I'm not against clipping. But I'm not pro either. I prefer my birds unclipped. However, Peewee is clipped by his pervious owner and there are some definite advantages to him being clipped.
The most important one to me is that I can take him anywhere I like without having to be afraid he gets spooked and fly away. The weather here is sunny and warm at the moment (pretty unusual for Holland
) and I love to take him outside, put him on his perch and just let him do his own thing. I feel that I can give Peewee a much more diverse environment this way.
In time, I would like to train him to accept a harness and be able to fly free. But till that time, I prefer him clipped.
As far as the young cockaltiels and budgies go, I have a different strategy. Clipping budgies and cockatiels to make them tame is the biggest load of ****. Buying a young bird from people who socialize the birds with people will be bigger advantage than clipping their wings. So all the birds I sell are unclipped, with one exeption. Sometimes young birds that just learn to fly will fly around like kamikaze pilots. They smash into walls, ceilings, lamps, kabinets, anything that comes in their way. If it takes them more than 3 days to figure out how to fly slowly to avoid those obstacles, I clip them just a little bit (3 of 4 feathers on each side) .They need to put in more effort to fly, so they are forced to slow down.
To Jodie: What gives us the right to put a bird in a cage to begin with?