How late can I start handrearing?

[morry]

Hi

I have been in the market for an eclectus chick for a while now and I have recently been offered a 6 week old chick that is currently being raised by its parents. Is it too old to successfully start handrearing it now?

Thank you for the help

 

[JLcribber]

What kind of experience and hand feeding skills do you have? Doesn't sound like much.

I have recently been offered a 6 week old chick that is currently being raised by its parents.

Lucky bird. Too bad you want to psychologically damage it by taking it away from its natural parents and raise it unnaturally.

 

[Mizzely]

I prefer raising adults You can take a bird away too early, but not too late.

What is your definition of "successfully"?

 

[morry]

I prefer raising adults You can take a bird away too early, but not too late.

What is your definition of "successfully"?

By successful I mean that I am able to successfully feed the chick. I am concerned he will not want to eat as he is unused to being handled or fed by someone other than his parents.

 

[TikiMyn]

It Will be much better to build a Strong bond with an adult or fledgeling then psychologically compensate a baby and think hand raison him or her Will fix everything. I am sorry if that sounds harsh but hand Feeding a baby has a lot of complications for the birds mental Health.

 

[iamwhoiam]

If you have no experience hand feeding then I would not recommend doing this. Adopt an older bird or wait until the chick has fledged and been weaned.

 

[cosmolove]

Generally breeders that sell unweaned are not a breeder you want to deal with. I would buy a weaned baby or I honestly prefer adults that need a home. Based on your post it seems as if you have little hand feeding experience, if any at all. Handfeeding is not something that is super easy for anyone, accidents happen all the time that result in illness, injury, or even death of a baby bird if the hand feeder is not experienced.

Parent raised babies aren't really the end of the world in my opinion. A breeder can have parent raised tame babies if they put the time into it.

 

[karen256]

I think 6 weeks would certainly be possible but it might be stressful to the baby. There are breeders that routinely pull at that age or even older, but they generally do some handling of the babies in the nest starting earlier, so the babies are not frightened of them. Once their eyes are open and they can recognize their parents, it's scary to switch. Older babies may also be fussier with a change in diet as well.

Is the person offering the baby located near you? You might see if you can visit this baby a little, it may be possible to work with it a little while it's in the nestbox to help gain its trust early on, and then bring it home as soon as it's weaned. Generally the only real difference between a handfed baby and a tamed parent raised baby is that handfed babies are more fearless since they get exposed to a lot more people and new things while being handfed. So with a parent raised baby, you really want to focus on a lot of socialization and exposure to new foods, toys, people, ect. in the first few month after weaning. But that's a good idea with handfed babies as well.

 

[Begone]

Parent raised and parent feed parrots are the best. They are 100% a bird and not something in between.
It will only take some days to tame them if you get them as soon as they are eating on their own.

Too bad you want to psychologically damage it by taking it away from its natural parents and raise it unnaturally.

In Sweden it isn't legal to hand feed them, just for that reason. And it is cruel to both parents and babies.

 

[aooratrix]

I know of people who don't pull macaw babies until 6 weeks or longer if they co-parent. I'm not an Eclectus person, but I've heard they're hard to feed when switching hand feeders. Best let the breeder handfeed and then take a youngster home. If you're thinking you need to feed out a baby to bond, that's not accurate. Plenty of older birds form bonds with 2nd, 3rd, and later owners. Sometimes, feeding a baby can lead to a separation from the handfeeder when the bird's instincts prompt it to become independent.

 

[melissasparrots]

You need to talk to someone that specifically breeds a lot of eclectus. I am not that person and probably most of the people who responded are not those people either. Some species respond very well to being pulled late for hand-feeding. Others, if you don't catch them within a certain window, they might learn to take food from you, but only because of hunger and will never be as tame as a baby pulled earlier for hand-feeding. Some of them will even revert to a wild state as soon as they are weaned. I would think that prior to 4 weeks old would be best for most large parrot species. I noticed with my amazons that they bonded just fine if pulled at 4 weeks but it was a lot more stressful for me to teach them to eat at that age, and they had some fear issues that took a solid few days to a week or more to get past. Its hard to get a baby to feed when it is afraid of you without having it miss some meals that it needs to grow. 6 weeks might be a little harder because this is a time where many large parrot babies are trying to lose weight in order to fly. So hunger will not be driving them as much to interact with humans.

Many of the people on this list are anti-breeder and will thus embrace practices that sound nice, but aren't especially successful in practice. I would call other people that breed eclectus and ask them what their opinion was of late pulled babies. I do agree with everyone above that recommended waiting until the baby is fully weaned. That way, you can handle it and know better how it turned out.