Anyone had any experience co-parenting lovebirds or other parrots?

[mango_&_sunny]

What do I mean when I say co-parenting you ask? When you allow the parent birds to feed their babies but you still handle the baby birds daily to help with socialising and to get them used to human hands. Initially I was thinking I would pull the baby out after 17 days and hand feed but I have no experience nor can I commit to the schedule of feeding every 3-4 hours. I also believe my female and male lovie will do a much better job.

So my question is, does anyone have experience doing this and did it make a difference with the bird being better socialised and not so scared of human hands?

Love to hear your thoughts on this, and in particular, if you have had any 'hands on' experience (pun intended).

Thanks in advance.

 

[HeatherG]

I did this with a clutch of cockatiels with very good results. I handled the babies as soon as they were a few weeks old, but mom and dad were both very tame so it didn’t seem to upset them.

I hear the resulting three chicks were “so tame they were annoying”. I know when they left they were stepping up nicely and friendly little birds.

I’m guessing if mom or dad weren’t very tame this would be upsetting to the parents. Just fyi.

 

[mango_&_sunny]

Thank you for taking the time to reply. Great to know that you have had success doing it this way. I am still preparing myself of the fact it may not work. But both Mum and Dad are fairly tame. Mum, at the moment, is a bit more erratic and flighty but she will still do recall, step up and eat from my hand.

I try and make sure she does not see me take the baby or return it. So far it has been ok. I am aware too that if the baby hears Mum make an alert cry it could potentially train the baby to associate danger with me!

 

[Vampiric_Conure]

I, too, did it with cockatiels. Well, ttwo cockatiels . You need really forgiving parents and you really do have so spend more than 20 -40 minutes playing with and socializing them. My experiments didn't go very well and I had a very eager bird who hated hands.

 

[mango_&_sunny]

I really appreciate you sharing your personal experience. From what age were you spending 20-40 minutes with them? Our baby lovebird is 19 days young today. I have only been taking it out for 5-10 minutes as I don't want it to get too cold nor do I want it to miss out on sleep. Is it the right age to be spending a longer time with out outside its nest?

 

[Vampiric_Conure]

I really appreciate you sharing your personal experience. From what age were you spending 20-40 minutes with them? Our baby lovebird is 19 days young today. I have only been taking it out for 5-10 minutes as I don't want it to get too cold nor do I want it to miss out on sleep. Is it the right age to be spending a longer time with out outside its nest?

I believe I started from 15 days old until they were fledged. They were tame as babies but as soon as they fledged they were super flighty and hated hands . I hope you have better luck!

 

[texsize]

My second clutch of Cockatiels was done like this.
At about the 2 week point the parents started plucking the babies feathers from their head/neck.

I kept babies separated from parents except at feeding time and then was closely supervised.
Also gave some hand feeding but Babies tended to resist syringe.

they turned out very friendly but…. I knew I had to sell them and so I tried to keep an emotional distance.