After so long, I finally manage to upload to YouTube and share with everyone Kiki’s Cups Stacking Trick. That’s definitely a long wait, but hope this is a worthwhile one and everyone should enjoy watching the trick performance.

It’s fairly simple trick for Kiki. There isn’t much difficulty for her to understand the whole sequence and master the whole trick.

How do I teach?
Before I can really introduce Kiki into this trick, she must be able to master some of the basic trick component like the Retrieval/Fetching Trick.

Kiki had mastered the Fetching Trick and the Coin Depositing Trick, thus it’s definitely no difficulty for her to complete the task. The only differences is the prop. Like I always said, the first thing to do before moving into actual training, is to introduce the props.

Once proper introduction of the props have been conducted, the actual training commenced with teaching Kiki to pick up the cup upon cueing. When she achieve that, I slowly added another cup labeled with a green label identifying it as my master cup. The objective is that Kiki have to stack the cup onto the master cup.

This portion of the training can be the most challenging one, as Kiki had no idea how to stack the cup. Thus I had to conduct a live demo in front her, thereafter when she holding the cup I had to guide the cup slowly push it onto the master cup. Once she achieved it, I praised and rewarded her. I continued to assist her and complete the sequence several times until she truly understand that she had to stack the cup in order to be rewarded.

At the stage when she’s able to stack the cup on her own, I moved on adding 2 other cups to add challenge to the training. Every successful tries of stacking the cups, I praised and rewarded her.

Below I’ve highlight the breakdown sequence on how to train Kiki to accomplish the whole trick.

The Breakdown Process of the Cups Stacking Trick

1. Introduction of New Props (The Cups)
2. Learning How to Hold/Lift the Cup (Restrict to one Cup)
3. Learning How to Stack the Cup (Restrict to 2 Cups)
4. Add-on of 2 others cups into the training (Total of 3 Cups to stack into the master cup)
5. Full Training Sequence

Remember always be patience, be consistent in your training. Some parrots might take quite a while to understand and master the trick. Good luck to all parrot owners!

Related Posts:
The Cup Stacking Props
New tricks for new year

Earlier on, I mentioned about Kiki mastered the new Cup Stacking Trick on New Year’s Day. My aunt who visited my family during New Year’s Day was really impressed with Kiki’s performance of the new trick. She’s absolutely delighted. Oh gosh! Looks like Kiki is becoming the “centre of attraction” in my family, she got all the attention she wanted. *Jealous*

Lately, I received a couple of emails from friends asking about the Youtube video clip of Kiki performing the new Cup Stacking Trick. Honestly, I’ve yet to get it uploaded to Youtube but Kiki and I are really happy by your warm response. Do stay tune on our weblog and YouTube Channel! I’m sure everyone will get to see the clip by this weekend!

On today’s posting, I will like to share on how I created my own Cup Stacking Props rather than purchasing them off shelves. To be frank, it’s pretty hard to find any parrot trick props from pet’s stores in Singapore. Even you do find one, it’s definitely going to burn a hole in your pocket! Possible problems like the size of the prop might be too big or just unsuitable for our companion parrots. Thus, I do find that making your own props will be an ideal choice. Not only it’s cheap but you also customize the right size just for your own feathered pals.

For my Cup Stacking Props Project, I barely spent above two bucks. Sounds amazing right? I’m not kidding and it’s the fact. The items I bought are just a few coins from my pocket from any neighborhood stores.

Items for the Project:
1. Small Plastic Cups (Those that hawkers used to package chilli sauce) - $1 per pack (10 Cups in a pack)
2. Colored Insulation Tape (I’ve got myself a green one!) - 50 Cents

For the Cup Stacking Trick, I require 4 Plastic Cups. 1 of it will be the primary cup and the other 3 cups are to be stacked into the primary cup. In order, to let Kiki able to differentiate the primary cup from the other 3 cups to be stacked, I sticked the green tape around the primary cup. Thus, it will look different from the other cups. It’s a fairly simple project and does not take up too much time. I believe anyone interested can make one for your feathered friends!

Related Posting:
New Tricks for New Year