Hand Feeding Baby Birds

Hi everyone. I would like to make a comment concerning breeders that let birds go before they are fully weaned. It takes a lot of experience to hand feed a baby bird. There are so many complications that can arise if you do not know what you are doing or have experience with hand feeding. Good breeders will always take on that responsibility until fully weaning a bird if they care about the development and mental well-being of the babies. From the time the baby bird hatches it is in learning mode. Unless the birds personality is shaped from that time on you will end up with behavioral problems, and hand feeding correctly is a huge piece of that puzzle. Screaming, feather plucking, biting and being territorial are just a few of the problems that can occur. A breeder that cares about the birds they breed will know this. If a breeder tries to convince you to finish hand feeding the bird yourself because it will bond with you easier or you will have a closer bond with that bird, WALK THE OTHER WAY. This is a common fallacy and is simply not true. If the breeder says they will come to you to hand feed, WALK THE OTHER WAY. Hand feeding is a 24-7 job and bad breeders will tell you anything to regain a lot of their time. Most, and I mean around 98% of people, who are not experienced, that take on the responsibility of hand feeding a non-weaned baby bird will end up loosing the bird. So please be careful of the breeder you choose. Interview them before making your final decision. After all, they have the bird for around 12 weeks, you have to live with the bird for a lifetime and do not want to end up with a bird that is unhappy or dead. When you do choose your breeder make sure they will keep you updated on the progress of your bird. They should email you at least a couple times a month and give you a status report on where your bird is at mentally and health wise. I even make sure they send me pictures twice a month so I can keep track. If you can, make a trip to meet and see your bird before you bring it home to access its health, especially if you have given a deposit. Do not feel bad about asking for your deposit back if you feel your bird is not in the best of health. Vet bills are expensive and you do not want to support a breeder that is only in it for the money.

Welcome to the forum! I agree with pretty much everything you said. Some people want to feed their birds though even if I don't think it's a good idea, it doesn't mean it's wrong for them I guess. I personally have never wanted to do it based on what I've read, and about all the mistakes that an inexperienced person can make doing it.

Thank you for your advice. Just wondering have you had a bad experience.

There is a lot of your comments i really don't believe is true or i agree on. With regards to behaviour. I can work with a baby bird for 4 months & have a beautiful behaved parrot, it will only take the new owner the first meeting to stuff up all my work.

In my own experience as a breeder it's the general public that are always asking me to sell a baby from the nest. My usual response is a firm No. They have this crazy idea that they can do a better job of hand rearing the baby than I do. Most breeders don't make it a habit of selling unweaned.

Hand-rearing in itself isn't that hard & is very rewarding. Some first timers do a wonderful job. Some just don't grasp it as well & yes they do make mistakes that compromise the chick. God knows how many time i have saved someones chick from death because they just didn't know.

I will sell a chick from the nest if the person is an experienced hand-rearer. But a first timer no but if they really want to learn I will teach them everything I know.

As a final note if I wasn't given the opportunity to buy a couple of chicks from the nest I probably wouldn't be as experienced today. Although i did buy books on hand-rearing parrots & books on health & diseases. So at least i had some knowledge on what to do i just had to put in into practice.

There are some very young members on this forum that are very good rearing their baby bird. Some are even at school still.

But yes i do see where your coming from.

I do agree with parts of it. I do think it is important on how the breeder train the baby to begin with. They should be taught to step up regardless if they want to or not. Handrearing your own chick doesn't always mean they would be bonded to you either! I've had babies leave me as soon as they find someone else more suitable.

I would never sell an unweaned chick. I think the only people I would let take an unweaned chick would be another breeder and that would only be under some weird circumstance that made me unable to hand rear them myself. I'm just really protective over our babies though, I would feel absolutely horrible if I let someone take an unweaned baby and something preventable happened to it.
I also think it's important to add that, in my opinion anyway, the weaning period can be just as dangerous as handfeeding. You have to make sure the babies have appropriate soft foods and find the right combination hand feeding to regular meals. It's also an important time to carefully monitor their weight(I weigh all of my babies daily from the day I pull them) a little weight loss is normal but you don't want the baby starving to death. All in all, I think if you go to reputable breeder that is properly socializing their babies, there is no added benefit in you hand rearing the bird yourself. Our babies will gladly go to anyone, I don't necessarily feel they are bonded to me more and I do all of their hand feeding.

I think some people mix up "bonded" with "hand tame" , which is mostly what you get from hand feeding .. JMO

Just curious where you got the statistic of 98% lose the bird...certainly haven't seen that here.

What do I see are inexperienced people coming home with unweaned babies and no clue of what to do though :-( Which means some breeders are selling them and not making sure the person is really ready to do this. That's the part that bothers me. If it's something someone really wants to do though, well, everyone has to do each new thing for a first time. Some chose to learn certain skills and some don't. Some people want to learn to pilot planes, others don't.

So, I would just like to see people get more lessons I guess, and whatever research would be beneficial before getting the baby.

roxynoodle said:

Just curious where you got the statistic of 98% lose the bird...certainly haven't seen that here.

What do I see are inexperienced people coming home with unweaned babies and no clue of what to do though :-( Which means some breeders are selling them and not making sure the person is really ready to do this. That's the part that bothers me. If it's something someone really wants to do though, well, everyone has to do each new thing for a first time. Some chose to learn certain skills and some don't. Some people want to learn to pilot planes, others don't.

So, I would just like to see people get more lessons I guess, and whatever research would be beneficial before getting the baby.

Click to expand...

Agreed, I was also kind of wondering about that statistic...

I believe that the best upbringing comes from the parents. I let my pair raise their own babies. Granted I am a small breeder so I can socialize each and every baby so that they become tame. It is harder and more time consuming but it is very rewarding. It is amazing to see the parents raise their babies and teach them everything from feeding themselves to flying. They become well adjusted, independent birds that also seek the attention of their humans.

More breeders are considering co-parenting now and that is great!

I'm only 15 and have been raising my babies since they were 10,13, and 21 days old. They are all doing great. I personally don't think hand feeding is hard but some people don't have the patience for it. I would never sell an unweaned baby because I don't think they bond better if you hand feed them yourself. The baby I have been raising since he was 13 days old likes my dad better.
I'm also wondering where you pulled the number 98% out of.

I agree, I don't really think hand feeding is hard if you know what you are doing. As long as you have the right temp and consistency and have been taught a safe technique to keep them from aspirating the formula, it's really not that hard. My biggest concern is that the person would not feed them enough or something. It's pretty demanding to be home and available to hand feed every four hours. I've turned down a lot of social situations since I started breeding but it's really hard to have a social life when you have babies to care for. All it takes is for the person to become lazy and suddenly you have a starving baby. That and most people that only have one baby are going to be using a home made brooder, which is fine, but you have to consistently monitor the temps and humidity when you are running a brooder without a thermostat.

I do agree with most the other people with hand feeding not being hard but the problem is that most people and even many breeders don't know the first signs of a sick bird or when something is wrong and what to do to fix it ASAP. It is not just knowing how to feed a baby it is knowing what to do when all the other things happen. I had a friend who wanted to breed birds she knows how to hand feed but ended up looseing both her babies because they had very bad crop infections and didn't know what to do and couldn't tell what the problem was soon enough. She was so upset and it was just that she didn't know, so knowing how to hand feed is not Y I will not sell unweaned babies it is all the other stuff that can happen that people have NO clue about!

If I sell babies that r unweaned it is only to other breeders and I have not done it many times. I also make them come feed the babies here and I ask tons of questions. I had to sell a ton of babies unweaned to other breeders when I had to go for surgery(I was in Surgery within a week of the Doc. apt) It was not planned but I was very picky with who I sold them too.

Just as Amy has posted I think the most important thing to think about when considering an unweaned baby is !!!!How Healthy!!!! is the breeders birds. It does & has happened where the buyer buys a sick baby & with in 24 hours that baby has died.

I knew a breeder that bought 18 baby cockatiels from another breeder out of the nest. This lady was just starting out hand-rearing. A very dear friend of mine got this same lady to look after her babies while she went on holiday's. One by one the babies she bought started to die, she lost every single cockatiel. Then my friends babies started to get sick & die. We managed to save some of my friends babies, I think she lost 5 chicks. They were all infected with megabac.

I still would like to see a breeding section here for the people who need help, rather than have posts strewn all over the forum. I'm now also thinking a sticky of good information to read about potential problems and what to do about them would be a good idea as well, even if it is links from other websites. I have had new members accidentally PM me just probably because I'm so gabby here, but I'm not the right person to help with that new baby they just bought. I do refer them to those of you who can help. Last time I had a baby bird I was also working 10 hours a day. And certainly didn't have the time not only for feeding, but for learning everything I needed to know. I fed her at the breeders, but I didn't mix or heat the formula, she was getting older then, and the breeder guided me through it. It was an interesting experience for me, but I knew I didn't have even the smallest amount of education about it to do it myself. Had there been a problem, I might not have realized in time that there was one, nor would I have known what to do.

I agree , it is scary that a person is going to take on the task without someone physically there to help guide them and without prior experience.
But like was mentioned earlier , sometimes these situations can arise and you just need to jump in and help. So a thread specifically on handfeeding should be available.to those who need it. JMO.