The step by step guide from start to finish.
Hand feeding a baby lovebird it is not difficult if you know the exact method and procedure. This guide will help you step-by-step hand feed your baby lovebird and get through the weaning process. All the techniques and procedure demonstrated in this book are 100% based on the experience of the author practicing the hand feeding process in all his Lovebirds. Why hand feeding a baby lovebird? There is a lot of myths and believes in hand feeding a baby lovebird. Some people believe that by hand feeding the baby lovebird the lovebird will become more attached to its owner. In most cases this is true the lovebird becomes less afraid and more calm around it’s over. The way this works is because by hand feeding the lovebirds since he is little he looks at you as if you were its parents. These is what most people like about it, they want to be able to have a tame lovebird without having to go through the process of taming a wild bird. When the birds are feed by their parents naturally, normally they don’t allow humans to get around it because they get really scare.
That’s why when you grab a lovebird that is not hand fed naturally is going to bite you because he’s trying to defend itself from you because he feels scare. The advantage of hand feeding your baby bird is that when he grows he won’t not harm you or try to defend itself against you because it has a imprinted image of the human presence on them.
DIFERENCE BETWING HANDFEED LOVEBIRDS & TRAIN LOVEBIRDS
A lot of people tend to confuse hand feeding and training. When you hand feed your baby lovebird what you are doing is that you are taking the parental role in the lovebird life. What these do is that the bird will not be scare of you and he will not bite you. And training a bird it is something different when you see in the YouTube videos and you see in the Internet how birds getting on people’s fingers that is a train bird a hand feed lovebird likely will not go on your finger naturally unless you train it to do that. With these said if you want your bird to learn tricks and to do different maneuvers it has to be trained.
Which is a lot easier to train a hand feed lovebird and not a wild lovebird. A wild lovebird also can be trained but is a lot harder to train them if is not while is a lot easier to go through the process if it was hand fed. It is still a good idea to hand feed your baby
lovebird so once he gets bigger it becomes a lot easier to train your bird. Now keep in mind that even if you hand feed your lovebird sometimes the baby lovebird will still be scare when you going to grab it. That is because not every bird becomes automatically attached to the person that feeds it. Sometimes the lovebird would try to run away from you when you try to reach for him that’s why is important to train the bird after is hand feed. In these guide we will teach you the basics on how to start hand feeding your lovebird and how to complete the weaning process of your baby lovebird.
WHY HANDFEED A BABY LOVEBIRD
Beside all the benefits that hand feeding a baby lovebird can bring you to bond with the baby lovebird and to train him in the future a lot of times you will have to start hand feeding your baby lovebird because you have no other option. For example sometimes the parents love
birds do not feed their babies as they should. Some other times the parents tend to attack the baby lovebird and eat all their feathers. This is very common in lovebird’s behavior. To protect the baby lovebird you have to pull it out from its parents and start hand feeding it yourself. That’s why so important to know how to hand feed it, went to hand feed it, and when to start the weaning process, knowing all the steps can save your little baby lovebird life.
WHEN TO START HANDFEEDING A BABY LOVEBIRD
It is important that you leave your baby lovebird with it parents for at least 15 to 20 days. These will leave enough time for the birds to become healthy and ready to start handling it. Even if by any chance you run into a bad situation like the one shown above that you had to pull it out of the nest because it was being mistreated by its parents, then don’t worry you can still work with it and save its life. But normally the ideal will be to start hand feeding it after 15 to 20 days from being with its parents.
HOW TO HANDFEED A BABY LOVEBIRD & WHAT CONTAINERS AND MATERIALS TO USE
When it comes to start the hand feeding process there is a lot of things that you need to keep in mind while this is happening. You have to keep in mind the right temperature; you need to have inconsideration all the time the hygiene of your baby lovebird. It is very important that you keep your baby lovebird in a clean environment at all times. A baby lovebird is very vulnerable to bacteria’s. Always be very gentle when grabbing and moving him from place to place, (always handle with care) and make sure your hands are always clean before touching the baby lovebird. Also is very important to use the proper containers to keep your baby lovebird confortable and worm. For this you can use a simple plastic basket or a
Copa Babys, the basket can be use when the baby birds are still small and does not have all his feathers yet at the moment. And the Copas is more essential when your baby lovebird has all his feathers out completely and is starting to fly around. Another important detail is what type of bedding you are going to use to make your baby lovebird feel comfy in his basket. There are two good options to use one is Pine niddles and the other one is Softwood. There is a big difference betwing this two in textures and smell, also in its benefits. The pine niddles have good natural smell and also they come with a natural wax that repels insects, this will help you keep your baby lovebird insect free all the time. In the other hand the Softwood is more soft but it can smell really bad really fast and it holds the insects and bacteria’s in case of any.
Also it is good to keep a light on top of the baby lovebirds when they are still getting all its feathers. That way you help them stay worm. The light can be place about a feet and half high from the bay lovebird. And please do not use a heat lamp that is way too hot, just use a regular light bulb.
KNOW HOw TO USE THE FEEDING SYRRANGE
Sometimes you will find that your baby lovebird is easy-going when he comes into opening its beak, some of them are in a rush to eat and they will cooperate with you in the feeding process. But you will find some baby lovebirds that do not want to open their mouth no matter what, that’s why it is good to know the right technique to open its beak without hurting him you will find a video below that will show you the proper way to open its beak when you find yourself with a stubborn lovebird.
When you find yourself in a situation that your baby lovebird needs to eat but it doesn’t seem to want to collaborate opening its mouth, you can always use the technique shown in the video. You have to place the syringe under the upper beck of your baby lovebird and pull backwards and as soon as you see that they open a little bit the beck you have to introduce the syringe inside. Now keep in mind that you can only place the tube on the right side of your baby lovebird and that will be the left side for you. If you introduce the syringe on the left side of the baby lovebird with is the right side of you the food will go straight to the longs and the baby lovebird can suffocate. To prevent a bad situation like that it is very important that you pay attention to these steps.
WHAT TYPE OF FOOD IS USE TO HANDFEED THE BABY LOVEBIRD?
A lot of people ask themselves what is the best food that they can use with their baby lovebird. In my personal experience we always use Exact hand feeding formula. There is two type of exact hand feeding formula out there, the one that we have always use here at Tampa
lovebird’s is the Omega 3 mix. This formula has all the ingredients needed for the growth and health of your baby lovebird in my personal opinion it is one of the best formulas in the market at this moment. You can purchase this formula at any of your local pet shops or you can find it online.
HOW TO PREPARE THE FORMULA & WHAT TOOLS ARE NEEDED?
When it comes to preparing the formula of your baby lovebird you need to keep in mind a couple of things. Number one is that the formula cannot be too watery or too thick it needs to be in a constant level that will be easy for your lovebird to digest. The amount of formula that you will use that depends on the amount of birds that you will be hand feeding. Number two keep in mind the right temperature of the formula, do not make the mistake that most people do of warming up the formula in the microwave.
This is very important these is one of the most crucial mistakes you can do so keep in mind the right temperature never forget that is from 106°F to 108°F. If you feed the formula too high you will burn the inside of your baby lovebird and it will die. If you feed the formula to cold your baby lovebird will not be able to digest the food and it can die also. Once you have monitor the temperature of the formula and the thickness of the formula and everything is ready to start feeding it to the baby lovebird, you will need your feeding instrument. There is two ways that you can feed your baby lovebird one is by syringe and two you can do the spoon feeding. Any of those two methods work fine, as spoon feeding takes longer because you will actually let the
bird eat the food more slowly; this method is used a lot when you only have one or two baby lovebirds to feed. That means that you can dedicate more time to the feeding process. The method that I use personally myself because is faster is syringe feeding. In the syringe feeding there are to different ways to feed. One is by tube feeding them and two is by using this syringe but letting them swallow the food slowly. No matter what method you decide to use if you use the spoon feeding or the syringe feeding you always feed the same amount of formula to each bird. Once you finish feeding the baby lovebirds, you have to throw away whatever formula you have left from that meal. Some people are tempted to save the formula left over in the refrigerator and just reheat it the next day and that is a big mistake. The reason why is because the formula becomes like a rock and then it will be very hard for the baby bird to digest it and it can die. The other reason is because it accumulates bacteria very easy and fast so the
most practical and save thing to do is to toss way whatever you have left do not save it. The best way that you can save formula is by only making the exact amount that you will need for each meal only.
HOW MANY MEALS A DAY & AND HOW MUCH IS FEED ON EACH MEAL WHEN HANDFEEDING A BABY LOVEBIRD?
A baby lovebird should be feed from 3 to 4 times a day, if you are a person that works too much and you can only feed it 3 times a day that is fine as long as you follow the same schedule every single day. A baby lovebird is like a little kid the more on-time you keep its meals the faster it will develop and grow. Feeding a baby lovebird four times a day accelerates the growing process but unfortunately not everybody has time to feed four times a day. In each one of these meals you should feed your baby lovebird’s 5CC of formula on each meal. If the baby lovebird seems to always want more food you can always give them a little bit more like one more CC on each meal but don’t overfeed him because it can hurt the digestion of the food. The perfect schedule for feeding your baby lovebird is every eight hours. For example one meal in the morning one meal in the afternoon another meal in the evening, and if you have time one last meal before you go to sleep. That last meal can accelerate the process a lot.
WHEN TO START WEANING YOUR BABY LOVEBIRD?
In most cases your baby lovebird will start rejecting the formula or syringed from 4 to 5 weeks old. When these behavior starts to take place it is very important that you follow the next steps. Always keep them fresh spray millet it around them in their cage so they can start peeking on the Millet and start to learn to eat on their own. Along with these keeping mine that once you see that they start peeking on the Millet you have to supply them water also. The water is necessary so they can start digesting the seeds, always keep an eye on the Millet or the seeds to see how much are they eating and before you feed them in each meal feel their crop to see if they have seeds or if they are empty. This way you can monitor the weaning process and start reducing the amount of formula that you give them on each meal, the last thing you want to do is overfeed them too much formula on top of seeds. These can be very deadly for them. Normally after five weeks old that will be eating completely on their own and you will not have to hand feed them again.
HOW TO KEEP YOUR BABY LOVEBIRD TAME
Keep in mind that to maintain your baby lovebird tame you have to follow these procedures. There is a difference between peachface lovebirds and fisher lovebirds. And that difference is that if you have a peach face lovebird the peace face lovebird tends to stay calm and tame for long periods of time even if the owner has not interact with it. In the other hand the peachface lovebird it’s known to be calm while the fisher lovebird if it doesn’t maintains
a consistent relationship and interaction with its owner, In some cases we have noticed that in just one month of its owner not interacting with its lovebird the lovebirds have shown aggressive behavior against its owner. To avoid this issue it is very important that its owner maintains physical activity with its birds at least once a day or twice a week or else the lovebird can start becoming more dependable on its own and show aggressive behavior.
I hope all the information in this book was helpful to you and provides value to your actual breeding or future breeding and hand feeding of your lovebirds please know that you count with our assistant for any questions that you have or any doubts don’t hesitate feel free to contact us here at Tampa lovebirds we are here to serve you help you and do our best by showing you that we care and we are here for you even if you have mot bought a lovebird from us or not you can still count with our help guidance and suggestions, making sure you have a successful hand feeding process with all of your baby lovebirds share this book with all your friends and family that are going to the same process and feel free to contact us www.Tampa–lovebirds.com or call on us or text us at 8135981207.
Let me win a lovebird please
This is a great article very informative information that gives you step by step of the handfeeding process. 😊
I find in the weaning process, my birds always transition to seed much more easily using Avi Cakes crumbled to smaller pieces .
I didn’t know you could use a spoon. Thats very cool. I have a lovebird that I had to tame on my own and it still wont perch on anyones fingers but loves to be held.