Hi, I bought 3 IRN’s on 12 March 2021. I have given them nutritious fruits and seeds from the day I got them. I also talk to them for hours daily. Still, whenever I show them my hand, or even go close to them, they flap their wings and keep getting scared till I go away. One of them has tried to talk but its not understandable.
Hi,
If these three birds are in one cage, that is the first of your problems. When parrots share a cage, they will almost always form a bond and not be interested in forming a human bond. Even if they were hand fed, if caged together, they choose another bird over a human.
If these three birds are in one cage, you need to separate them for another reason. They are probably much too young to breed – they should be around 3 years or older before letting them breed. If they stay together, they will try to breed at too young of an age. It’s never a good idea to have an odd number of birds sharing a cage. They tend to form bonds and one bird ends up getting left out and bullied. They are at an age where they will start maturing and getting their first bout of hormones, and this can trigger fighting or mating. They are too young to breed, but not too young to exhibit hormonal behavior. And if they are under 2 or 3, you still can’t tell their sex by looking at them. You could keep 2 females or 2 males together, but you should not have young males and females together.
As for taming, unless they were hand fed, they will be really hard to tame, and they may never tame. IRN’s can be wonderful pets, but more often they are stand offish and not the best pet. If you hand feed a clutch of 4, most likely 3 will revert to being wild once they are weaned. It’s not about how much they were handled, or how they were fed – I have seen this happen over and over where some of them do not remain tame. They are an interesting species. The best chance you have of taming any of them is to separate them, have their wings trimmed, and work with each separately. A bird that can fly away from you is also very hard to make any progress with. The wing feathers will grow back and you can have the trimmed when needed or let them fly. You have the right approach, but again it isn’t getting you anywhere if the birds are in the same cage. I’ll give you the link to our taming and behavior pages to give you more help.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
