by Pajarita » Tue Nov 15, 2016 12:13 pm
No, no, nobody has to wait until they are sexually mature, they can be removed when they are still chicks, just not as early as 7 weeks. All animals have a window of time when they are babies for imprinting so, although one needs a parrot baby to imprint to people, the filial imprint is what is necessary (the one that makes a baby imprint to its momma). The sexual imprint is the one that 'tells' the animal what a sex mate should look like. When altricial birds are reared by humans from too early, they think that the only good sexual partner is a human and this creates all kinds of behavioral problems when they are sexually mature. Just two examples that illustrate this: birds of prey that are raised by humans from when they are too young would not have sex with another bird so, in order to breed them, the owners would allow the male bird to 'copulate' with their heads while wearing a special hat that 'catches' the sperm which they later use to inseminate -via a pipette- the female, which they also allow to 'go through the motions' with their hand resting on their back (to simulate the weight of the male bird). And, more to the point, the second example is 'incubator parrots' and all the huge behavioral problems they developed later on to the point that the practice of buying fertilized eggs, which was very popular in the late 80's and early 90's, was discontinued completely.