Joan, I am not an experienced bird person either! Handfeeding means that you literally pull the babies from the parents at a young age, use an incubator, and literally feed them, by hand, with a special syringe and special formula. How often they are fed depends on at what age you pull them. After doing a lot of research and talking with people who are much more knowledgeable than myself about these matters, we decided to let Mom and Dad handle the feeding and the ultimate weaning. I have not handfed these babies and will not at this point. They are getting used to being held by us, though, and Milly is not bothered by our picking them up, removing them from the cage, etc. I hope that they will be friendly, fun birds, wherever they end up, regardless of the fact that we chose not to handfeed them. We're making sure that they have lots of interaction with humans (mostly me, since I am the one here with them, in the same room, most of the time).

They might be even more human friendly had I handfed them, but it would be like having 3 infants at one time, with feedings up to every 2 hours! I hope I'm doing them justice this way. They certainly are precious and do not fight being held at all.

Hope that answered your question!
Logan