This is a really general question, requiring a really general answer. I've always preferred parents to keep and raise a / the baby until the latest point possible, I believe it's better for them mentally and sometimes physically. I plan on hand taming them myself from whatever point they are at. (learning step up, etc)
Have any of you kept a baby with the parents for the longest point possible, and then hand tamed later on? Or even tried handling the babies while the parents were out of the nest / etc?
Sorry if I sound ignorant, this is far future planning and I just want to know all I can.
side note: the birds in question are parrotlets, and while I don't actually have a breeding pair, I may end up with one pair for "hobby" breeding, because I adore the species.
You say you prefer the parents raise, but then you say you plan on hand taming them. So, have you personally bred birds already and from experience have decided that they are better off being parent reared? Or have you read up on it and decided you like the idea of having them be parent reared even though you haven't done it yourself?
With cockatiels, I've left chicks with the parents right up through weaning and a little bit beyond. I started handling them for short periods as soon as they were old enough to maintain body heat for a few minutes. I've also hand reared cockatiels from about 2 weeks old. I have not left a baby entirely to the parents with no handling and then tried to tame them later.
IMO, you need to do the right thing for the bird's future rest of its life. In my area, there is very little market for parent reared birds. So, if you breed them, you sell for the pet trade for the most part. Pet owners don't want to tame a chick. They want instant cuddles and love. And many pet owners don't have the skills to successfully tame a chick. Some species are very difficult to tame after being parent reared. Personally, I worry that if we start selling a lot of untame parent reared birds, we will see even more going into rescues and even more birds with bad behavior habits because someone screwed up training. I'm not sure even a lot of breeders have the skills to tame a wild parent reared chick and do it consistently. Sometimes its not so much a matter of skill. Some species, after a certain age just don't want to be pets anymore. Other species(cockatiels, cockatoos, most large species) are much more forgiving and able to form a bond of some sort even if wild caught.
So I have to ask myself, even though I want parents to rear the chick, is it in the best interest of the bird to be brought into a world where it is not desired because it is untame and parent raised. Some people, if you say its tame but was parent raised, they are done. No more interest. Someone told them they should get a hand-fed chick, they want no part of a parent raised bird. No matter what you have to say about your ideals. If you let the bird be entirely parent raised and it turns out it doesn't want to be a pet, what then? Had you hand-fed it, chances are good the bird would have made a good pet and you could find a good home for it. But now untame and only interested in its own kind, you are likely to be stuck selling to a breeder or even giving the chick away. That breeder may or may not be the forever home you were hoping for. There is a lot of bird trading going on in breeding circles. Not necessarily bad, but if you are one of those pet owners that has dreams of forever homes, selling to a breeder often isn't forever. Of course, selling to a pet owner often isn't forever either. The bird can have a series of good homes or potentially one good forever home and be happy and well cared for in both cases. But the odds of getting a forever home go up if the bird is sweet to the owner.
Then if you have ideals of leaving the chick with the parents, you have to worry about parental behavior with your interference. In many cases, the parents will become much more nervous if you are interfering. They won't sit as tight on the eggs, you'll have more dead in shell chicks that fail to hatch. You'll have more chicks that accidentally get shoved to the side when mom was all nervous from your last interference and then they get chilled or not fed quite as well because mom jumps off the nest every time you walk in the room rather than staying with her babies. Your pairs need to trust you. Trusting you doesn't usually translate into trusting you to play with their babies while the parents stand there and look at you with loving adoration in their eyes. It usually means they trust you to feed and leave them alone. They trust that you won't be opening the nest box every time you walk in the room or try to handle babies every time you walk in and see mom out of the box. That just makes mom want to go jumping back in the box when she sees you walk in which means possibly jumping on babies. Or, it makes her hesitant to go back to her box when you walk in or sound like you might be walking past the room because if she's in her box, she can't keep in eye on you, plus you are a giant scary thing with big eyes opening a tiny little box with only one exit. Doesn't sound like a good place to bet trapped. No trust there if you are constantly in their business. Parents that trust you to feed them, clean and leave them alone often are good parents that produce really fat, happy babies. Parents that don't trust you not to be opening the nest box every time you walk in, are likely to be jumpy, possibly abusive, neglectful or just nervous parents.
With parrotlets specifically, I would either pull them at about 2 weeks, hand-feed and be happy with it. Or leave them with the parents, let the parents do their job and be happy with untame babies that will be sold as future breeders. If you can tame them great, but odds are decent you will not be able to or it will be hit and miss. Cockatiels are very well known for allowing interference and still feeding their chicks. Parrotlets are not. My recent experience with parrotlets is that a good mama won't get off her babies for you to hold them. If you try to move her so you can handle the babies, she will either bite you and hang on, or she will bite a baby, or she will jump up and down around her box, scattering everything everywhere and eventually run out of her box in fear, when her display of aggression doesn't work. Not really good for that trust I was talking about. You can potentially wait until the chicks are closer to a month old and the parents will naturally be spending more time outside of the box anyway. However, you may have a higher incidence of chicks that just don't want to be pets. Then you get back to trying to sell them as parent raised in a world were hand-fed is in demand. You can lie and say your tame parent raised chick is actually hand-fed in order to make a sale. But sacrificing ethics tends to become habit forming and generally isn't the way to go. Back in the day that we had wild caught imported parrotlets breeding, people preferred hand-reared birds for future breeders as they were calmer and better parents. Basically, with parrotlets, a hand-fed bird will have more options available to it. As long as it wasn't an only chick being hand-raised, it should still be able to be a good breeder. And it can also be a good pet and be in demand for both markets. You limit yourself and the future of the bird by parent rearing. Now if you wanted to just parent rear a clutch every once in a while for the sake of comparison and the experience for both you and the parents, then its a great thing to do IMO. You gain a lot by just sitting back and being a casual observer. And, its good to know that your pair will parent rear in case you ever have a family emergency and have to leave town on a day that you planned to pull babies for hand-feeding.
Also, I haven't actually read all the responses, but I thought I saw someone discuss a study on greys or amazons in which the birds were co-parented. Keep in mind, you want parrotlets. Its just different. Trying to handle tiny little parrotlets for socialization when you have large clutch hatching and your giant hands reaching into the box is a recipe for disaster. You'll have chicks old enough to start needing socialization happening at the same time as there are still eggs from that same clutch hatching. You can reach in there, roll the eggs around all over the place to handle the chick, meanwhile mom is throwing a hissy fit. You might end up killing some babies that haven't hatched yet from all the rolling around, you might destroy mom's trust in you and thus the hatch rate and success of future clutches. But, you might still be able to produce a few chicks that are tame parent reared birds. Trade offs. To me, if you run the risk of killing babies either in the current clutch or future clutches because of habits established now, then you probably should just keep your fingers out of the nest box.
