A friend of mine , Nic, has a semi-tame Ducorp cockatoo, named Enzo, that he has not the time to truly make tame. This bird used to be a cage bound one person bird before coming to Nic. Since then, he has refused any interactions with Nic or anyone else except another Goffin cockatoo. According to Nic, at his mildest, he will allow Nic to hand feed him through the cage.
On the verge of selling this cockatoo away, I decided to help Nic out by bringing Enzon into my care and try to tame and socialize Enzo. My sister, upon seeing this beautiful white guy with distinctive blue eye rings, immediately called him "Casper...the friendly ghost!", because according to her, he looks uncannily like Casper, the cartoon character! However, this Casper is not that friendly after all.
We therefore decided to nickname him "Casper" in the hope that he can become a friendly bird and try to rehabitate him to life as a companion parrot. He needs lots of opportunities, time and patience to establish trust and confidence in the company of us humans. This is indeed a meaningful challenge for me to help bring Casper around.There are generally speaking two tecniques to tame a parrot who is afraid of humans. One is through a slow and gentle trust and confidence building process by tender loving care and interactions while the other requires a T stand and neutral room to teach the bird to step up cooperatively, which is more stressful initially.
I'm more for the first method as it will cause less stress for Casper despite taking a longer time. Will definitely need to consult my avian behaviourist shifu (master) on this. We'll see how it goes!
Do watch this space as I will be updating on Casper's progress as time goes by.
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