Taming a pair of cockatiels

They might still live in the wild and the pet store ones might be wild but if someone goes to a good breeder that hand tames them and the parents and all extended family have great temperaments, they won't wild for 50 generations as you say. I would hope by then a breeder would have some really nice, calm birds...

But yes you are right, the average bird most people buy, the pet store one or not selectively bred, bird will remain wild.

But yeah, either way they should accept you eventually.

And sorry, i think i see what you mean now. Parrots are not, and probably never will be, domesticated. They're still wild animals even if you get generations of handtamed birds from a breeder. Sorry, I think I misunderstood, I thought by wild you meant like personality wise, flighty, etc. But maybe you meant like wild animal, not domesticated?

Well, either way, when selectively bred (or the time is spent to train) they can be very calm and friendly

It is strange how I got myself again involved in forums on birdies. I backed off many parrot/birdie forums for many years now. Especially as I decided the price
of having a birdie in my life is not worth the anguish when I had to say good byes and left a bit of my soul each time. I got here because I have friend who collected 4 red jungle fowl eggs
, hatching out 2 of them, and telling me he amazed to see them flying in just two weeks or so. I hoped those 2 wild jungle fowls will leave their genes behind. On my search for that, I came into this forum. And later found this particular forum.

I see that you have birdies and beasties in your life too. And quite likely to have had even more even if they passed on. They you will agree with me each and everyone of them has their own unique personalities and different characteristics. Can you use anyone of them as a model to fully describe another of that kind? An article in the BBC a couple years back detailed that even molluscs , insects and hermit crabs demonstrated different kind of personalities. Considering birdies, and even kitties, are very intelligent, it will be inevitable personalities can be so different that I hesitate now to use any of them to predict what another of their kind will do even if I predict a kittie will likely meow.

There is this ongoing thingie that a 'handfeed' or handraised birdie is the best you can get if you want a pet bird. Which unfortunately is such an unbridled lie
Let me try to cut and paste some stuff I wrote before


Bird born in captivity & 353 heads // Meet Jackie

October 14th, 2011
.

In my reports of Oberon, Ketile in a French forum http://www.perroquet.biz read of my difficulties and asked
"As a friend, wouldn't it be easier to find a bird born in captivity ??"

Ketile meant well. When I wrote my report " To Shanlung - How to do Free Flight Outside ", I mentioned that started
at a French forum. Ketile asked me then that question, and which lead to my report.

This question can be seen from two main different angles.

Angle 1

You all knew I had relationships with wild birds in the first place.

Riamfada was a wild caught CAG as seen in her open leg ring. She was a rescue and given to my charge when she was about 5-6 years old. She came to me bitey and fearful.



In about a year, she was doing free flights to me.



Yingshiong above is a white rumped shama. A shama is a songbird. He was caught from the wild at about 3 years old. He was given into my charge at about 5 years old. He flew to me on cue within a month of coming to me. Breeders of shamas told me even their breed shamas , some they hand raised, never ever landed on them. They told me above was the first ever they seen of a male shama landing on a human.



Libai is a Greater Greenleaf song bird. Caught from the wild and probably about 3 years old or so when he came to me.

Even wild caught and old birds can be so easily trained and bonded if you know how.

Understanding them is the first and most important step that can be taken.
That is the most fundamental truth in looking after birds.

One do not need a young bird be the bird from breeder or anywhere else.

If one start on this route, where will that end?
Getting younger birds?
Getting handfed birds?
Getting baby birds?
With eyes still closed?

That we get them young to imprint them that they are humans and not birds so they interact better with us?
Getting very young birds apparently caused much problems with the birds when they are older.
I wrote on this problem in
Imprinting of birds
http://shanlung.livejournal.com/130187.html

I think it is far better to let the young birdie remain with their birdie parents.
For them to know that they are birdies.

Oberon was different. When I first took him in, my main thought then was to return him back to where I felt he belonged. And I think that affected my mindset towards him. His acting as if I was the fearful bogeyman , that I dared not even change the newspapers catching his pooping for the two months he was with me.

It was so painful at the point of his release when he only flew that 5 meters to the edge of the forest and perched there to look back at me instead of flying non stop into the forest as I thought he would.

That perhaps the relationship between Oberon and myself had actually started but with my main thoughts of returning him back prevented me from recognising that in the first place.

I do not have that idyllic vision that back to the wild is paradise for wild birds. As sadly, whatever is left of the wild is only a shadow of the original primordial forest.. And even if it was the original primordial forest, that still can be paradise, or can be hell. It is a struggle of survival of the fittest, a struggle for life and death.

When I cleaned the flight room, I found many flight feathers that he molted. Those flight feathers had been clipped. Which explained why Oberon could not fly the first couple of days. It was not just that he needed to rebuilt his flight muscles. In his two months with me, I returned to him the gift of flight. And helped him build up muscles and fat reserves.

I gained too. From having such a beautiful bird like the Asian fairy bluebird living with me and having his beauty and pleasure of his company for a while. And he did land on me as chronicled in the photos. You all have seen a bird which otherwise you all would never have seen or even know about.

I learned too. That perhaps having a treat might not be all that important for clicker training even if I had not proceeded with that phase with Oberon. Relationship is far more important. After all, Tinkerbell, Riamfada tend to take and threw away my sunflower seeds when I offered it to them. Yingshiong, even when allowed free feeding of millis, would still harassed me for training as if the millis from my hand mattered more than the millis left for him in open box in his room. And none of them flew to my wife who tried to bribe them shamelessly and they flew to me even though it was clear the treat box was with my wife and I had empty hands.

Angle 2

Should wild caught birds even be bought at all?

Should not wild birds be allowed to remain in the wild and not captured by anyone at all?

But to do that, the parrots and birds and beasties must have the original primordial lands that they were in. But sadly most of the decline in the numbers came because of the loss of their habitat as man encroached into their areas.

There is this saying that when the buying stop, the selling will stop too.

At one time, I fully subscribed to this school of thought as I thought then that if no wild birds were bought , they then can continue to live their lives in the way that they should and live happily ever after.

Then an article I read compelled me to a major rethink and to write of that in June 2009 in
Are we helping the wild greys by banning all imports of them?
http://shanlung.livejournal.com/101312.html

The article written by Dave Harcourt is here
http://ecolocalizer.com/2009/01/25/smuggler-caught-with-heads-of-353-african-gray-parrots/

That as there is a total ban on any wild caught african greys, the value of the greys in their original land become the meat on their bodies and cooking pot. The heads have little meat and then sold which was why that smuggler was caught with a bag stuffed with the heads of 353 african greys.

I realised then I could hardly blame the poor Africans trying to make their living farming and with African greys probably eating their crops. In the past, they could catch and sell the parrots.

I thought back to myself when I was living in Oman with Riamfada. In my garden then, I grew sunflower plants. And beautiful IRNs would fly in to eat the heads of the sunflower plants.


Above was one of the IRNs on my sunflower plants.
I even accepted that at first.
Until I discovered Riamfada loved the sunflower seeds in the dried heads of the sunflowers







Video of Riam chewing on the head



And I loved to see Riam digging those seeds out one by one even though I had loads of store bought sunflower seeds.

If the IRNs continued to be allowed to eat the seeds in the developing heads off my plants, there would be none left for Riamfada.

I tied plastic bags around the developing heads of my sunflower plants to prevent the IRNs from eating the heads so the heads could ripened.

I tried to return some of those heads back to the wild IRNs on a basket later hoisted high up out of reach of my kitties.
And even added store bought sunflower seeds into that basket as well.



The IRNs did not go to that basket.
The wild IRNs flew in to the sunflower plants still wanting to eat the developing heads.

And I did not remove the plastic bags around the developing heads.

If any of you were in my position, would you allow those IRNs to get to those developing heads?
To sacrifice the happiness of your own grey and feed your grey only with store bought sunflower seeds and let the IRNs have the developing heads of the sunflowers?

Then you are a far better man than myself. I could not do that even though I loved those IRNs.

And that was not even a matter of life and death for me or Riamfada. After all, Riam did not even need any sunflower seeds. It was more for my , and her esoteric pleasure in digging those seeds out of the heads.

What if I was a poor African farmer and I need my crops to feed myself and my family which are being eaten by African greys? In the past where perhaps I could sell the greys I caught , I might let them live to be caught. And if I can no longer do that since wild caughts are all banned, I probably be compelled to kill the greys to save my crops and eat them.

And sell the heads.

And please do not blame the African farmers. We want coffee and more coffee. So more forest are cut to grow coffee beans. Or we want beef or pork or chicken. And another part of the forest got cut to turn into grass land or to grow soy beans for the cattle or pigs or chicken. We poisoned our Earth with CO2 causing drought or flood and more forest had to be cut for them to grow their crops.

One need not even be a poor African farmer.

One can be a rich Australian farmer. Where 95% of the original forest and grassland of Australia are now taken over from the local flora and fauna and turned into fruit plantations, sugar cane plantations, grassland for sheeps and suburbs and houses and roads and playgrounds.

No trapping of wild birds are allowed in Australia.
But can the remaining fragmented 5% of the original land support all the wild beasties and birdies?
But if the lorikeets and cockatoos from Major Mitchells to Galahs to Blacks to Ganggangs to Sulphur Cresteds are caught eating the fruits of your fruit trees, you can shoot and kill them all.

They need only to bury the bodies quietly in the field somewhere.
I guess they just cannot sell the heads.

Or the lorikeets and other birds can starve to death as can be read in this article.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/09/22/3323483.htm
Rainbow lorikeets are becoming less common on the Gold Coast, as development takes away their habitat and food sources.

I do want wild birds and parrots to live, to truly live in the wild.

I do not believe a total ban on selling of wild birds will help them to live.

Only if their value can be recognised and accepted as a sustained resource to be treasured by the people living with the wild birds that only then the birds can continue to live in the wild.

For that to happen, there must be market for wild caught birds, caught and sold in a sustained way that they can continue to live in the wild.

But an unholy alliance of breeders stopped that. So they can sell their captive breds without the market being upset by wild caughts. And they created a movement to totally ban wild caughts as if they have a true interest in protecting the parrots in the wild. People who meant well, which included me in the past, jumped on and joined them all in declaring wild caughts are immoral and must be totally stopped.

Joining those NO WILD CAUGHTS campaign will make you feel good inside.
Will that do any good for the wild birds to be caught for the pot or just shot and buried in an unmarked hole in the fields of Australia farmland or fruit plantations?

While those breeders laughed all the way to their banks. Do think about that the next time you are asked to support a cause against wild caughts. And asked to give them money so that they can continue lobbying against wild caughts.

Even the bred parrots and birds came from original wild caughts.

Without those wild caughts from which my Tinkerbell was bred from, and who ignited in me a realisation how precious birds can be, the ShanLung that you know would never have existed.

Would I be writing the way I am writing on birdies and beasties if I had not have Tinkerbell in my life?
No, I probably would not.

Would I have become a life member of Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust with no Tinkerbell in my life?
No, I probably would not.


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Most breeder of tiels will not consider hand taming a hatchling or a chick before its opened its eyes as there's no point unless the parent birds need assistance. Mother nature likes to breed heirs and spares so the first born get the best and grow the fastest and the younger chicks survive if food is plentiful. If something happens to a older chick then the next oldest gets his place.

So as a breeder (technically not a breeder more of a seller of overflow) if a hen has to many chicks/eggs I can either get involved and pull the eggs (replace with artificial) then replace the real eggs when she stops laying which gives all of the chicks a close hatch date or I can remove the oldest 2 birds which will allow the parent to spend there effort on the smaller chicks. I think of this as a assisting to save the younger chicks and it doesn't happen very often.
If the parent birds can keep up then the chicks are left with there parents until they are 90% feathered at which point if they are to be hand tamed they will be removed for hand feeding (normally done by a specialty pet store I use). It only takes about 4 days to hand tame a tiel after which you will still have to hand feed it until its weaned.

Most of my tiels are use to being handled and with experience you can tell just by the way the bird acts if its comfortable, upset, or putting on a show. I can pick up a male/female check there eggs and put them back on the eggs with very little fuss. When the chicks are small they are use to being handled to check there crops or to move them while there boxes are being cleaned so even the untamed birds are use to having humans around.
A few that were hand raised like to come sit on your shoulder and see what you are doing so you have to check for stow aways when you leave the aviary. The biggest difference i noticed with these birds are that it seemed to took a lot longer to learn some of the finer points of being a bird especially when it came to breeding than the ones that were not hand raised. Then again it could be that I spend more time watching them as they cross the line between a aviary bird and a pet.



Would I consider buying a wild caught tiel. Probably not especially as there's no need unless fresh dna was required from over breeding.
Can a wild bird be tamed With time and a shortage of other birds around it will try to bond with something as its a social bird.
Do I consider a hand tame bird wrong No as its not being returned to the wild and as its a social bird at least it can be social with its owner
Do I believe in having tiels to breed maybe as its nice to see them being tiels doing tiel things but I wont cage breed
Are there bad breeders yes there are people who do this just for the money but it shows in there birds
Will I sell a chick that needs hand feeding Only to people I know that have the experience and can prove it
Do I think that im doing tiels a disservice No.
Do I make any money I might break even but in all honesty the money spent is re-payed by the time I spend with them

gpop1 said:

There is a second option which is kind of a sledge hammer approach where you can tame a bird by submission but this is not a good idea if its bonded as the partner will panic. With a tiel it would require gloves. After a lot of handling for short periods of time they seem to get the idea that after being handled they are being returned to the cage and nothing bad happened. It doesn't make a good hand tame but it can make a bird that doesn't mind being handled. Given a option the tiel will normally step up on a finger to avoid being handled so they kind of submit to being handled that way. (most of mine are that way as they are use to me picking them up to check them or to check eggs/chicks).

Click to expand...

Does wearing gloves when handling a bird help tame it because the bird will eventually realize that you are not a threat? My cockatiel bites so hard on my hands that I have multiple cuts from bleeding.