Wing Clipping

Question
Hi Jennifer:  We have a new, young budgie.  The vet suggested we clip his wings to make him easier to handle.  The breeder we bought the bird from did clip his wings, but he could still fly and ended up bumping into walls.  We did what the vet advised and clipped the last two flights feathers.  The problem is that we purchased a large flight cage and now the budgie has to scale the cage to get anywhere.  It looks pretty pitiful.  Is there a happy medium when it comes to clipping?  Thanks.

Answer
Dear Rob,
thank you for your question.
I don't recommend wing clipping at all, it takes away so much from the bird and they are much surer of themselves when climbing and less prone to accidents when they are not clipped. It's easy to make a room bird safe and since you have a flight cage, that's even less of a problem.
Use the time until the feathers grow back to tame the bird, he will still be tame once he has the ability to fly again. At first he may be unsure of himself, but he will learn it quickly. It's possible that he won't be able to fly properly while the feathers are still growing, make sure he can reach the cage again if he has fallen to the floor.
Clicker training is a great method for bird training, you can find a lot of information on it here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bird-Click/
http://www.clickertraining.com/

Once the bird is tamed, I recommend getting him a partner. Budgies, as all parrots, are extremely social and need constant company. A single bird will get lonely when left alone even for an hour, but two bird can always interact with each other and they are a lot of fun to watch together. They are also much more active than single birds. It's a myth that two birds cannot be tamed and the second bird will learn the tame behaviour from the first one.It's true that two birds don't bond to you as closely as a single one, but in my opinion it's much better to have birds that are tame because they choose to be than one bird that's tame because he has no other choice.
I hope I was of some help to you
Jennifer