Karma wrote:It is harder to allow the macaw to be fully flighted because of the limited room. We got her from a local pet store (very small store who takes very good care of their pets for sale) and she was clipped.
Now this in my oppinion is two statement in one, I mean for me there is impossible to claim that someone that clips birds takes "very good care" of their pets... I'd say they may care for them or care about them but to me this is equivalent to a petstore selling puppies that gets their hindlegs tied together to prevent them jumping out of the enclosure, now you wouldn't ever claim that a store were taking "wery good care" of puppies if they tied their hind legs together would ya? And by tying the legs together I would consider that less cruel than clipping the wings, since tied legs can be untied immidietly someone buys the puppy and they can start building muscles to use them properly... while the clipped wings may take months before replaced and flighttraining can begin properly... Now I only bring this up because I feel sorry for all the clipped birds and quite honestly for everyone living somewhere where clipping vs flight is such a big discussion (because so many goes by the clipping option). The only way honestly to prevent young birds to be clipped isn't really asking for your chick not to be clipped, since that only prevents that particular bird from getting mutilated, but the solution is to only deal with stores/breeders who always allow free flight of their birds. A store over here keeping all birds clipped would probably loose every single birdowner/interested as a client no matter it be on the actual birds or toys for their excisting etcetera. most of us wouldnt set out foot inside that store.
And the debate about the bird being lost or not and weather clipping prevents it if they get outside etcetera shouldnt be such a big part of the discussion, these things (bird trained or not) is down to human error, laziness, lack of will to make changes in their house etcetera etcetera. Seriously if you live in a house for example the cost isnt that great to make screens for the windown and make it so that you ave to go through two doors to go outside, I mean if your inbetween your two doors and the bird is with you there... open the door back inside rather than the door leading outside...
What should matter and be debated if its even gonna be a choice to clip is the birds mental and physical health, there are harnesses for going outside so you do not need to clip it to go outside in a safe manner... And the bird should not be punnished due to human errors and laziness, but the human should be willing to work on these things to prevent it. if there are no window the bird can simply fly out of... thats not an argument, if you can not secure the window with a screen or bars to be able to have the window open safetly... then don't open a window... simple as that.