Hand-taming parrots

The Myth: you have to get a baby bird, 4 weeks old, if you want a tame bird.

From my experience I say this is totally incorrect and cruel for the bird involved. I believe that any baby needs its parents for as long as possible.

Disadvantages:

1. As foster parent of such a little baby you create a lot of additional work for yourself.
2. The baby develops all sorts sicknesses which hamper its growth.
3. It then becomes more prone to sickness.
4. You cannot teach the baby what its real parents do in the nest box.
5. The baby develops abnormally, resulting in eventual sterility.
6. Even worse when its flight feathers get cut before it has learned to fly.

I have hand-tamed a variety of parrots of any age successfully through the years. The birds that where taken out of the nest before 8 weeks of age are definitely more prone to sickness, are more aggressive as grownups, tend to feather plucking and masturbating and struggle to breed, if they do at all, when given a mate.

Yes, it is so cute to see incubator bred baby birds in a pet shop, you just want to cuddle them.
But please, remember above disadvantages before you take home a baby like that. It comes from a breeder who only cares about the money, having no feeling for the birds themselves nor
for you, who will have to live with a problematic child for some years to come.

My advice: rather take a parent raised parrot.
Advantages:

1. You won't have to get up every 4 hours to feed the baby.
2. You won't have to constantly run to a vet with it.
3. You won't have to potty train your feathered kid.
4. You won't have to train it to eat by itself.
5. You won't necessarily end up with an aggressive bird.
6. You will be able to cuddle your fid as much as you want once it trusts you.
7. You can easily train it to do what you want.

Disadvantage: it takes patience to win the parrots trust, but that is nothing compared to the patience you need to hand raise a baby.

If you want to know more about the subject of winning the trust of a parent raised bird, just
bookmark this blog spot or send me an email.

If you need help with the training of your parrot, here is an excellent free training course.