My new Cockatiel

[od94]

Hey Guys!!
Khan is doing good I am going very slowly on him as you advice

I think my male is going under a molt there are feather everywhere in his cage.. big and small ones,and has some white stuff filaments on his body also.. A molt I suppose. That's great! Because he is clipped like 1/2 of his wings are clipped that way he will grow them back,till he grow then back and can fly again I hope I will be able to tame him and gain his trust

[Wolf]

This does not sound like a molting bird, it sounds like a bird who is plucking its own feathers or if in with another bird it may be getting plucked by the other bird. If you have them together put them in separate cages right away. Send pictures if you can, please.

[od94]

There is no bird with Khan,i don't have any bird in my place other than him.

He is not plucking his tails,even when I had him today on my finger he tried to fly and one big feather fall from his body. here is a couple of pictures:


hebergement image





In the picture he is eating for the first time some cooked rice lentils,quinoa,and he loves him! lol

[Wolf]

Ok, he looks fine and there are not as many feathers as it appeared to be in your post. I have a couple of birds who were pluckers when they came to live with me, so I am well aware of how difficult it can be to change this type of behavior.
I also am guilty of not always refreshing my mind on who has what birds and sometimes just answer based on the latest post, which is what I did with this one this time. My bad, my only defense is that I answer a lot of questions.
Also cockatiels appear to be more prone to feather issues than many other species of parrots. I suppose that this is only in captive bred and raised birds and not in the wild ones. I would guess that it is the result of poor breeding practices by unscrupulous breeders who are just out for the money. They are easy breeders and as a result they are one of the most overbred segments of the captive parrot population. Diet seems to play a very large role in correcting many of the feather issues that they have, but not all of them as a fair amount of them appear to me to be poor genetics.
Keep working on his diet and get him to eat as wide of a variety of vegetables and fruits as possible as well as whole grains instead of seeds or pellets, reserving them for the evening meal. I still don't see any benefit to pellets over a good seed mix when fed in this manner.
I also try to stay very aware of the quality and source of the lighting that my birds receive and so far I can say that although I do see the random feather fall out, my birds are not yet molting, which is a good thing as it is still a bit too early in the season for them to be molting.
I hope that you can get some benefit from this.

[od94]

Hey Wolf!! hehe Yeah you are really very active on the forum impossible to remember everyone's birds.. lol

Thanks for the advice!!

For the time being Khan is still afraid of my hand and doesn't respond to hand feeding,sometimes if I get too close he will hiss and bit but not hard at all.. I hope that when he will get used to my hand and handfeed him everything will be in order.

[Wolf]

I am active on other forums as well as here.
If you are referring to when you offer him a treat, try stopping and removing your hand when he hisses and try again in a couple of minutes. bonding and training are both activities that require the birds trust and when it hisses it is saying back of or I will bite in self defense. You begin to earn that trust by listening to what the bird is saying and backing off.