by Pajarita » Sat Apr 20, 2019 9:19 am
PLEASE do your own research on the species. Do not follow your avian vet's (or anybody else's) advice . I really do not know why avian vets give advice on diet, nutrition or behavior because these are subjects they do not study (I have three Avian Medicine and one Avian Surgery text books and the nutrition chapter is two pages long -too many species, too many different dietary ecologies so it's so generic as to be useless- and there is no chapter on behavior) so, unless the vet is an individual who has owned multiple parrots for a number of years and has done research on the species he keeps on its own time (doubtful but possible), he has no more knowledge or expertise than anybody else out there.
If you do research on IRNs you will find out that babies don't even fledge until they are almost two months old and normally stay with their parents until they are about one year old. This doesn't mean that you will have to hand-feed for an entire year but it does mean that, if one follows the rule of thumb, you will have to hand-feed for 5 months or so. See, the thing with hand-feeding is that although a baby bird will look as big as an adult in a few months, they are still emotionally dependent and that translates into hand-feeding because, to a baby bird, the ultimate proof of love from its parents is the fact that they feed them. Parent birds don't kiss or cuddle with their babies, they give them warmth, company and food -which means security and no stress for the baby- for as long as the baby asks for it so, in my personal opinion, if the baby asks for it, give it to him.
You need to be VERY careful when hand-feeding and weaning because doing it wrong means a messed up bird forever. We have studies that say that babies that went hungry (force weaning = hungry baby) will develop eating disorders - and that babies that suffer stress (not getting the 'love' of getting fed causes a feeling of insecurity = stress) remain high-strung for the rest of their lives. A bird that is never satisfied with food will scream incessantly and a high-strung bird is a bird that does not adjust to new anything and that startles easily. Taking into consideration that IRNs are aviary birds and when kept alone are always stressed out, I would be super extra careful. The sad truth is that ALL the undesirable behaviors in parrots (screaming, biting, plucking, etc) are always caused by improper husbandry. And that the current hand-feeding and weaning guidelines are actually harmful to both the birds and their humans. Personally, I follow Nature and if Nature determined in millions of years of evolution that a baby bird needs to be fed whenever and as often as he begs for it for him to grow up well-adjusted, I'll do just that.