Finding out history

[davefv92c]

my wife has a male 15yr old Umbrella. got this bird from a store who had taken him in on rescue and the only info she knew was the lady who brought it in could not handle him and get him back into his cage,and of course the noise was also a problem for her family. he took right to the wife and has been a good bird we have had him around 9 months. i would like to find out somemore history on him. he does quite a bit of talking ,you know the kind you can only pick up a few words out of i call them rants. his leg band says ABRC which i know is the aviary it has an 02fl which is state it also has the number 242 which i believe is an id number. any ideas how to track down and of his info?
so far in my research i did find out the Aviary he came from is closed.

TIA

 

[Kiwibird]

He may have been hatched in florida and 2002 was his hatch year. He could have been the 242nd bird hatched at the aviary that breeding season, if they were a large scale operation. Finding info about rescue parrots is next to impossible, unfortunately, unless you know the prior owner and they are willing to disclose a full history. We even got our bird from the prior owner who was selling him directly and still know very little about his past beyond what we observed at the home he came from and the very limited information we were told (and he even had a previous home before the people we got him from, which we know nothing about). He didn't even have a band when we got him, we know basically nothing about his past life and can only assume based on behavior at the time we got him that the age we were given was likely accurate (he was going through puberty, which matched with the approximate age we were told). If the aviary is closed, you're probably out of luck with that lead.

An avian vet can give an approximate age based on juvenile, in puberty or past puberty (which for large parrots, they become fully mature adults around 10-15) and run a DNA gender test, as parrot gender is often assumed. They can also check for nutritional deficiencies or disease. Certain behaviors can indicate the bird may have been parent raised (meaning parent birds raised the bird until weaning with minimal human contact prior to weaning) or hand raised (meaning the bird was pulled from the nest at some point prior to weaning and the breeder finished weaning them, or possibly co-raised by the parent birds and breeder to get the bird used to humans). However, that is certainly not ever "certain" as events in a birds life can dictate adult behavior far more than which method they were raised with. Other than that, very little can be gleaned off an older bird. A loving, but uniformed prior owner could still have created a bird with behavioral problems out of ignorance, lack of time spent with the bird or mismanagement of undesirable behaviors. A prior abused or neglected bird could just be a particularly hardy individual mentally and respond positively right away to proper care. You just never know.

If you pay close attention to your bird and play a little bit of investigator , you may be able to deduce some reasonable assumptions. For example, we suspect our birds first home or breeder was Spanish-speaking, as he responds very differently to my husband speaking to him in Spanish than he does when spoken to in English, not to mention the area he supposedly was rehomed in the first time has a high Spanish-speaking population. We also suspect he may have been either parent raised or possibly abused by hands, as he is wholly uninterested in being petted or cuddling despite being very trusting of us and bonded to us. We know someone swore at him a lot, as one of the only things he came saying is a swear word (and we've never said that to him!). He was likely never previously handled, as he was essentially wild when we got him and it was very difficult to train him. We don't think Kiwi was his original name either, as he doesn't really respond to it. Things like that you can figure out just by observing the bird and their behavior, but of course is mostly educated guesses and supposition. Still, better than knowing nothing!

 

[SailBoat]

The leg band can get you some information of the distant past.

The more important History is Recent History. What kind of food was provided, interaction, etc... And, if the prior owner ever took the Parrot to a Vet. If so, get the past owner to release /switch the Parrot's records from the past owner to the new owner. Past owner's name protection is very easy for a Vet's office to make happen.

See Post Above for great insight on developing History!