strange baby lovebird behavior

[Wolf]

The problem with cheerios, or at least the main one is that they have added iron which is bad news for most birds. When people say that they are good for them they are just thinking that they are oats and oats are good. You could make some old fashioned oats for him.
It is a bit harder to live with a fully flighted bird but it is also a good measure of how well your relationship is doing from the birds perspective for they same reason that you are asking about clipping. If the bird doesn't want to be with you it can just fly away from you. A bird that bonds to you and trusts you is very likely to want to spend most of its out of cage time on you. Also because flight is such an integral part of being a bird it is hardwired into nearly all of the birds major systems and flying is one of the most healthy things for them to do. The ability to fly affects how their brain functions and how well they learn to solve problems, the ability to fly also affects them emotionally as well as physically. It affects every major system in their body directly or indirectly and unless there is an actual medical reason for clipping a bird I do not recommend doing it. Personally, I have not found any problem that can't be solved by other means.

[Archer96]

I agree with what you said about flying being a big part of birds but it is getting harder to control him and I fear he might get in some trouble. I think I should clip his wings and then maybe later on let them grow back when he is bonded to me.

[liz]

I agree with what you said about flying being a big part of birds but it is getting harder to control him and I fear he might get in some trouble. I think I should clip his wings and then maybe later on let them grow back when he is bonded to me.

uh, he is suppose to get in trouble. How else is he going to make you crazy?

[Wolf]

I understand, but if you can hang on for a little while so that your bird can do its exploring and watch the bird will begin to go to only certain places which you can influence greatly by just putting up some perches. Then as the birds trust you more it will prefer to stay on you.
If you decide to clip this birds wings it will take two years for all of the feathers to regrow, also in order to reduce this small of a birds flight capabilities you have to do a pretty severe clip. I don't think that the benefits of clipping are worth the consequences.
Well these are my thoughts about this thing, but ultimately the choice is yours to make.

[Pajarita]

Maybe I am misunderstanding but what is it exactly that you want to control? Where he goes? Or is it that you can't get him back into his cage? Or maybe that you are afraid he will hurt himself? Because these are all things that can be, in one measure or another, taken care of.

For one thing, he needs to be confined to a single room until he is bonded to you and, if you are very careful and birdproof it, he should be pretty safe. As to where he goes, all you have to do is place perches around the room and he will fly to them (they are smart and will always choose an easy place to land than a difficult one). If the problem is that you cannot get him back into his cage and have to go after him in order to do so, this might be the reason why he flies away from you. All you have to do is let him out one hour (at the beginning, you can do it for longer later on) before the sunset and turn off the artificial lights. Once it starts getting a bit dark, you put his dinner in his cage and, if you are not free-feeding high protein food (which you shouldn't, in any case), he will go into his cage to get his dinner on his own.

So, tell us exactly what the problem is, as you see it, and we will try to give you pointers.

And, yes, a lot of people say a lot of wrong things about birds diets and that's why you should not take anybody's word for anything. Just use everybody's opinions as a starting point and then do your own research. When it comes to diet, you should find out what they eat in the wild and what are the nutritional values of the items so you can determine how much of this and how much of that is good for him.

[Archer96]

I'm afraid he will hurt himself, and my current situation in life won't allow me to not clip his wings. I'm sorry if my choice is against some of you.

Thanks for all the advice you guys have given.

[Wolf]

Even though we are not recommending that you clip your bird and for the reasons given, ultimately the choice is yours to make and whether we agree with the choice or not your choice is not against us and we will still be happy to try to help you and your bird. There are other members of this forum who clip their birds wings. We have a lot of members although many are less vocal than others and hopefully someday they will speak up more often. There are no experts on parrots, although there are those who like you to think otherwise, so you should take what we say and add to it with your own research when you need to make a decision about your bird. I give information based on my experiences and on my research, others may have different experiences and may have done more or less or different research than I have done. We are all still learning about our birds, including those members who have 20 or 30 years of experience with birds.
This forum is not about us agreeing with each other it is about sharing our experiences with our birds as well as what we learn always with the object of improving the life of our birds. Sometimes we even have to agree to disagree on certain points. You will find that on this forum just as on others that there are certain areas that large portions of the membership disagree with each other and as there are no long term studies to provide the answers for us there is no concrete answer for. Free flying, wing clipping and diet are all areas with strong proponents both for and against. This is just to let you know that those who reply to you will try to give you what they feel are the best answers that they can, and that everyone knows that ultimately the responsibility to make the choices concerning your bird falls on you. I am looking forward to hearing more about you and your bird as well as having you share your stories about life with your bird and if we are lucky maybe even pictures.