Progress

During the Thanksgiving break I had 5 days to work with and be with the Baron. Now I'm back to work 8-5 and I have to give him a regular schedule so he can have some normalcy in his life. I've got him on a once a day feeding, giving him enough to burn through to the next feeding roughly 24 hours later. This involves calculating his weight loss per hour over the previous 24 hours and estimating his next 24 hour burn based on that number. Then I reduce that by a couple of grams since I'm still lowering his weight. So tonight he ate 15.2 grams of starling (about the size of a golf ball of meat) which should put him at about 111 grams by 6:00 pm tomorrow. With yesterday's estimated calculation for today at 6pm he was .5 a gram higher than I had estimated. Turns out his weight loss went down from his recent .84 g/hr to .77 g/hr. Of course, he spent the day in the mews instead of being handled and messing around so his metabolic rate was slower.

He was caught at 127.8 and today before feeding was at 113.5, losing roughly 2.6 grams a day. Tomorrow I'll reduce that to 1 gram a day until I reach his "hunting" weight; the weight at which he is most responsive and willing to interact with me for training and hunting.

When I feed him he has to earn his food. Each bite is earned by jumping from the perch to the glove where the food is. Tonight I started out at 4 inches, then 8, to 12, and by the time his meal was done he was going a little over 2 feet which required some wing flapping to get there. He is also a lot more tolerant of us touching him. When I came home from work I promptly took him from the mews and my wife wanted to touch him and give him some water from her fingers. I really wondered how that would go since he hadn't been around people all day. But he did great. No biting. After I feed him I can rub his belly and feel his crop and he just looks slightly nervous but doesn't bite. Eventually he'll start side stepping to get away from it but not like he's too scared. He still doesn't like being touched from behind. He'll spin around in a circle really quickly to avoid that.

It's amazing to think that only 5 days ago he was completely afraid of people and wouldn't dream of letting anyone within 30 yards of him. I'm very proud of him and his progress. It's going to be a great partnership.