clipping wings

Question
Jennifer,  I have reviewed many of your answers in the archive, and you have never said to clip wings.  I have a male and female parakeet and they don't have thier wings clipped.  The male likes to come out and fly, but the female never does.  She used to, but I think she got frightened or something.  The male is funny because he just comes out and flies around the room 2 or 3 times and then returns to the cage or lands on top.  If I need to leave, I just tell him to get in the cage, and he does.  That is all the exercise he gets, and the female never comes out or gets much exercise.  Will they be healthy in the long term.  They only get seed, but I want to begin to give them variety.  Will they get fat?  Their cage is 30x40x14 inches.  I agree with you that they need each other, I would love to handle them, but didn't believe that I would be able to with the 2 birds.  I will begin with the food, but don't have the heart to clip wings when he loves to fly.  What is your opinion on the wings?
Also, I loved the pictures on a website you gave.  Anything in English?
Thanks,  Vicki

Answer
Dear Vicki,
thank you for your question.
It's nice to hear from someone who didn't clip the wings of her birds. I think it's a cruel and unnessecary practice, depriving the bird of something important in their life. Birds are meant ot fly and they know it. The big parrots often get depressed when their wings are clipped after they were allowed to fly. Imagine someone would chop of your feet and tell you "Oh, don't worry, I'll push you around in a wheelchair. And your feet will grow back anyway. But I think I will chop them off again because you are so much tamer and handling you is so much easier when you can't walk." This may sound drastic, but in my opinion wing clipping does exactly this to the birds.

You cage has a good size for two birds and if you feed the right food, they won't get fat even though they don't fly much. Some birds just don't like it. Maybe you should see a vet with the female, you said she just stopped flying. This may be a sign of illness, for example of a tumor that makes flying for her diffcult. Of course it's always possible that she just doesn't like to fly.

Parakeets need only two teaspoons of seeds per day. Apart from that, they can be fed all kind of vegetables and fruit. They might not eat them at first, but if you offer them again and again, they will eventually try them. Carrot, basil and chickweed are favourites with most birds. They can also eat wild grasses and usually love those.
On this website you will find tons of info on food and other parakeet info:
http://www.birds-online.de/nahrung/nahrung_en.htm

For taming birds there is nothing better than millet spray. Most parakeets will do almost anything for this and even shy birds will eat it from your hand if you are patient. Clicker training is another efficient method of taming your parakeets. Basically, all you need is a clicker (can be bought in pet shops, for dog training) and some treat, I always use millet spray. If you want to train your bird to sit on your hand, you put your hand as near to the bird as he is comfortable with, then you click and give the bird the treat. Do this three, four times, then take a break of several hours. In the next training session, you move your hand a bit nearer to the bird. Do this three, four times, then take a break, ect.
If your birds won't eat from your hand, use a small bowl to put the treat in after the click. First show the birds that a click means getting a treat a few times, they will learn that very fast. Always train outside the cage, it's the birds home and you should never reach into it except when feeding or cleaning them. Since only your male leaves the cage, start training him.
If you want to start clicker training, I strongly recommend joinging the BirdClick list here:
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/9154/
There used to be another good site on clicker training with birds here
http://www.thepiratesparrot.com/trick.htm
but it seems to be offline. Try the website later, it is excellent and has lots of basic and advanced info. I hope it will be online again soon.

Another reason why your birds don't come out of the cage much is that they have only the cage top to sit on. You can easily build a nice parakeet tree out of oak branches (hazel, birch, beech, apple and pear tree are also fine for this). Of course they will be frightened of it at first, but after some time and with the help of some millet spray (what else :) ) they will use it. It's like a playground for them and will make it more attractive and interesting for them to come out of the cage.
Branches from the trees I mentioned can be used as perches, too, and are more healthy than the perches you can buy. They train the muscles in the bird's feet because of the different diameters. Apart from that, the birds can gnaw them which will give them something to do and it's a healthy snack. Of course the branches shouldn't be gathered near a street.
Here are some pictures of the tree I built for my parakeets:
http://www.arcor.de/palb/alben/80/94180/1024_6132303332363265.jpg
http://www.arcor.de/palb/alben/80/94180/1024_6331356332336336.jpg

I hope I was of some help to you
Jennifer