What Can I Do at the Store??

[kikidee]

I have purchased a pearled cockatiel at a parrot shop recently. It, along with all the other available cockatiels left are still too young to be taken home, and can be taken after the next 6 weeks. The cockatiel I chose is very scared of me and all others but I know it will be fine when I take it home and do a lot of work with it. However, the people at the store tell you to come back every few days or every day if you wish and work with it to help it adjust and not be afraid of you. Many of the other already claimed cockatiels whose owners obviously worked with them a bit come right out and jump on my finger.
I know what I would do at HOME, but what can I do at a store? Also, every time I pick the baby up (against its will which I don't want to do but don't have a choice here at the store) it will walk on me for a few seconds and then jump off and fly into the door I can't really just leave my hand in the cage because people in the store would look at me weird xD and there are other people's cockatiels in the cage too, so it might be ignoring me and trying to be safe with them anyways.

I don't know what to do!
Advice?
Kiki

[Wolf]

What would you do at home that you can't do at the store? I would think that although the conditions are not ideal at the store, I can't think of anything that I would do at home to help my bird that I would not do any place else. So I apologize but I have to ask.

[Pajarita]

I was thinking the same thing. You can do almost everything at the store that you could do in your house: you can sit next to it and calmly talk/sing to it for a couple of hours, you could offer treats (a tiny piece of millet will do), you could open the cage, put some warm soft food near the door and wait for him to come out (they are all clipped, aren't they?) , you could buy a gym and bring it with you when you visit as well as a couple of toys, etc These are babies so even in your house, you can't do much more than what I suggested.

[kikidee]

Hey! Thanks for the replies.
Well, I guess I'll have to ask if I can give it a treat, because the people at the store still kinda act like the baby is still half theirs. I would probably talk to it and sit next to it, however there aren't any chairs in the store xD and its on a cage with 2 other birds, so I don't know how it will know I am talking to it individually :/
I would also like to leave the cage door open so it can come out on its own, however, there are other people's birds in there and they might fly out. I would also want to start introducing a clicker and target stick simply to familiarize it, but maybe it is too young? I would probably do that and try to target it to my hand so it can become comfortable around my hand. I guess most of it comes down to, if I bring it out, It'll try to fly around the store, and that'd be fine if it was in my OWN house and I'll have to be standing up the entire time because if I sat somewhere I'd be in people's way. Plus If I tried doing training like that there I feel like everyone would be looking at me strangely xD Maybe I should just get over that though..

[kikidee]

Oh also, I think they always have millet in their cage .
And yes they are clipped, which I plan on not doing when I take it home. I'm sure the people at the store won't be thrilled about that factor though
It is just strange, these babies are hand fed so I'm surprised they still can get scared by hands or people.

[Wolf]

I seriously doubt that the people at the store are taking their time or are being too careful about their hand feeding though. So it doesn't surprise me that some of the babies are hand shy. As far as other customers in the store, I wouldn't be too concerned as they will stop to watch anybody who is doing anything with animals. I think they are mostly watching to see if they can learn something new.
I would think that trying to target train your bird at this age would be just rushing things a bit. I know that I really don't start that until I have made a certain amount of progress with getting the bird to start to trust me as I think that trust is the major factor for all that will come in its life. In fact to me it is the foundation for everything. Just my thoughts on that.

[Pajarita]

Just because a baby is hand-fed, it doesn't mean it enjoys the experience. If the breeder/caregiver is loving and takes his/her time with the bird feeding it out of a syringe or a spoon a bit at a time, just like the parents would do, he will learn not to be scared of hands BUT if he was/is been fed with a crop needle (it's not really a needle but a long, thin tube that is pushed down its throat and fills the crop with food very fast and all at once), he will hate the experience and the hands that do it. Stores don't usually buy their babies from good breeders (no good breeder would sell a large amount of unweaned babies to a store), they get them from birdmills where babies are mass produced and fed with the crop needle (15 seconds versus 5 to 10 minutes a bird).

It doesn't matter that the other birds are hearing your voice, the important thing is to get your bird used to it. And, if you paid for the bird in full or have a contract for partial payments until bird is weaned, you have a saying in what can and cannot be done with the bird because actions taken today will affect the bird for the rest of its life.

Please do not even think of training him. He is not even weaned yet! You need to wait until he is completely weaned and fully grown before you even start.

PS You do know that a male pearl baby will, almost surely, lose its pearls as he gets older, right?

[kikidee]

Thanks for your replies!

[kikidee]

I honestly can't say. This place is very different from most places I've been too, and the employees seem to all be very sweet with the birds and know how to treat them, but who knows. Yeah I think I'll wait a few months to begin target training, however, that was how Michael said would be a good method to get it to step up. However, I guess I could use the "force out and reconcile" method.
I guess I'll just go to the store, talk to it a lot, stick my hand in and just let it get used to it without having to touch it.
@Pajarita- Yeah at first I tried to adopt, and this is probably going to sound dumb, but honestly it was too much work. All the places around me made me first fill out an adoption form before I could even SEE if they had the bird I want, and then make me pay for three sessions of training, or become a member of their foundation and donate a lot, meet my entire family (which lived almost two hours away from these places) and let the parrot and the workers VISIT my house. I got pissed and was like "okay if you don't want me to adopt a bird that bad, then so be it". I may adopt in the future, but I just wanted my first purchase to be smooth. And yeah I won't train him. I was literally just going to target train to step up until two months but I guess I'll wait on that too.

And yes, I know the males lose their pearls, but only that one and greys were left, and I want a male anyways, so it is being DNA tested at the moment. He was already losing some pearled feathers at the bottom, so I figured to verify a prediction that it was a male.

[Wolf]

You do not have to use the force and reconcile later method, I would not. I simply talk to them and place my hand near the bird and let the bird come to me. I also will offer it treats ,but it must come to my hand to get the treat. If it will come to my hand to get the treat, it is just a little more time and patience for it to step on to my hand to get the treat and given the time without any pressure it will step up on its own and when it does, sat Step up and give the treat and praise. This has always worked for me, but all of my birds came from an abusive place and were deathly afraid of me and my hands, due to the abuse that they had suffered.