Hi there, first post so soz if this is a little messed up.
Cain , Hide .
Background:
I bought two bonded six year old Senegals 8 months ago from a dodgy situation- Basically they were kept in a dimly lit shed and only recieved interaction from humans when they were being roughly grabbed and moved to a different cage. As a result, when I took them home they were terrified of human company and would shriek, fly to the other side of their cage and shake if someone came near them or even into the room.
While working with them I realised that they seemed to have opposite personaities, the female (Cain) was very calm and sweet, whereas the male (Hide) just couldn't calm down and would either try and escape through any means possible or bite.
The female (Cain) is now calm to the point that I can train with her alone for 1 hour a day, she does step up, walks over to me from across a table when I say her name and lets me stroke the feathers backwards on her head.
Now here's the problem...
The male will work only work with me if Cain's there too (if she steps up, he steps up), the only problem is, if he get scared and flies off, she mimics, gets scared too, flies off and then it can take a while for me to calm them both down again.
I always take them out of their usual room to train or they'll just fly back to their cage and refuse to leave the top of it. Cain is fine with stepping up onto a rope and being taken to another room, whereas Hide refuses to step up and either clings onto the top of his cage or flies away.
Another problem:
While Cain is graceful, Hide flies like a literal stone, he's flown into the door 'many' times, last week he looped the room and then flew head first into a hardwood cupboard (not kidding I was convinced he should of bashed his skull in, doing that). He let me pick him up with a rope, climbed onto my arm and started biting my t'shirt, making angry noises and trying to walk up to my shoulder, I had to use the rope to stop him- I didn't want that beak near my face.
Today, I walked in to see him climbing up the cupboard, I said 'Oh so that's how you're getting up there' (open cage policy). He basically freaked out, and flew on top of a different cupboard, I tried to get him to step up but he refused the rope. I stood back and watched to see how he'd get back to his cage, he jumped off, flew perfectly to his cage and then landed awkwardly, half jamming his left leg and wing between the cage and the wall, I worried but waited where I was, thinking he would right himself, he attempted to climb back into his cage, sort of slipped and landed heavily on the cage floor. I quickly went over to see if he was alright, he climbed back up the inside of the cage and sat quietly with Cain- I put a few extra peanuts into the cage and left.
Main question:
The question is, I want to get him clipped so he doesn't basically attempt suicide everytime I try to tame him, everyone I know says it's a shame to clip his wings, but I'm worried that he'll kill himself before he manages to calm down enough to accept human contact... What does everyone here think?