Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Aggresive Red Tail

This is our third year together and this year is a whole new challenge. When I started bringing her out of the molt and dropping her weight, she was not dropping no matter what I did. I would try just a few grams a day, and would try a large crop every other day. No matter what I did she would only loose 10 grams a day. This last weekend I did not feed her for 2 days, lost 20 grams, and than cropped her good with 170 grams. My bird is not very aggressive except when there is food involved, and not to get to the food, but if there is no food. I will explain. When she is on my glove I can run my hand all over her with no problems. I can pull on her beak, play with her talons, she is a little fidgety, but not aggressive. When I cropped her up this last weekend, the whole time she was eating off the lure I was running my hand all over her with not to much problem ( I usually do not mess with her while she is eating, just trying to re-enforce the fact that I will be moving in on a kill). The next night I took her out of the chamber and took her to the shop and weighed her, she dropped 113 grams, a little more than half what I gave her the night before. So it looked like her metabolism was kicking in. The problem came when I brought her back to the chamber. I put her on a perch in the chamber and removed my glove and folded it and was holding it in my hand. I turned to look for a casting and she hit the elbow that was holding the glove. I dropped the glove and she hit the glove. I had to use my other hand to push her off the glove and she kept jumping at it. I was than able to leave the chamber. Let me give you some idea of where her weight is at. First off I trapped her at 1380 with a small crop. The first year I flew her at 1010, last year I flew her at 990. This year at the end of the molt she weighed a whopping 1420. At the time she hit my elbow she was at 1175. It gets worse, last night I weighed her and she was back to where she was before I cropped her up at 1110. I carried her back to her chamber and went to put her on the perch, but instead of stepping off the glove to the perch she turned and hit the left side of my face. So I am at a loss as to what to do as she is not at weight yet.
10/29/08

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