Spoon-feeding vs bottle-feeding vs syringe-feeding

What do y'all do and why? What are the pro's and con's about each in your experience?

I know how to bottle feed, and I suppose syringe feeding is likely quite similar but I have no idea what spoon feeding would be, or how you would do it..

Any feedback from the pro's?

We tried to spoon feeding Chico. She loved it, but it makes bird messy. And believe me, this baby formula is like a glue; if you don't clean bird immediately, later it's hard(but not impossible).
The syringe worked fine, was less messy and she loved it. The same with raccoon and house sparrow.
But wait until real expert from hand-feeding birds will respond(Momma 'Zon, Roz)
I bet you will have no problems at all, with your profession and feeding and you'll see each time how exited it is

Syringe feeding is the way to go, we do spoon feed older babies but this is more to help them wean .With the syringe they don't realize where the food is coming from and with the spoon it's a slower process and they become impatient and start trying to feed themselves from out of the bowl.Yes it's messy and they tend to sling it everywhere,and as Margaret said it's like glue.Many people raising birds for the pet trade will keep birds on the syringe for months because it helps keep them hand tame and dependent, we on the other hand are happy to have the babies wean themselves and use interaction and socialization to keep them tame.In short spoon feeding is not absolutely necessary, but it's how we do it.In the "olden"days i didn't think to use a syringe and spoon fed my babies from to start with cream of wheat cereal mixed with fresh fruit (bananas,mango) or baby food from the store, this was a very time consuming and messy job, the syringe is much easier and faster.

henpecked wrote:

. . .we do spoon feed older babies but this is more to help them wean.

I thought I was the only one who does that! Yeah, at what ends up being about the last 2-3 weeks I spoon feed w/ a mix of formula and softened pellets. They get to feel the chunks on their tongue and play as much as they eat.

But spoon feeding is generally too messy - all over the bird, all over the wall, all over the table, all over you.

I use disposable plastic transfer pipettes. Similar to the syringe. I prefer the pipettes as I'm paranoid I'll plunge too hard on the syringe and drown the babies. I'm also paranoid that I don't get the syringes clean enough and the o-ring needs to get lubricated. With the pipettes I just throw them away after every use. I have a "connection" so I get my syringes really cheap (free).