What are your thoughts about leg bands?

[Athame]

Hi

I have a IRN and this is my first bird, i fell in love and had to have her so now i cant get enough lol

I have noticed that in a lot of the photos that most of the IRN's and other birds have leg bands.

What is the general opinions of these and would you recommend me get one.

Cheers

[rod038]

I wouldnt recommend putting one on an older bird. I put rings on mine when they are a couple of weeks old and this helps me identify them for breeding or selling them.

Older birds dont always take to them very well and they can damage the ring and their leg trying to get them off.

[ellieelectrons]

I read once that it was "irresponsible" of breeders not to leg band because not clearly identifying a bird as aviary bred encourages taking birds from the wild (which is a big deal for some native birds in Australia that are endangered). Our first bird has a legring. Our second does not & when I queried the breeder he said it was unnecessary and can lead to injury if it gets caught on something & can irritate the bird. After considering both points of view, I think unless it is illegal not to, I think don't legring them. I wouldn't attempt it on an adult bird. I am considering asking our vet to remove Janey's as I've seen it occasionally get caught on things.

[ellieelectrons]

P.s. I'm not sure how useful they are to identify a lost bird. Does anyone else know? Microchipping might be better???

[Molossus2]

Close banding is the appropriate way of recording breeding data for correct identification. Close band identification is the easier way of confirming ownership as not everyone carries a microchip scanner. With the move away from wild caught bird keeping it is the responsible thing to do. The danger of the ring snagging should be eliminated through proper cage design in the first place.
I am going for a combination of close banding and micro chipping.

[ellieelectrons]

Thanks for the info M. We regularly put cut off bits of tree in our birds cage which naturally have lots of twigs on them & they develop more of them as they chew the wood. I've seen janey's legring get caught on one once. Admittedly it didn't really distress her but that was what got me thinking about removing the ring. The tree provides a lot of enrichmentbas well as natural branches to sit on but I don't think I could make it completely snag proof.