Taming my cockatiel

[mariam.khawaja]

Hello,

I bought a male cockatiel a few months ago, he is about 2 years old now. When i first bought him my brother and I trained him according to bits of information I found on the web. And it worked fine! He would step onto our hands and would never bite, only nibble, and sit on our shoulders. He loved walking around under the dining table too. The big problem I had with him though was he never stayed with us, he would always be more interested to explore the house. And because of that he never became friendly. I'm trying to sort start again using different techniques so I found one called 'Touch Training'. I was just trying out this technique giving him coriander (he goes crazy for this) and using a wooden stick for him to touch and a clicky pen. After several tries he became more interested in playing with the wooden stick.. I'm not sure what to do with him! He bites and hisses at me and won't let me touch him.

Please Help!

[Kim S]

If he isnt afraid of the stick and he will let you touch him with it, than you have achieved your goal. Now you can maker things more interesting. Make the end of the stick smaller and smaller each time you train with him so your hand comes closer to him. If he starts hissing, dont react. He is just trying to impress you, he feels like the bigger bird. If he flies off or starts getting scared, take a step back, youve gone too far.
Dont go too fast. And dont make the sessions of training too long. Train 5 minutes at a time, a couple of times a day. If he doesnt back off or get scared in the last three sessions you can make the end of the stick shorter.

Search around this site. There are some great articles on taming birds