going to tune it out. They have no idea that these are words with meaning that they should learn. It's just random noise.

In the same vein, your parakeets might chirp loudly when you play the parakeet sounds for them - but I sort of feel that's a form of torture :) You're trying to get your parakeet to talk like YOU, to have it think that it is part of your human flock. But then you play the sounds of other parakeets talking - and it gets homesick to be with other birds instead! It hears them saying all sorts of things like "This is fun!" and "Come with me!" and your parakeet wants to be with them, wants to be in a real parakeet flock. But it can't see these birds anywhere. Your parakeet calls out to its new "friends" but its friends completely ignore him and never answer back! And then when the wav file is done playing, the parakeet thinks that his friends have abandoned him or that something bad has happened, for their voices to be shut off so abruptly. So in any case while I might play them once or twice to get to know what parakeets sound like, I wouldn't play the sounds regularly for my pet parakeets. They are supposed to be learning to talk like humans, not hearing the friendly chirping of other parakeets who seem to completely ignore any attempts at friendship ...

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