Handfeeding vs Co-Parenting?

[Castle of Wings]

Several baby kakarikis hatched about two weeks ago, and I'm ridiculously excited. They're pretty uncommon in my area, so seeing this many big, healthy babies is great.

They're starting to get to the age where I'd like to pull them for handfeeding. I've had experience with cockatiels and doves, but my dad has fed other species. I don't mind doing that, but recently I've heard of co-parenting. I honestly have no clue what co-parenting is. My father isn't familiar with the term either (most of his experience is from many years ago). How do you do it and what are the benefits? Would it work with kakarikis? Does it take more, less or about the same amount of time as handfeeding?

 

[karen256]

Co-parenting is great, if the parents allow it. It can be done in different ways, depending on how tame or accepting of people the parents are. It's just any combination of hand-rearing and parent rearing.
Depending on how it's done, you can have babies that are as tame as handfed babies, or babies that are just a little bit tamer than parent raised. It generally takes the same or less time than handfeeding.

Coparenting offers the advantage of the babies spending a little more time with the parents, which is good for their development, while also teaching them to trust people. In many parrots, it's common for older siblings to help their parents feed and care for babies; sometimes even aunts and uncles will help feed babies. So if your birds accept you as part of the flock, it really isn't unnatural at all for you to be helping them out with the babies.

But if the parents are extremely fearful or aggressive to people, you run the chance of them not tolerating co-parenting. They might accidentally bite a baby while you try to handle or feed it, or they might just react so strongly that the babies start to learn that people are bad from the parents' behavior. If the parents are tame or at least don't get upset about you peeking in the nestbox, then there's a good chance they will let you help with the babies.

At its simplest, the babies are left with their parents until weaned, but you handle them a little bit once or twice a day. Studies have shown that babies that are handled just 20 min a day and removed from the parents after weaning turn out as tame as handfed babies, although with a stronger fear response to unfamiliar things.

Another option is to transition them to handfeeding - you start out handling them a little and offering small supplemental feedings so they trust you, and then you pull them for handfeeding at a much later age than you would normally (but usually before fledging).

Less common (it only works if the parents are tame pets and even then, not all will tolerate it) is where the babies are pulled for handfeeding, but the parents are allowed to visit and help care for them every day. I've heard of this being done with conures, though.

The most important thing to know is that it doesn't really matter who feeds the babies - it's the amount of time you spend with them that is most important.

 

[JLcribber]

If you can, please answer this theoretical question. After "you" are born, is it better that your human parents raise and teach you or is it better that you got taken away from your parents at a few weeks old and then raised by the dogs in the backyard? (There is absolutely no difference between this and what your asking.) You will never be a good human. You won't be a very good dog either.

Hand feeding/human imprinting is done for nothing more than human convenience and to commercialize the birds. It has nothing to do with what is good or needed by the bird. It permanently damages the birds psyche.

Greg Glendell pet parrot behaviour | behavior consultant - published articles | journals |magazines | Veterinary Times | parrot care information advice | problem | expert

Hand-rearing.
While some aviculturists allow some of their breeding pairs to raise their own young, many parrots are hand-reared. Even before the ending of the commercial importation of wild-caught birds into the European Union in 2007, most captive-bred parrots destined for the pet trade were being hand-reared. The hand-rearing process may start with removal of eggs; these being incubated artificially. The reasons for hand-rearing are essentially commercial. Where eggs are removed from a laying female, she is stimulated to re-lay her ‘lost’ clutch, so more eggs can be had from her each year than is natural. As a result of being fed by humans as neonates, hand-reared parrots exhibit submissive behaviours to humans. This trait continues, at least until the birds reach maturity at 2 to 5 years old (depending on the species). The submissive behaviours ensure the birds are tractable and can be handled by potential buyers and ‘cuddle-tame’ parrots sell much quicker in the pet shops than those which are not so tame.

At sexual maturity, many hand-reared parrots tend to show sexual imprinting to humans. The process of hand-rearing has adverse effects on the behaviour of African grey parrots when they mature (Schmid, Doherr and Steiger 2005). Indeed, many behavioural problems do not manifest until the birds become young adults. Typically these problems include over-bonding to one member of the household and aggressive biting of anyone who approaches the bird’s favoured person. The bird’s normal contact calls often escalate into distress calls whenever the favoured person leaves the room, so the bird becomes a ‘screamer’ or noise nuisance. These sexually imprinted birds experience behavioural frustrations with which they fail to cope. These birds are then vulnerable to a range of unwanted behaviours, the most common being stereotypies and self-harming of feathers; these tend to manifest when the birds are no longer immature. So the hand-rearing, or what we might more accurately call parental deprivation, sets in place a behavioural time-bomb with a 2 to 5 year delay in behavioural problems. Indeed, according to Schmid, et al. the maladaptive behaviours of hand-reared birds appears to be largely in proportion to the amount of parental deprivation they have experienced. Where birds are part-parent raised (not removed from the nest until at least 8 weeks old) they suffer fewer behavioural problems as adults than those which have been solely hand-reared from the day of hatching. In addition to adverse behavioural issues caused by hand-rearing, there can be adverse physical effects including osteodystrophy (Harcourt-Brown, 2003, 2004).

 

[Castle of Wings]

Huh, co-parenting sounds pretty interesting. I might give it a try. The thing I don't like about handfeeding is the birds don't get much time to spend around their parents, so this could be a good alternative.

The parents aren't particularly bad about being checked up on, and two of the males like to jump on the plate they get their fresh food on before I put it in. However, the females really are not happy about me checking in their boxes. They scurry over and look inside the moment I open the lid. Would that cause a problem?

I might try handfeeding one nest and co-parenting the other to see what works better, but it depends. I think one baby needs to be pulled for sure because the parents aren't doing a good job feeding it... If he or she doesn't have anything in the crop by tonight, I'm planning to handfeed it.

 

[Laurul Feather Cat]

I co-parented the last two cockatiel chicks my birds hatched. They are much more "bird" friendly, interact with the flock normally and at least tolerate human interaction. They sure know what a treat is and I have used that greediness for food as a way of wooing them into pets. I figure their parents teach them to be birds and then I show them humans can be flock members as well. They then can go into either world and feel comfortable.

It does work to make good pets.

 

[iamwhoiam]

I co-parented one of my red-bellied parrot clutches for a few weeks before I pulled them at 6 weeks of age. The two females from that clutch are friendly although one went "phobic" at about 6 months of age and stayed that way for a few years. I felt that they fledged faster than the ones I pulled at about 3-4 weeks. My vet told me they were precocious especially when one of the females started talking at 10 wks. of age with her sister copying her shortly thereafter. If you want to try co-parenting it really depends on how mom and dad react to you handling the babies. My red-bellied pair had no issues with me taking the babies out of the nest for a bit and then putting them back.