Magazine Training Day 1 (Peaches)

Today was the beginning of training Peaches!!!!  Just like the Sniffy program Megan and I began the process with magazine training...

Our Goal:
To magazine train (classically condition an association between the sound of the food magazine and delivery of the food) Peaches.  The purpose of my session today was to condition Peaches to approach the food magazine each time Megan or myself pressed the hand switch.

Operant Box

Procedure:
Peaches was food deprived to 90% of her starting body weight (235.5 grams) and weighted 207.6 grams, 4.4 grams below her target weight (212 grams).  Daily sessions will be at 8:45 AM, but today our first session began at 11:52 AM.  Today Megan was the trainer and I was the observer, once Peaches was in the operant box Megan immediately pressed the hand switch to deliver a food pellet in the food magazine.  But we hit a tiny little issue...the food magazine would make the noise, but no pellet would appear.  Megan pressed the hand switch a second time and then a third time, but there was still no luck.  Then we proceeded to take Peaches out of the box so we would take the food magazine appear in order to try and fix it.  Once it was all put back together Peaches was placed back into the box and the training began again.  Megan pressed the hand switch again and a pellet appeared for Peaches, we waited for her to find it and eat it.  Then after she took her head out of the food magazine Megan pressed the hand switch again and we waited to see if she ate it.  The magazine training continued for about 24 minutes and 50 food pellets were presented to Peaches.

Results:
Megan pressed the hand switch when Peaches would be on the other side of the box, opposite of the food magazine to see if she would approach it and she did.  From this we believed that Peaches was beginning to develop a sound-food association.  After this step we then began to reward Peaches when she would move her head to the left of the food magazine close to the bar.  Sometimes she would press the bar herself.  Megan then began to press the hand switch when Peaches was on the way down from rearing in the area of the bar.  By the end of the session Peaches pressed the bar 12 times on her own.

Discussion:
By the end of the session Peaches seemed to have developed a decent association between the sound of the food magazine delivery and the presentation of the food.  We have to work in a new operant box tomorrow so we may have to take a couple steps backwards and retrain her so she can get used to the new box.  Over all Peaches seems to be developing a strong sound-food association, the stronger the association the easier it will be to shape her to press the bar.  I believe that we will be able to get a little farther with her training if we use the full 30 minutes.

Great start today Peaches pressing the bar on your own 12 times!!