Handfed or parentraised parakeets

[Kim S]

This is a hot topic in Holland and I was wondering how 'you Americans' look at this. I will address what the norm and the issue is here in Holland and let you respond to that.

Small parakeets like budgies, cockatiels and the like are usually raised by their parents. The breeder will take the birds out every now and then to check whether they are healthy and put the legbands on, but thats it. When they leave the nest they will stay for up to two weeks with their parents and then move to a new home. These are the regular parentraised young you buy in petshops or from big breeders. Shy and easily spooked, having had very little human interaction.

Hobby breeders, like me, take the babies out every day to cuddle and get used to people. When they leave the nest they will also stay up to two weeks with the parents but are taken indoors for a couple of hours a day to get used to the houshold. After that they will move to a cage in our livingroom to make sure they can fend for themselves and for a bit more basic training, like step up.
On occasion the need is there to handfeed babies. This is almost never done with budgies, but on a regular basis with tiels. This is not the norm however.

People who have never had birds, or dont know much about them, keep looking for handraised birds. The idea is that handraised birds are much more affectionate and tame than parentraised birds. From my own experience I can tell you that the way we raise them they are just as tame. The only difference is that the parentraised birds have a much more solid upbringing by their parents. They know how to be a bird and interact with other birds. This can prevent a lot of problembehavior in pet birds.
I Also feel that the handraised birds bond so strongly to their owner that they 'forget' everything else. If you wish to introduce another bird, the handraised one will not immediately recognise it as one of its own. Whereas a parentraised one will know how to deal wit the newcomer.

I would like to know what the 'norm' is over there and how you deal with these issues. Is it a hot issue as well or is there a common idea everybody looks to?

[Azure Hanyo]

Well I have personally never seen any hand-raised budgies available around my area. Cockatiels and most other birds are very commonly hand-raised. It really just depends on where you get your bird. But most birds larger than lovebirds are hand-raised pretty much exclusively, at least in my area. Though I must say my favorite bird so far was my sweet little hand-raised cockatiel Stanley...though that may have just been because he was my first bird.

[Red Moppet]

My Sputnik (budgie) was raised like how your hobby-breeders raise birds - the parents take care of the babies but the babies are handled often. He was super friendly when I met him and already knew how to step-up.

But there aren't many places around that will do this with budgies (I'm assuming because they are considered to be fairly easy to tame?). I was hard-pressed to find a baby budgie that was raised this way. I knew I didn't want a budgie from a pet store because they are all so skittish. Cockatiels, on the other hand, seem to be hand-raised or at least handled more than budgies seem to be.

I think poor budgies get a bum rap oftentimes.

This is my perspective from Alberta, Canada. Not sure what the States or other provinces are like. : )

[Kim S]

Thanks for replying.
All larger parakeets and parrots bred for the pet-trade are handraised here too. Most breeders take 1 or 2 out of a clutch to bring up by hand and leave one chick to be raised by the parents.

Budgies in Holland are looked upon as a hobby. Like collecting stamps, growing carsized pumpkins, breeding budgies. Theyre not pets, but something to do. Most arent even bred to be pets or showbirds. Just, I dont know, bred to breed, I guess. These birds go to the pet trade for a buck a piece. If you want a bird, ask around. On every streetcorner someone will breed budgies. Buy one, get tired of it, bring it back. That kind of thing.

Anything larger, cockatiels, lovebirds and up are usually more thought about before buying. So more people will actually spend tie breeding them the way one should.

[Michael]

Duke was supposedly a "hand raised budgie" but he was not tame one bit when I bought him. However, nothing a few weeks of taming wouldn't solve. Budgies are kind of dumb and very food motivated. They are probably one of the easiest parrots to train and tame. So for them I don't think it makes much difference if they are handfed or how they are fed at all. It's more about the interaction they receive. A good breeder can give the buyer a head start by taming the bird before it is bought.

For the large parrots, everyone wants a hand raised one. I don't think the actual feeding has much to do with it. I think it has much more to do with daily interaction and care. There are breeders who will do nothing more than shove the food in the babies' beaks and then leave them alone. I am certain that a parent raised parrot that received daily handling and interaction from humans is better.

Truman was a compromise of both. I think he was one month parent raised and then 2 months breeder hand fed and tamed.

[bmsweb]

I'm not sure how much of an issue this is, unless you are hand raising a single bird on its own without the possibility of interaction with other birds. Our birds had 3 weeks with their parents and now they are with us. They are still learning off each other and I can see them exhibiting exactly the same behaviors as their parents, right down to the biggest bird feeding the smallest one when she begs for food.

[pyrrhuraphile]

I like the idea of letting the parents raise the birds, along with daily human socialization. It's not usually done that way with birds larger than budgies though, is it? Is that because of the difficultly of removing the babies from the parents several times a day without being bitten?

Since it's easy to do with budgies, it seems like a very good idea to me. In another post I spoke of hand raised budgies vs. totally parent raised budgies, and now I am aware that there's a happy medium. Still, finding a hand tamed baby budgie in western Canada is very difficult in my experience. Mostly I see overcrowded cages of birdie-mill budgies at pet stores, behind glass, afraid of human contact.

[Rue]

I'm maybe using the wrong term. When I say 'hand-raised' I mean more being socialized with humans and handled daily vs. being removed from the parents and hand-fed. I don't thing leaving them with the parents, as long as they get that socialization, is a bad thing. In fact I think taking babies away from parents too early causes many issues as well. I think that a lot of African Grey issues might be related to being hand-raised from too early an age (plus a genetic issue from poor breeding practices)...but you'd need to do a controlled study to find out for certain.

My daughter's two budgies are from the pet-store...I call them 'bulk-bin' budgies. Cheap, probably no concern for good genetics, not handled, etc. Essentially these are 'disposable' birds. One of them is perfectly fine (friendly, steps up, easy to deal with)...and the 2nd is totally psychotic (freaks out when we get in her space - so we just leave her alone and she's otherwise fine). They were both very young when we got them and we treated them the same.

If the psychotic one happened to be someone's first bird experience...it sure wouldn't be a good one - and they'd probably make the association that all budgies were psychotic.

So when I suggest a hand-raised bird, I mean one that the breeder has taken the time to handle and comes bonded to people already to some extent.

[Titanius]

Im with Michael on this one I remember having parakeets when I was younger from a petstore and they took to me after awhile. It was a rough ride but eventually they got used to me. My tiels which are more commonly hand raised I find take things more to heart easily and they remember things like when I'm supposed to feed them when I usually wake up...

I think a lot of people looking for parakeets aren't looking for any handfed specially raised birds just something to shut their kids up..or a "starter pet." I faced the conundrum of hand-fed bird meets aviary bird. You could see the difference Jasper was just way more used to moving around like a independent bird. Diamond is just always slinking around me for scratches on the head. Yet their inseparable...I don't get it haha.