Food Imprinting Question...

[oneshot]

I haven't done this but am curious if food imprinting is irreversable???
Your thoughts and cures/corrections appreciated...

Thanks...

[goshawkr]

I haven't done this but am curious if food imprinting is irreversable???
Your thoughts and cures/corrections appreciated...

Thanks...

Um.....huh?

Can you elaborate some on what your talking about here?

[oneshot]

Um.....huh?

Can you elaborate some on what your talking about here?

If a young bird is food imprinted can you reverse it so it isn't food imprinted and a screamer???

Is that better???

[poleyc]

Feeding chute....remove the food source from the equation. It will take a bit to undue but usually helps especially in passage birds.
Just my two cents

[Barbary90]

I hate the term food imprint. The bird isn't imprinted onto food.

A food imprint is the exact equal of a parent reared bird. It absolutely thinks that you are its mother and later on a sexual partner. The key to imprints is to fly them as heavy as you can, fly them on appetite and they have no reason to make noise. Noise starts when their weight is cut,

Jakk

[allredone]

I haven't done this but am curious if food imprinting is irreversable???
Your thoughts and cures/corrections appreciated...

Thanks...

Hand Fed Imprint might be the more universal term for what you're talking about.

Are you thinking of trying it but reluctant because of warnings from others? Hand feeding doesn't necessarily lead to the behaviors your'e concerned about. Check out Jeff Suggs post "Ruger" on this years goshawk and "Apache" for one from a couple seasons back. You don't have to get that involved for good results but he threads are a cool window on making a hand fed imprint.

As for reversing it I'm not sure if that's the term I'd use but maybe? For instance a naturally imprinted wild taken passage bird can sometimes go through some late stage imprinting on the falconer and lay eggs and even copulate and breed by artificial insemination. So I think it follows that it can go the other way too but I don't think that's what your'e asking.

Hand feeding is what we do with passage birds. It's can be a simple easy way to go for branches too. For a young taken imprint it should probably be done with some careful understanding of the birds point of view and limited weight reduction. One of the best reasons to take an imprint is so that you don't have to rely on weight reduction so heavily to overcome fear and drive hunting etc. So if you hand feed a chick just take the long road and allow play to turn into hunting. It's a big topic. Read Jeff Suggs threads.