Last Updated on February 16, 2023 by Mitch Rezman

How can I tame two adult budgies at once?

 

I would rather not buy two bird cages.

mitchr explains:

It’s been recently discovered that the first parrot breeders in North America existed almost 1000 years ago.

 

Birds on the other hand existed freely around the planet for about 99 million years prior to humans containment of them.

This means that we’ve been interacting with companion birds for one thousand years and still struggle to keep them in our homes.

 

I love Quora for its ability to allow both teaching and learning.

This is a Quora question with the first answer from a veterinarian

 

“There are three things in your question that will doom you to failure.

 

One, they are adults.

 

Two, there are two.

 

And three, you don’t want to separate them into different cages.

 

With those three obstacles, there really isn’t any way to effectively tame them.

 

Even one of the obstacles makes it very difficult”.

 

mitchr replies: Let’s look this answer holistically.

 

Fact: the veterinary community is unable to cure excessive parrot screaming without possibly the use of psychotropic drugs like Haldol.

 

 

Fact: the veterinary community is unable to cure feather destruction, something that rarely occurs in nature.

 

Fact: using a drug like Lupron as the tool of choice to reduce prolific egg-laying, yet not one long-term study has been done on this drug that has severely hurt and/or crippled more than 10,000 women.

 

Thus, answers from the veterinary community (almost apologetically) are similar to “we can solve problems the best we can with the tools that are available to us”.

 

Yet the veterinary community makes absolute statements relative to potential absolute failures as a pet bird keeper (see answer above).

 

When was the last time your veterinarian asked about perches and perch placement or your bird’s general birdcage arrangement?

 

Saying that you are doomed to failure is not only harsh but entirely wrong in my humble opinion.

 

This issue has nothing to do with 2 cages.

 

The age of a bird has no relevance regarding its ability to learn tricks and be trained in general.

 

I can give you anecdotal evidence about our female Senegal that we rescued at the age of 7 1/2.

She spent seven years in the same cage 22 hours a day and never fledged.

 

Experts will tell you if a bird is never fledged it will never fly

 

Here’s my first response

 

To really understand the training of budgies you have to be familiar with a man named Norman Barrett. Norm is a famous animal trainer for the Zippos circus.

His father trained all his farm animals.

 

Here’s the only article I can find on him – let me give you some excerpts.

 

“A trained animal has had its brain developed.

It’s had a more fulfilled life.

If you and I couldn’t read and write, we’d have a very dumb life.

Zoos are now teaching animals to do tricks because they’re better off.”

 

The only time birds are in cages is when they are entering the ring or when being transported.

 

Then they are in special partitioned cages, exceeding the specifications of the Ministry of Agriculture.

 

He avoids clipping wings, saying that 90% don’t need it once tamed.

 

When there are escapes, the birds return to an open cage “when they get curious about their mates. If you chase them, they won’t come.”

 

“Norman’s birds are partners to him. They’re not pets; there has to be some sort of working understanding.”

 

Barrett uses males exclusively.

 

While some trainers consider males more intelligent, he found the tendency of females to fight made them harder to train.

 

Males do tend to “partner off”, so they are not without their own jealousies.

 

Birds run down a table, put their head in a harness, and pull a car.

 

This was the most difficult trick he has taught “because the birds have to be led away from you. You’ve got to tell him to go to the bottom of the table, turn left, put his head into the loop, and pull the car along the track.

 

The first training he and his wife do is to acclimate the bird to the human hand by holding a hand in the cage.

 

When the bird is comfortable, it is carried to a perch with older birds, where Barrett jokes it must think “well, he can’t be all bad, if you’re sitting here. ”table.”

 

 

Enjoy the article and take a look at what Norm is able to do with his Budgies

 

BTW I was at a lecture by Dr. Karen Becker who related how she did an intake on a 25-year-old budgie.

Dr. Becker was suspicious as to the accuracy of the bird’s age.

An 80-year-old woman the bird’s companion had her original Woolworth’s receipt to prove the purchase date.

 

The woman attributed her long life to sharing a cup of decaffeinated green tea with bird every morning

 

To your success!

 

Best

 

MitchR