Hand-taming a wild-caught vs hand-raised parrot — where do you stand?

A hand-raised chick costs more and arrives already trusting people. A wild-caught adult is cheaper, arrives terrified, and may never fully settle.

There is a welfare argument in there as well as a practical one, and it is worth having out loud rather than in the comments under a sale post.

For anyone who already has a frightened bird, the method that works is slower than people expect: weeks of sitting near the cage doing nothing at all, then hand-feeding through the bars, then eventually a hand inside. Never grabbing, never chasing it round the cage.

If you have tamed a wild-caught bird, how long did it take? And if you will not buy one on principle, say why.

I will not buy wild-caught and I will say why, since you asked directly.

It is not really about the individual bird in the shop. It is that for every one sitting in that cage, several died in the trapping and the transport. Buying it does not rescue it, it orders the next one. That is the part people genuinely do not know rather than choose to ignore.

Where I am less certain: if you already have one, or you take one on from somebody giving up, that is a different question entirely and I would not judge anyone for it.

Wild-caught raw, took me about seven months to get him stepping up. The method in the original post is right and the hardest part is the first stage where you genuinely do nothing. I sat and read out loud next to the cage every evening for six weeks. Felt ridiculous. It was the part that worked.

Never fully settled here. Two years and she will take food from my hand and that is the ceiling. I have stopped pushing for more and honestly she seems happier since I did.