Snowflake, the chick I kept from bitsy and Roscoe's first clutch, does not like to be touched. She will step up on my finger, sit on my shoulder and even let me give her a kiss on her belly or occassionally on her beak. She will also eat frommy hand. But she will not let me touch her. When she was a baby there were times I had to catch her to get her back in her cage so I don't know if this is why she doesn't like to be touched or she doesn't fully trust me or this is just her personality.

How old is she? She sounds like my Emma!

Have you socialized enough when she was in the nest? This is the reason why I co-parent starting when the babies are 2 weeks old. I think I might start pulling the babies out when they are less than a month old.

She is 5 mos old

the babies were parent raised. I was not sure that I could co-parent them at that point, although I did consider it and was prepared to step in if I needed to. But Bitsy and Roscoe were wonderful parents. I did handle all 3 everyday but once they could fly it as hard because they loved to play the game "catch me if you can". I loved watching them fly so I proably was not good at trying to continue handling them. Out of the 3, she was the tamiest.

I have clipped her wings. She can still fly a little but cannot get height and does not go far distances. I just feel bad for her (and me too) because she is missing out on scritches and cuddles that Bitsy nd Roscoe love.

Some birds just don't like to be touched. So you find something they do like and work with that.

Henry doesn't want head scritches, but he loves it when I kiss him on the head a bunch of times and say "Oh Henry". So that's what I do with him. I'm still working on getting him to accept my finger touching his head and I think he might accept it eventually. But it's slow going. He'll let me touch his head with my nose sometimes but we haven't worked up to the point of nose scritchies yet.

I agree. I have Beaker, who likes to be the center of attention, but no touching whatsoever. No kisses, foot rubs or scritches. He will interact with us on his terms, he steps up all the time and will fly to us if he wants to, or if I'm having a panic or hypo attack, he will hold my hand. He just puts his foot on one of my fingers and I can lightly grasp it.

Jaiden, whom I got as a baby, liked rubs all over, but then he grew up and decided wrestling was more fun. I am bitten every time I try to scritch him. As it turns out, it's a good way to tire him out so he doesn't make obnoxious sounds. He loves kisses. More than anything. He goes "kiss, kiss" and I kiss him.

Probably the most interactive I've ever seen mine was when they had AGY and were so weak, I picked them up like a baby and coddled them against my chest so they could hear my heartbeat. That was how I fed them. Of course they were much too sick to have any major protests. Soon they liked it.

A couple of times recently, I have had to catch Snowflake to put her to bed for the night. She does not like to be touched or restrained but I had no choice. After a few seconds of struggling she would quiet down as I quietly talked to her. I would then snuggle her a sec and give her scitches and put her in her cage. This morning as I was sitting and doing my morning reading she came to me and put her head down for scritches. I am so happy with her.

That's so great.

The use of force is supposed to be a bad thing but I find that sometimes a little bit is actually helpful, just to get the bird to experience something and find out that it's not so bad.

That's amazing.