Hand raised and the link with plucking

ItI'm try to copy my previous post in plucking thread. And this is a good place for others to share info on the subject. Of course not all hand raised babies grow up to pluck, but there is evidence that it is extremely extremely rare for parent raised babies to pluck.I'm posting a link to a you tube video I watched about feather picking. It focused on Cockatoos but I still found it informative. Some highlights, parrot raised babies are very unlikely to pluck, vs. hand raised babies. ChristaNL will enjoy that fact as the Netherlands are way ahead of us Americans. Two birds allowed to fledge, and are kept flighted are less likely to pluck. Three birds that get to spend time outside or have outings outside are less likely to pluck. This is an exotic vet, as he is old school before avian specialist, but he had been practicing for 30 years. Also their success is with useing haldol medication, and their success is over 90 %.
Cockatude 14 They are back! Finally, an effective treatment for feather picking behavior. - YouTube
[ame="https://youtu.be/TfOCjf6YgV8"]Cockatude 14 They are back! Finally, an effective treatment for feather picking behavior. - YouTube[/ame]
From ChristaNL thread (but not sure which article adtesses habdraising ChristaNL hope you clear that up when you read this) https://www.researchgate.net/public...iew_with_consideration_of_comparative_aspects

It's not the fact that they are parent-raised versus hand-raised, but rather how they are cared-for and interacted with by their owners.

If you take the average parent-raised parrot, they aren't able to be handled when they are brought home, they have to be hand-tamed over time, and this is a long, tedious, and frustrating process which most-people don't have the patience to do, at least not for the time period it usually takes to get them to the point of behaving like a hand-raised bird...So most parent-raised birds end-up being more "look but don't touch" kind of pets, or at least aren't handled/cuddled/snuggled with on a regular basis, not anything like a hand-raised bird is, therefore the bond/relationship that most parent-raised birds have with their "people" is not nearly as close as that of most hand-raised birds...

In contrast, most hand-raised birds are brought home as young babies or juveniles, and since they already think of people as being their "flockmates" right from the start, people usually start handling/holding/petting/cuddling/snuggling/kissing them right from day 1, and they develop very close, intimate, strong bonds with their birds. Hand-raised birds think of people as being their "flock" from 2-3 weeks old, whereas parent-raised birds don't think of people that way at all, and they never will UNLESS their owners put in the time to hand-tame them...

****So, if we look at how a lot of inexperienced bird-owners go out and buy themselves a hand-raised baby bird, bring it home, and don't understand how much attention and interaction a parrot needs from it's "flockmates" or it's "people" on a daily basis, this is usually the #1 reason given for the tens of thousands of parrots being re-homed every single day, because their owners cannot spend anywhere near the time with them that they require, and a lot of the time one of their very first signals that they aren't caring for their birds the way they need to be cared for is that their birds start Barbering or Plucking...Also, you have to factor-in hormonal behavior into this equation, because we as people unfortunately often trigger hormonal behavior in our parrots, to the point that I've seen Macaws who are so dependent on their owner being with them all the time that when their owner leaves the room, they will start screaming for them to come back, and if their owner doesn't come right back to them, the Macaw will actually reach around and pluck a feather out of their back/wing/chest, and will keep doing so until their owner comes back into the room with them...Parent-raised birds are typically not anywhere near that dependent on having that close of a relationship with people at all...And often times parent-raised birds are used for things like breeding, so they have a mate that is a bird living with them 24/7. So no need for them to start plucking...

We as people often try to turn our parrots into people themselves, and we think of them exactly that way, as being humans...But they aren't humans, they are bird who are naturally "flock" animals, and when we bring them into our lives and they have been raised to believe that people are their "flock", and then their people don't give them the attention that they need (and the need for that attention that was initially created by people to begin with), then they develop Feather-Destructive Behaviors...

I'm following this. Wow. Is there a postulated neurochemical basis for this? I wonder what the Haldol does (not that it's really even understood in human beings). Really food for thought...

Ellen, no doubt birds need a lot of care , socialization, and enriched lives and proper nutrition. All of that as well as certainly health issues factor into plucking. I need to find more articles, but from what I've read in the past, wild caught birds brought into captivity didn't pluck, (or was extremely rare and almost unheard of). When breeding programs first started and parents raised the babies, parrots didn't pluck, when hand raising became the normal there was an explosion in plucking. Not all hand raised parrots are going to pluck, definitely linked with lack of stimulating and caring for your Parrots correctly, and certain health issues. There are a horrify number of parrots being quitly neglected and left in a cage and people don't even realize how cruel they are being, I will never agure that, and then people think no one will want their plucked parrot, or they are embarrassed, so they don't even rehome them. It's on pet amnesty day, when you can bring your pet and dump it with no questions asked about the condition the pet is in, or any charge brought. That you see some of the most horrific mutilation, plucked, starved parrots being relinquished.....I have worked those events, and asked why didn't you let go of this parrot sooner, and the answer most received was they were embarrassed, they didn't think anyone would want it (the parrot, but they said it ) or they didn't think the parrot would like anyone else.... So there is definitely a lot going on with pluckers...

Also for any of you lurking. If you've gotten into having a parrot and are in over your head, just don't have the time because you work and have kids ect... And now you have a plucker, or screamer or bite abd you just can't deal with it, it's ok to re-home your Parrots. I want your plucker, many many people are happy to take a plucker. Don't be embarrassed about it, just get the bird in a better place. Maybe you have the huge cage, you have the toys, but you just flat out don't have the time, and didn't realize that first. It's ok, your bird can learn to love someone else, you can find a careing individual or rescue that will take your parrot. So please go ahead and reach out, don't shove them into a bedroom and forget about them, or tell yourself you are providing food , water, a roof over their heads, abd that is just the way the bird is ....they need so much more. Please give them to someone who does have the time, who can work with their behavior. If you have a friend or a relative who's just leaving their parrot in a cage because they can't deal with it, talk to them, beg them to rehome, reassure them that someone else can love the bird, and the bird can in fact love and bond to someone else, please please don't let them live out their lives in a cage in the corner, or in the garage, or in a spare bedroom, or out on the porch..

Oh wow... I never heard of pet amnesty day.... what a wonderfull idea!

- there are always people who will take in a bird. no matter how it looks.


But yes what Laura described it is more or less what happened to Sunny:

She got to be "too ugly" to be a display/resident parrot in their shop (gardencentre, so any damaged goods are not a good thing) and ended up in the back of the house, listening to the adolescent kids doing their thing on the next floor and the owners being away at their business almost all day long, all days of the week.
Not because they were bad people (they have another macaw that thrives, a lovely dog that is behaving wonderfully , great kids etc.) its just that something happenend that blew the whole well-oiled machinery out of whack...and she got left out for most of it.
They really tried everything under the sun, even got her a stint with a behavior-analyst; but the situation (maybe the other macaw had something to do with it as well - they did get into terrible fights) just was not right for her.

That really does not make anyone a bad person, but they could not cope with this bird being the way she was in that particulair situation...and that got Sunny in a place she should not have been.
They realised that as well - and after much deliberation decided to find her another home and hope she would do better there.

The saddest part of this is that these people actually rescued her while she was still a baby (around 1 year old) from another family who got in way over their head because they did not realise what a macaw was/needed. They raised her right and loved her as much as they could for the next 9 years!

So ANY situation can change!
(in this case: probably hormones?)



Plze. Do not be ashamed to reach out for any kind of help.


(and sod those who judge without listening to the whole story -- I have met too many people who have a huge love for their birds but because of health reasons, financial reasons, annoyed neighbours etc. have to let their beloved birds go to another home ... and have to deal with huge amounts of critisism from the parrotcommunity on top of everything else because they are trying to do the best they possibly can and find their beloved birds a new home.)

LOL Ellen, there IS such a way as the happy medium- it is not one or the other.

Most responsable breeders here have babies reserved from the egg and the new owner chooses what kind of bird they want:
* If they want a future breeder-bird the breeder backs off a lot and lets the young bird gets birdy-socialized and human contact is kept to a certain minimum.
Of course they know humans are okay to have around (no stress, most breederbirds will still flock to the owner -> because of food etc.), but not necesserily flockmates (which comes in handy because the adult bird will not vieuw the human caretaker as a possible mate or potential rival) They know we are not the same species.
* If the bird is going to be a companion-bird, they get handled a lot more during the in-nest phase, but not taken away from the parents or handfed till the babies are ready to leave the nest naturally and start eating on their own. So when they are still quite young (maybe too young still, we are doing research on that) they make the transition to an in-house-bird.
So you have a co-parenting situation, both species teach the youngster important survival-skills for the urban jungle.


So..there is no long-outdrawn process of taming a halfwild bird like you describe: you just get a curious, not stressed out youngster, that knows how to eat (maybe needs a comfortfeeding at night so you still can have that fun), has some ideas about how to preen itself, flap about a bit and more or less knows 'how to parot 101".

It is *not* a horrorstory about " breeder stepping into an aviary, swinging a net about, catching an unsuspecting baby-bird, plunk it into a cage and sell it as "nature bred, now *you* deal with it" " -- that would be cruel to both the bird and the new owner.
If you go about it that way you have essentially a wild caught baby and will have to spend ages building a bond.
Not saying this last scenario will never happen anywhere on the planet (greedy people will always find ways) but that is not what we mean by "selling parrent-raised tame parrots".

That is why the most important step will always be:
find a good breeder!
(and communicate clearly what you -both- want)


...me going awfully off-topic again, but like in any profession it is hard to keep up with the 'latest developments' and unfortunately most research is still hidden behind paywalls (dont get me started on that) instead of freely available to everyone.

While I do agree it's very important for the parent birds to play a large role in raising their chicks, I question the wisdom of letting them exclusively raise chicks with no human interaction until weaning/fledging time (i.e. what I consider a true parent raised bird).

I can only imagine the trauma for a newly weaned baby who's only been raised by/around other birds and only seen humans in a hands off fashion (such as feeding parents or cleaning cage etc...) being plucked out of their home by a human, put in a cage by themselves and sent off to a home where there may be another bird (or maybe not) being on par with the trauma wild caught parrots felt being plucked from their homes amongst other birds and sent off to live the remainder of their lives with humans. My moms old wild caught still appears to remember her traumatic capture experience after over 40 years in the same loving home whenever she sees strange men or someone with gloves on. Kiwi, whom we strongly suspect was parent raised, acts more like my moms wild caught than either of my parents birds who were hand raised. In species prone to plucking, this could manifest itself down the line in self destructive behavior kind of like traumatic events in childhood can cause humans to engage in self destructive behaviors as they become older.

Personally, I think the best option is for future pet birds is for humans and parent birds to raise the chicks together, with humans being a big part of the babies lives, not just passively 'around' so humans are always seen a safe, nurturing presence but they also benefit from the beneficial bacteria and mental insights into being a bird that they can only gain from other birds

Wanted to add- when someone talks about parent raised birds, most people (in the US at least) envision a scenario as described above of a bird who never interacted with humans before weaning/fledging age and is likely traumatized and frightened of humans because that is what constitutes a parent raised bird here (and I suspect in many other parts of the world as well). Birds who's parents were likely not handleable and wary of humans and likely passed that on to their chicks. Birds like ours, who despite a decade of effort still doesn't want to be petted or touched by human hands and likely never will because he has a wild mindset. Birds who make 'bad pets' to most because while they may bond with and learn to enjoy the company of humans, they just never quite 100% trust them. Co-parenting is a much more accurate term to describe a scenario where human and parent birds work together to raise chicks who will adapt well into domestic homes/life as pets. Being described as 'parent raised' just does not evoke a warm and fuzzy feeling in people.

Hand-feeding to Feather-Picking Link?
Does hand-feeding baby birds lead to feather plucking? Vets and experts give their thoughts.

There are many theories on the reasons why birds engage in feather destruction, everything from nutritional deficiencies, infections and hormonal imbalances, to environmental and psychological problems. One theory causing debate in the avicultural community is the suggestion that hand-fed birds are more likely to feather pick. Some veterinarians believe that hand-feeding baby birds can intensify the feather plucking. Typically, aviculturists pull the babies from their nest at 2 weeks of age and start hand-feeding them with a syringe. This is generally done in hopes of making the birds more tame or due to incompetent parent birds.

However, according to Jeffrey Jenkins, DVM, an avian veterinarian in Southern California, ?hese birds miss out on the normal training and developmental interaction with their parents. These parrots imprint on people and don? learn how to be birds. This creates abnormal behavior such as feather plucking.?Prior to 1992, when parrots were still being imported, few birds were feather pluckers, he noted. ?he imported parrots knew how to be birds because they were raised by their parents,?Jenkins said.

The young wild macaws in South America? rain forests hang around the nest for two years before going off on their own. They spend this time observing their parents and learning how to live. Pet birds, when they?e pulled from their nests at a young age, might not get this valuable training.

Some avian enthusiasts believe that one of the most important life lessons hand-fed baby birds miss out on is how to take care of their feathers. ?robably the majority of pet birds today do not know how to properly groom themselves or care for their feathers,?contended Illinois veterinarian, Richard Nye, DVM. ?any times,?he said, ?hen a feather gets out of place the pet bird doesn? know what to do with it ?so it grabs the feather, chews on it, breaks it off or pulls it all the way out. The bird doesn? know how to take the feather in its beak and smooth it out so that all the little veins stick together like they should.?lt;br />
Other avian experts, however, consider the argument that hand-feeding increases a bird? chances of feather destructive behaviors premature and even potentially dangerous because not enough is known about feather plucking. Although it may be ?ery easy to come to that conclusion,?Dr. Susan Clubb, DVM, Dip. ABVP said, ?e need more data.?Clubb has been trying to uncover such data. In collaboration with the Loro Parque Fundaci??nd other veterinarians, she conducted a 4-year study on 3,000 parrots, both hand-fed and parent-reared birds, to trace the origins of feather pluckers. She found that both wild-caught and hand-fed birds could be feather pluckers, but she also found that a higher percentage of parent-reared ?not hand-fed ?birds were feather pluckers.

Clubb added that she believes a lot of veterinarians come to the assumption that hand-feeding babies can cause feather plucking later on ?imply because what they?e seeing in their practice is hand-raised birds.?lt;br />
Howard Voren, president of the Organization of Professional Aviculturists and a breeder for 35 years, echoes this sentiment. He said that, today, there is a larger percentage of hand-raised birds than there are parent-raised birds in the United States, thus leading people to the conclusion that hand-rearing increases the chances a bird will pluck because hand-raised birds are what people have experience with. ?wenty years ago, when the majority of birds were imported, you still had plenty of feather pluckers,?Voren said. ? raise 1,800 babies a year and they don? turn out to be feather pluckers,?Voren said. Voren added that he does have one pair of feather-plucking sun conures and that the majority of their young do turn out to be feather pluckers whether they are hatched from an incubator or parent-reared.

A parrot can become upset when its owner goes to work during the day and the bird is home alone without the proper toys or other entertainment. ? lot of these hand-fed birds have never been taught how to entertain themselves and don? know what to do when they?e by themselves,?Jenkins said. The stress or boredom can motivate the bird to pull out its feathers.

Yet, Clubb said she found in her study that many feather pluckers actually have an inflammatory skin disease. This was particularly prevalent in macaws and Amazons. However, there is still the possibility that some birds, such as cockatoos, may have a psychogenetic problem that leads them to feather plucking.

So what is the solution?

Both Nye and Jenkins see co-parenting as the answer. This means that the baby birds stay in the nest until they are weaned or fledge, and the parent birds do all the feeding and rearing. ?hen the babies are about 2 weeks of age, the bird breeder can start handling the chicks for a short time every day,?Nye said. ?he human just holds the chicks for a few minutes to get the babies used to being handled, and then the babies are put back in the nest. Each day, the birds can be taken out of the nest for a little longer period of time.?The end result, he said, is that ?ou?l get a tame baby bird that knows how to be a bird and probably a lot less problems down the road with feather picking.?lt;br />
Voren on the other hand, said ?he major contributing factor to feather plucking, above and beyond a bird? individual propensity for nervousness, is what they are confronted with in their living environment long after they are weaned.”

So that article, kinds looks at everything.. but I would like to add that there is no way our manufactured bird baby formula is a one size fits every species thing. I have hand raised multiple species of animals, they always grow slower than parant raised animals by at least 25%, and mostly end up smaller as adults. I have noticed parrots of today are much smaller than parrots of yesteryear. Has anyone else noticed this? When I almost got a monk parakeet (Quaker) 19 years ago the ones I looked at were very large, and when you look at wild monk parakeets they are way larger than their captive cousins...

I would like add that often hand raised parrots are often raised solo, separate from their hatchmates. Or even worse sold off to be hand raised my the new owner as the only bird in the house. So instead of the 24/7 constat attention of parents and siblings, they are all alone, on regimated feeding schedule. Come on folks there have been studies of the horrors of this in primates! Plus the natural Flora shared by adults to young when feeding, and there are plenty of info on good Flora and gut health. Many autoimmune are linked it thought to have links with gut health....if there is a link with chronic inflammation and feather plucking as well that's probably linked with gut health and diet... The many species I hand raised also had great difficulty being part of a breeding situation, and these species weren't as smart as Parrots.... In cats at least the circle I was in it was known that hand raised kittens where wacked....they would have behavior problems as adults, not grooming themselves and being greasy, or obsessively over grooming themselves, or over eating as adults, or being very vocal cats...and so on... Sometimes you could lesson all the weirdness hand raised critteres seemed to have by raising them in large groups of the same species.... Anyway I look forward to more discussion and input from all our members!

ChristaNL said:

LOL Ellen, there IS such a way as the happy medium- it is not one or the other.

Most responsable breeders here have babies reserved from the egg and the new owner chooses what kind of bird they want:
* If they want a future breeder-bird the breeder backs off a lot and lets the young bird gets birdy-socialized and human contact is kept to a certain minimum.
Of course they know humans are okay to have around (no stress, most breederbirds will still flock to the owner -> because of food etc.), but not necesserily flockmates (which comes in handy because the adult bird will not vieuw the human caretaker as a possible mate or potential rival) They know we are not the same species.
* If the bird is going to be a companion-bird, they get handled a lot more during the in-nest phase, but not taken away from the parents or handfed till the babies are ready to leave the nest naturally and start eating on their own. So when they are still quite young (maybe too young still, we are doing research on that) they make the transition to an in-house-bird.
So you have a co-parenting situation, both species teach the youngster important survival-skills for the urban jungle.


So..there is no long-outdrawn process of taming a halfwild bird like you describe: you just get a curious, not stressed out youngster, that knows how to eat (maybe needs a comfortfeeding at night so you still can have that fun), has some ideas about how to preen itself, flap about a bit and more or less knows 'how to parot 101".

It is *not* a horrorstory about " breeder stepping into an aviary, swinging a net about, catching an unsuspecting baby-bird, plunk it into a cage and sell it as "nature bred, now *you* deal with it" " -- that would be cruel to both the bird and the new owner.
If you go about it that way you have essentially a wild caught baby and will have to spend ages building a bond.
Not saying this last scenario will never happen anywhere on the planet (greedy people will always find ways) but that is not what we mean by "selling parrent-raised tame parrots".

That is why the most important step will always be:
find a good breeder!
(and communicate clearly what you -both- want)


...me going awfully off-topic again, but like in any profession it is hard to keep up with the 'latest developments' and unfortunately most research is still hidden behind paywalls (dont get me started on that) instead of freely available to everyone.

Click to expand...

Well of course there is a "happy medium", every topic like this has a TON of gray-area, and there isn't any stead-fast rule to any behavior at all...But in-general, if you want to strip this down and get very basic, if there is an overall difference that is noticeable between parent-raised birds and hand-raised birds as far as which end-up with more Feather-Destructive Behaviors (and we are looking at captive/pet birds), then you cannot ignore the human-influence on the issues developing. So if you are straight-forward about it and ask yourself "What are the main differences of how people usually interact with a parent-raised pet bird that they bring home and how they usually interact with a hand-raised pet bird that they bring home", and then look at how those differences influence a pet bird developing Feather-Destructive Behaviors, there ya go...

And the fact that they stated that Feather-Destructive Behaviors aren't as common in wild birds as they are in pet/captive birds, then once again, it's the human influence of the issue. It's pretty straight-forward: If a bird is used to being taken care of, entertained, and loved by a person and that's how they were raised from the age of 2-3 weeks old, and then suddenly they aren't getting as much human attention and interaction, that's a huge deal that creates stress...Whereas a parent-raised bird who isn't nearly as dependent upon human-interaction isn't going to be effected nearly as much by being ignored, being re-homed, etc., because in-general (yes, in-general) parent-raised birds aren't coddled or interacted with nearly as closely as hand-raised birds are...If I just look at bringing home my birds, all of which were hand-raised, I was handling them, holding them, petting them, kissing them, etc. on the ride home from their breeder's house. How many people who buy a non-tame bird do that within the first month or longer of having them? We see it every day here on the forum, new members come and post about how they bought a bird at a pet shop or they adopted a bird from a private-party that isn't tame, and they can't even go near their cages...There is a post on here right now where the OP bought a parent-raised Cockatiel from a pet shop 3 years ago, and the bird has only been out of the cage ONCE in that 3 years...and that Cockatiel isn't plucking as far as I know.

***This really is a "Nature vs. Nurture" discussion****

Jeff Jenkins DVM is legendary in the San Diego area. I've taken one bird to see him, but because of distance use one of his proteges as primary CAV.

I've participated in raising 5 chicks in my home: 3 Goffins and 2 TAGs. Each of the goffins were "rescued" from the nestbox within 3 to 5 days of hatching because of parent abandonment. Both TAGs has wonderful parents and chicks were removed at about 3 months. While this is a small sample, none of the birds became pluckers. The three goffins are extremely well adjusted and superb fliers despite no parental guidance. One over-grooms to a degree, while the others are in perfect feather.

I have used Haldol in a post-surgical setting for an untamed B&G. T-Bird required significant follow-up and absolutely opposed handling. Vet prescribed liquid Haldol to wonderful effect. She enjoyed being held, cuddled, and accepted topical meds to her vent area. I felt it unethical to continue using Haldol for selfish reasons when treatment ended. She mostly regressed but adopted a softer tone towards humans.