I have not taken the time to cage train my birds either though if one had the time I have to believe it would help set your birds apart from others. I read an article once, I think in the PP, where someone trained their bird to strike a certain pose whenever he whistled or snapped his fingers or something. He\'d do that whenever he saw a judge go before his bird.
As for how much to handle your birds, that I would say probably depends upon the individual bird. There are some birds I have that I wouldn\'t need to handle at all. I can walk over and pick them up and they don\'t make any ruckus at all. Others are more excitable and I\'d want to handle them more if I were taking those to a show.
There\'s a whole lot of others on here with vast more experience than I though. Hopefully they\'ll chime in.
God Bless,