by Pajarita » Tue Oct 20, 2020 11:03 am
Nothing is impossible - I mean, you can train a snail but it's the cost to the animal's emotional and physical health that makes the difference. Parent-raised companion species should never be kept alone. It's just too cruel to the bird and the amount of stress the poor bird lives with its entire life ends up shortening its lifespan. Why? Because as much as we think we are smarter than Nature, we are not and we cannot change genetic traits just by training or suppressing behaviors. Parrots evolved to live in flocks. Period. It's not a choice, it's not a luxury, it's a necessity for them. Companion hand-fed parrots, because they imprint to humans and develop a deep bond with their human, can be kept as single pets as long as the human has excellent husbandry and is a stay-at-home person with virtually no social life - but even them do much, much better when kept in pairs. But companion parrots that were parent-raised will never find safety and love in a human and keeping them implies that the owner does not know or care about it. We are talking about giving the pet a miserable life... I am sorry that I sound so very judgmental but this is not really my personal opinion, it's a scientific fact: undomesticated, monogamous, highly social animals need others of their own species.
And I doubt that the person who bought the pionus that was parent-raised but kept as an only pet is going to be able to tell you what you need to know because the bird is still a baby (babies have no choice but to submit but babies grow and become assertive) and the fact that he/she is keeping a single, parent-raised parrot as a pet is already telling you he/she does not know or care enough about it. I mean, what kind of person keeps an animal just to give it a miserable life? Either somebody who doesn't know or somebody who doesn't care - right? There are no other options...
But you are wrong that adult birds that are rehomed have negative personality traits. Some of them do, no doubt about it - but the greatest majority don't. In my personal experience, the greatest majority of the cases when birds are given up because of 'negative traits', it's not that they actually have any, it's that people consider 'unacceptable behavior' what, in reality, is nothing more than normal, natural behaviors. Behaviors that the people who bought them were not counting on, that they thought they could train out of the bird, or that they themselves created by inadequate husbandry. But all these animals 'revert' to 'good' behavior once they are given the proper care. Biters stop biting, screamers stop screaming, picky eaters become good eaters and, although chronic pluckers do not all stop plucking completely, the ones that don't always show a vast improvement. It does not happen overnight - but it happens. EVERY SINGLE TIME. See, the thing is that everybody thinks they are going to be able to keep a parrot well when, in reality, they have no idea of what is going to entail (nobody does - I certainly did not and if I knew then what I know now, I would NEVER have gotten into parrots) and, once the baby bird grows up and becomes sexually mature and starts showing it's unhappiness at their living situation, people give them up.
Why? Because although everybody calls himself an animal lover, very few people actually are.
The truth is that most people who call themselves animal lovers are actually animal 'enjoyers'. They don't really love animals, they might love their own animal but not every single animal out there and, mostly, they just enjoy what their own animal does for them. This does not mean they are bad owners, that they mistreat, neglect or abuse the animal or that they don't give it good care, it simply means that they put things on a scale and that their pleasure/comfort/convenience comes before the animal's needs. If the animal becomes too much trouble (as in too much work, too much money, too much noise, too much mess, etc), out it goes.
I mostly take in animals that, as you put it, have 'negative personalities' because I love animals and to me, keeping them is not something I do because I want a specific pet (a parrot of a certain species or a dog of a specific breed, color, etc) but because I feel for them and know I can give them a good home. This is not selfless, mind you! People talk about rescuers as if they were completely selfless angels but we are not. Some people do it because they like to be called angels and be regarded as 'special' but I and most other rescuers do it because we get a deep satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, a purpose in life and, yes! pleasure. Knowing that we helped an animal that needed it is deeply satisfying to us. And so I take in the parrots that hate humans and attack them every chance they get, parrots that scream all the time, parrots that have plucked themselves to the skin all over their bodies, etc - I also take in the old, the sick, the handicapped, etc. And they all work out GREAT! I have a male amazon that hated humanity because his second owner punched him with a closed fist every time he bit (and I know this because he admitted it to me) - needless to say, the bird would take what the military calls 'a pre-emptive strike' and would fly out to bite the heck out of anybody that was in the same room as him because, as far as he was concerned, humans were the enemy that would hurt him so he was defending himself from them by attacking them first. When he came here, he bonded to an older wild-caught female amazon that had been a pet of sorts but who had 'reverted' to wild ways when neglected for years and, although she did not fly out to attack, she could not really be handled (she would not step up to a stick or anything). It took a couple of years for Zeus to calm down enough so I could walk into the birdroom to clean, feed and water without a problem and they even learned to go into their cage on command because my husband refused to repair the birdroom when they were out. And they have been what my husband calls 'the revelation of the year' because we had to bring them out of the birdroom and into our dining room so the workers could remodel the room and, because these birds had an aggression 'history', had not lived in a cage for years and years and had never been exposed to the dogs and cats, I did it with great trepidation and not knowing how the whole experiment was going to work out - but they are behaving like a little gentleman and a little lady! Not a single attempt to bite, no screams, no nothing! They come out of their cage at dawn, chill on it, going in and out of it all day long until it's time for them to go back inside - which they do on their own and before I even have to tell them (parrots are very good at telling time and learn to anticipate actions from the sun position in the sky). Precie Zon (the older female) talks up a storm all day long and my husband, who used to be terrified of them, stops by their cage several times a day to talk to them and praise them for the good birds they are (I don't say 'Good Girl' or 'Good Boy', I say 'Good bird').
Now, these two birds, especially Zeus, are on the extreme end of the spectrum in behavior and, of course, I don't expect anybody without a lot of experience to adopt a bird like that but I have another amazon, Naida, a BF female, who was given up because of aggression toward the new wife and stepson of the original owner and this bird has never been anything but the sweetest, sweetest bird from day one! She never screams, does not pluck, eats well, bathes on her own, steps up or down without a single hesitation and, when on your shoulder, very, very gently preens your hair while making content little noises in the back of her throat - a sweetheart! Same with Zoey Senegal. I flew to California to pick her up when her owner, having been given an ultimatum by his wife (the bird or her!), put her up for adoption (I had known this bird since she was a baby, seen myriad videos and pictures of her, etc for years through a bird site) and, again, never a single problem with her. I can do whatever I want with this bird... put her upside down, touch her entire body, lift and open her wings, etc and she has never, ever, ever tried to bite me a single time (she is perching on my right shoulder right now). See? Neither Naida nor Zoey actually had 'negative personalities' even though their owners did think so. And even Zeus, who had been so severely abused and Mami (the older female he bonded with), who had been neglected for years had them either, they were just reacting to what had been done to them and mistakenly reached the conclusion that all humans were bad but, once they were shown that this is not the case, they went back to normal behaviors.