hi johnny, my name is Alberto. I have a few posts on the social imprint process here in Mexico so just to give you an idea of the whole thing i'll paste it here. And I will start a new thread, actually my female chick is about 5 months old now, and I had her at around 1 month. She would already be more than ready but she had some parasites that made her drop all of her tail feathers so I treated her and now i just have to wait a couple of weeks for them to grow in fully. Anyway, here's the post I had on the raising process.
The process is pretty simple. We take the birds at about one week of age. Since very small we introduce them to many things like the hood and what not but most importantly we introduce them to dogs. The more kinds of dogs introduced to them the better. Dogs spend a lot of time next to the chicks and that basically eliminates all the problems like the ones keith stated he had. Also they spend lot´s of time with other harri´s so they dual imprint, or social imprint or creche imprint, whatever its called. That way they have no problems hunting together.
We give them a well balanced diet of quail, squirrels, all kinds of birds etc so that they develop well. The feeding is done by hand.
Once they are able to stand and have some feathers in and are more active we itnroduce live "prey" to them. Small quail, small chickens or mice. I find that since they are already curious it is good to introduce them to killing as soon as possible. I think it helps them to develop the use of their talons as well as develop their caracter later on. I´ve had friends who decide not to do this and i´ve seen that their birds are more passive when introduced to game and hunting.
Once all they´re feathers come in we build them, put the jesses and such. The whole manning process takes about a week. Also, when they are feathered we take them everywhere with us so they don´t become scared of everything. We usually don´t use the hood, or at least I don´t, i find it useless when you have a bird that is used to the car and used to lots of people, etc...When they see more the get used to more things and so they fear less things. I do this because when they are hunting in a new place they don´t become distracted or scared by every new thing they see. We use the hood only when truly needed. I don´t know if i became too repetetive on this haha, if i did sorry about that.
After they are used to the glove and eating in the glove we start the training process wich is also very simple and i´m pretty sure is the same as everyone elses. Just the simple perch to glove step, and repeat. Create more distance until it is flying etc.
After they have been flying for not too long we plant a rabbit for them to kill. This is of course so that since young they don´t have the idea that the glove is the only source of food.
And that´s basically it, it is very simple and very effective. My brother´s girlfriend is very new to falconry and just had a chick and raised it this way. Last weekend we went out for hare and at the first sight of one it grabbed it by the tail, but unfortunately she didn´t capture it, but for her first time she was very excited hah.
Also, about the aggressiveness. If they show ANY signs of aggression we correct it right away. For example, I caress the bird a lot during the whole process so it is used to it, and so if i´m feeding it and caress it and it pecks at my hand because it bothers him, as soon as he does it I stick my finger down it´s throat for a second or two. It sounds weird or kind of primitve or what not but it is simple and it works. Next time he takes a peck at me I do it again. And that´s all I ever had to do to stop any kind of aggressiveness. They say negative reinforcement doesn´t work but it is even more natural than positive and in a small case such as the hand pecking I see no problem with it.
I don´t know, and this is just my opinion but I find that the more you socially imprint a bird, the less aggressive towards people or whatever it is introduced to it is. As I said before on the post, I have never had or met an imprint harris that became a threat to humans or that was a handfull because of it´s aggressiveness. Also, note that their is NO change in their aggressiveness once they are sexually mature, I truly find it hard to believe that a HH would chase and grasp a person just to attack it, maybe it´s true maybe it´s not, but to me it just seems hard to believe.
Oh almost forgot, another advantage to this is that when they are sexually mature it is pretty easy to artificially insaminate, wich i will try next year.
Well thanks for the interest to those of you who read this and I look forward to opinions and also criticism, I don´t mind it really hah.
cheers!
Alberto Vargas
Man, talk about a bad hare day...
Alberto Vargas
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Originally Posted by bassistus
