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Poultry hatching eggs are pretty commonly shipped by commercial hatcheries and private breeders. And as long as the eggs are collected quickly and shipped fast (and safely packaged), you can get a decent hatch rate. If you want to incubate your own eggs, chickens, ducks, quail, and other birds that have precocious young are ideal. The newly hatched chicks are able to open their eyes, stand up, walk, and feed/water themselves with 24 hours of hatching. They require very little parental care, compared to parrot chicks.
You can even ship day-old poultry chicks in the mail! It is pretty amazing.
Unfortunately, it is not possible (or at least very ill-advised) to do the same thing with parrot eggs or new hatchlings. The eggs are more delicate and need to be incubated much faster - parrots do not delay incubation like chickens, so the shipping window is quite narrow. The eggs require special incubation conditions that vary by species. Most standard incubators are designed for chickens and poultry. They are NOT calibrated to provide the optimal conditions for parrot eggs, so your hatch rate will be quite low. And parrots hatch at a much earlier developmental stage than poultry chicks. They are completely dependent on their parents for weeks and will not be able to feed on their own until they wean which usually at least a month but can be over half a year for some species (or especially persistent individuals).
It is also important to realize that most "hand-raised" baby parrots are NOT raised by hand from the egg. They are NOT hatched from an incubator. They are hatched and raised by their actual parents for several weeks, then removed from the nest for hand-feedings for a period of time prior to weaning. If a parrot chick is raised by hand from a very early age it is usually because something goes horribly wrong - the chick is thrown out of the nest or attacked by one or both parents, the parents are dead, the chick isn't fed enough and fails to thrive, etc. At that point, the chick will die if you do nothing, so hand-feeding is the only option. Not the best option - just better than the alternative. If at all possible, you WANT the parents to do the initial raising for the best outcome. Pulling chicks too early deprives them of the best care - it leads to more dead chicks, not more tame parrots. Nobody wants that.
Some breeders practice "co-parenting" instead of pulling the chicks from the nest completely, if the parents are cooperative. This involves taking the babies out for feedings a few times a day, but returning them to the nest afterwards and allowing the parents to continue to feed and interact with the babies. It is also quite possible to socialize baby parrots to be hand-tame and comfortable with being handled by humans while allowing them to be fully parent-raised. This just requires time and careful handling to ensure the interactions are positive.
The big advantage with hand-feeding is that it associates a very good thing (food) with people, so if you hand-feed correctly, the babies will be comfortable and happy to be picked up and not afraid of people by the time they are weaned.
But that doesn't mean all hand-fed babies are automatically tame or not afraid of hands. Poor technique or rough handling can frighten or injure the fragile babies, leading to fear or aversion from human contact, despite being "hand-raised". You could end up with a baby parrot that isn't scared of people, but is terrified of hands. Not surprisingly, this will sometimes result in a bird with a major biting problem.
At any rate, I don't recommend intentionally hatching parrot eggs without parental involvement. They just don't work like that.
Parrots are not poultry. Parrots need parents.
You can even ship day-old poultry chicks in the mail! It is pretty amazing.
Unfortunately, it is not possible (or at least very ill-advised) to do the same thing with parrot eggs or new hatchlings. The eggs are more delicate and need to be incubated much faster - parrots do not delay incubation like chickens, so the shipping window is quite narrow. The eggs require special incubation conditions that vary by species. Most standard incubators are designed for chickens and poultry. They are NOT calibrated to provide the optimal conditions for parrot eggs, so your hatch rate will be quite low. And parrots hatch at a much earlier developmental stage than poultry chicks. They are completely dependent on their parents for weeks and will not be able to feed on their own until they wean which usually at least a month but can be over half a year for some species (or especially persistent individuals).
It is also important to realize that most "hand-raised" baby parrots are NOT raised by hand from the egg. They are NOT hatched from an incubator. They are hatched and raised by their actual parents for several weeks, then removed from the nest for hand-feedings for a period of time prior to weaning. If a parrot chick is raised by hand from a very early age it is usually because something goes horribly wrong - the chick is thrown out of the nest or attacked by one or both parents, the parents are dead, the chick isn't fed enough and fails to thrive, etc. At that point, the chick will die if you do nothing, so hand-feeding is the only option. Not the best option - just better than the alternative. If at all possible, you WANT the parents to do the initial raising for the best outcome. Pulling chicks too early deprives them of the best care - it leads to more dead chicks, not more tame parrots. Nobody wants that.
Some breeders practice "co-parenting" instead of pulling the chicks from the nest completely, if the parents are cooperative. This involves taking the babies out for feedings a few times a day, but returning them to the nest afterwards and allowing the parents to continue to feed and interact with the babies. It is also quite possible to socialize baby parrots to be hand-tame and comfortable with being handled by humans while allowing them to be fully parent-raised. This just requires time and careful handling to ensure the interactions are positive.
The big advantage with hand-feeding is that it associates a very good thing (food) with people, so if you hand-feed correctly, the babies will be comfortable and happy to be picked up and not afraid of people by the time they are weaned.
But that doesn't mean all hand-fed babies are automatically tame or not afraid of hands. Poor technique or rough handling can frighten or injure the fragile babies, leading to fear or aversion from human contact, despite being "hand-raised". You could end up with a baby parrot that isn't scared of people, but is terrified of hands. Not surprisingly, this will sometimes result in a bird with a major biting problem.
At any rate, I don't recommend intentionally hatching parrot eggs without parental involvement. They just don't work like that.
Parrots are not poultry. Parrots need parents.
