Choosing Birds As Pets : Section 1

FIRST STEPS IN TAMING

Remember some essential ingredients for making a friend of your pet are patience, respect, times, (lots of time together), awareness and tender loving care, all mixed together with consistent behaviour on your part which develops trust. Also make sure your pet's cage is positioned at shoulder height where the bird feels secure and has a good view of family life.

Wing clipping and wing taping are often used to prevent the new pet bird from flying away while it is out of its cage and getting used to being handled. It is important to prevent it flying into windows, mirrors and other household hazards. Ideally these procedures should not be necessary. However if your pet is very flighty, (especially if you are trying to start taming it after it is 9 weeks old), then wing taping is preferable to wing clipping in my view.

WING TAPING
Wing taping will allow the bird to fly again when you choose without having to wait for old clipped feathers to be replaced by new blood quills. The latter could take 6-12 months. It may be best to get someone else to perform this procedure to minimise the risk of your pet becoming frightened of you. To tape a wing you can use "sticky tapes" but these will be much harder to remove and will cause more damage to the feathers than self-adhesive bandages such as Handy-grip cut into narrow strips. Wrap this around the base of all primary long flight feathers from the tip of the wing to the bird's wrist while keeping the wing in a folded position.

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