Timid parrot - taming vs flight

[SaraU]

I have had my young cockatiel, George, for 2 months but he is still timid. He will take food from my fingers but will not let me touch him; he just runs or flies away. He shares a cage with my mature tame cockatiel Edward. They both come out to fly. The only way I can get George back is to put Edward in, leave the doors open and wait for George to go back in by himself. Edward often comes back out too and I have to start again. I don't always have the time for that but I feel they need to fly. Must I teach George to step up before letting him fly outside the cage? He gets very agitated if Edward is out and he is not.

[Wolf]

You have come up with one way that works for you to allow your birds to fly and this is good. You could also try letting them out to fly about two hours before their dinner time and dusk. Then when it is time for dinner let them see you put their dinner in the cage and let them go in on their own at that time. You may have to put Edward in the first few times but is should help while you work to get the other to step up.

[SaraU]

Thanks Wolf. They eat mostly seeds (I have been working on the pellets, trying them crushed up etc. but no luck so far) and their seed dishes are in the cage all day. I give them sweetcorn and peas (which they love) in the evening. Do you recommend removing the seeds during the day? When I'm home I observe that they do forage in the seed dishes all day. Next morning there are mostly husks so I have got the amount right.

[Wolf]

There is a lot of controversity when it comes to their diets and this is true whether it is for a cockatiel or any other parrot. If you have done any research then I am sure that you have become aware of this. The free feeding of seed or pellets is not recommended due to the fat and protein content. When we first started keeping parrots everyone fed primarily seed mixes with a few vegetables and fruits, the seeds were left in the cages all day long, this is called free feeding. We learned that this was bad as it led to our birds dying from liver and heart disease. It was thought that the reason for this was due to the birds being able to pick and choose among the seeds for their favorite seeds, which were the ones that were the highest in fats and protein. This led to the development of pellets.
Pellets were an attempt at stopping the birds from picking out their favorite seeds and leaving the rest uneaten and it provided a way to fortify the food with vitamins and minerals, It has worked to some degree but over time we have been learning that it is still not the best answer to the problems with providing our birds with the diet that they actually need in order to remain healthy. pellets have changed over the past 20 years going from being ground up seeds mixed with various binders, to ground seeds with added vitamins and minerals to what they are today ground up seeds, dried vegetables and fruits, and vitamins and minerals with all kinds of sugars and food dyes and other artificial ingredients to bind it together, preserve the level of vitamins and colors which along with the sugars were added to increase the palatability and attractiveness of the pellets. The birds and their humans are drawn to the pretty colors.
I am not a big fan of pellets and I do not use them for any of my birds, I feed my birds a cooked mixture of whole grains, vegetables and legumes such as white beans and lentils for breakfast along with some fresh raw vegetables and fruit, providing an amount sufficient to last them all day and then I feed them a portion of a high quality seed mix for their evening meal which is removed from the cage after they go to bed at night.
For those who choose to feed pellets it is not recommended that they feed more than 15 to 20% of their daily diet with the remainder consisting of a mix of vegetables and fruit and a good seed mix. Cockatiels are not usually big fruit eaters, preferring leafy vegetables instead as well as thinks like broccoli, sweet corn, cauliflower, snow peas, carrots and sweet potatoes. So I would feed them the vegetables and a measure portion of seeds for breakfast and a mix of seeds and pellets for dinner. With the largest amounts being the vegetables for all day long.
Sorry about the book length answer, but there is a lot to learn about parrot nutrition and it is one of the areas that I am constantly researching to learn to provide for my birds the best diet that I can. The bulk of the research into parrot nutrition is less than 20 years old, as this is when the keeping of companion birds started gaining in popularity so there is still not much known.

[Pajarita]

Well, I would not use pellets at all. Cockatiels come from arid regions of Australia so they are not hard-wired by nature to drink a lot of water (because there isn't much where they live - as a matter of fact, water scarcity of abundance is so important to them that they only breed right after the wet season). What nature did do is make it so their digestive system can derive most of their hydration needs from the foods they eat (grains, seeds and greens -and don't forget that the seeds and grains are not dry, they are the ones still on the plant so they have a higher content of water than what we can buy for them). This is a big problem with pellets because the dryness causes the birds to live in a very mild state of dehydration. It's not noticeable to us and it doesn't really bother the bird much but it does end up messing up their kidneys terribly and that's why so many pet tiels end up with renal failure (especially the ones that are given water in a bottle instead of a bowl).

In my personal opinion (based on many years of research) and experience, the best diet for them is gloop with leafy greens in the morning and a budgie seed mix for dinner. If you feed yours this, you won't have any trouble at all getting both of them in the cage right before dinner (they will go in as soon as they see you putting the seed in it). I use a white paper plate at the bottom of their cage and, as soon as I start singing this little chant I do when I feed them dinner (I say "KooKoo Shooshoo peeeeeeanuts" in a singsong) they all know what's coming and each of them scrambles to be the first to get to the seeds

[SaraU]

Thanks Pajarita. I am concerned about fresh/cooked food deteriorating if left in their cage all day while I am out at work so I have been doing the opposite - seeds in the morning and left in the bowl all day and then peas, sweetcorn, rice or whatever else I am trying out (cooked potato was acceptable today) in the evening before they go to bed. I'll have a go at the gloop. I extract the sunflower seeds from the commercial mix and save them for treats.

[Pajarita]

Cooked grains and veggies do not rot in a few hours (not even when it's hot). They will soften and the smell will become a bit more pungent but they are not rotten so don't worry about it, put the gloop in there in the morning and just take it out in the evening.