New bird

[BozidarL]

Hello!
I've been busy for some time so I didn't have time for forum. Now, Im back and happy to hear you guys out. Last Thursday, while I was in school, my parents saw a bird in the yard. They ended up opening house doors and a red canary found his own way inside the house. It has his own cage and everything now but it actually wanted to be with a cockatiel, so I put them together in the bigger cage. The canary is really tameable, he was on my hand eating seeds next day already, I let it fly outside... I would like you to give me some advice about training and other stuff. The canary loves to eat lol. So, I found a way to put 2 feeders and one water source in the cage. The problem is, that canary eats where he wants and Sunny might not like that so much. However, they seem cool with each other, even though the excited and energic tiny canary sometimes runs into the cockatiel and Snny launches at him. But, he doesn't bite he, he just kinda pushes him, so I think they will be just fine after time.

[liz]

You found him outside where the wild birds are but you did not quarantine him?

[Pajarita]

I am very happy to hear from you, again, and even happier that the poor canary found a home! He would have died out there as canaries have been domesticated since the 1400's and have, pretty much, lost all their survival skills.

Now, I am afraid that you have a few misconceptions when it comes to canaries. You see, canaries are not social birds like parrots are. They are what it's called 'territorial' and that means that they do not live in flock. Every canary lives on its own and sharing a 'territory' (in this case, a cage) is highly stressful to them - so much so, that people think they only last about 7 to 9 years when, in reality, a canary that lives a stress-free life easily lives into his teens (I had a hen that lived to be 18).

Now, depending on the breed and the gender of the canary, it is more or less tolerant of sharing their space. Hens are much more tolerant than males and color and type breeds are more tolerant than song breeds (this is because a canary song is a form of aggression). A red-factor canary would be more tolerant than, say, a Hartz roller but it's still a canary and it's still stressful for it to share the cage so I would advise you put the canary in a cage of its own. Aside from that, there are basic differences between the cages. A cockatiel requires a cage with horizontal height (because they are climbers) and bars must be also in that direction (so they can use them as a ladder) - and these bars should have separation of 5/8. Canaries, on the other hand, require horizontal cages (because they are horizontal fliers), with vertical bars (so as not to damage their primaries) and with a bar separation of 1/2. Last but not least, their diet is completely different. Canaries are natural seed eaters with a high tolerance for protein intake while you cannot free-feed seeds to a cockatiel or you will end up damaging its liver and kidneys.

It's also not recommended that canaries are trained in any way. It's just too stressful to them - remember that they are not social birds so, although they do learn to recognize and trust their humans as time goes by, they never develop the kind of bond that it's required to train and they will only come to eat from your hand if they are super hungry (which this poor thing must have been!). Now, one could say: "Well, all I have to do is not feed it and then offer food from my hand and he will come" But the problem with this is that canaries have super high metabolisms so they need to eat throughout the day and fasting them is VERY damaging to their health.

Having said that, I know of canaries (bred by me and given away as a gift to special people) that are allowed to come out of their cage daily and would fly around and perch on their humans' shoulders on their own initiative so it's not impossible to create a relationship of such trust that the bird feels safe even perching on you but it's not done through training but through patience.

[BozidarL]

Oh, that really surprised me. Well, if so, I will separate them again. I noticed that the canary eats the whole day and I was scared that Sunny wouldnt have food. I have a really wide cage for outside throughout spring and summer, but Its too big and we dont know where to put it in our home. I will try to put it in a whole other room. Im a bit dissapointment because canaries seem like pretty social birds. This one is on the same perch as the cockatiel and they whistle to each other a lot. Sunny actually started "speaking" a bit aswell. I wanted to try to put 2 feeders, one for cockatiel, one for canary, in the cage, but the canary seems to eat from both... Well, Im gonna put the canary in the wide cage in the other room tomorrow and this is actually better for me because I dont have to worry letting the bird do some freeflying in that room, because only I go there on my PC and I wont worry about the bird escaping. But, I dont know how I will get him back to the cage when I want to, Ill try putting more food so it lures him back inside. Speaking about some basic step up training, today I slowly approached him with a fistful of seeds and pushed him to climb up my hand. He did it! A few times later aswell. I saw some vids on YT and I would love to have my canary fly to me on command.

About Sunny, all those advice from you guys helped, her confidence in me came back, she wants to hang out and comes out the cage almost instantly. She isnt a great flyer, she bumbs into walls still, but she usually finds her way to my hand. Only thing which didnt work, even though I was trying for over a month, is the feeding. She didnt want to eat fruit-vegetable-seed mix, so I had to give her basic cockatiel seed diet from pet stores.

Oh, and liz, the bird was probably living in household before because its not scared of people and it is pretty active and energic, poop is fine... I just think it will be fine.

[Wolf]

Please don't give up on Sunny and fresh raw foods as an all seed diet will cause him to develop liver disease and possibly kidney disease and heart disease. I understand exactly how difficult it can be to get him to eat a better diet as progress can be extraordinarily slow, just don't give up. I have some birds that were older when I got them and in three years I have made relatively little progress in getting them to eat properly.
The reason that Sunny does not eat the fruits and vegetables is because he does not recognize them as food, he was not shown that he should eat them. To get him to eat these foods you must show him that it is food and that it is good to eat. He will probably not eat very many different varieties of fruit as they naturally eat more vegetables and leafy foods than fruits. To get him to eat any of them, and I would begin with romaine, you need to eat them in front of them, preferably in the morning before feeding anything else, while making noises that show how much you love the food, this is because they learn what to eat by copying other birds or you when you eat. Also it is a bonding activity as well as a social event to a parrot. You must nibble on the food, tell him how great this food is but do not offer him any of it. You want him to steal it from you at least until he begins to eat it on his own. Once he begins to eat it then you add some to his regular food and move on to the next food item, but since his health and life depend on his eating a varied diet do not ever give upon him.

[Pajarita]

Yes, what Wolf said is correct but, personally, I've found that cockatiels would eat gloop without much prompting as long as you start with whole grains barely cooked and put them on the floor of the cage (like on a white paper plate -which is what I use to feed my parrots- or even a clean piece of cardboard, it just needs to be flat). The reason for this is that cockatiels are natural granivores and partial ground foragers so, although the ones we have never lived in the wild, there is part of their brain that will react to food that is similar to and presented in the same way the food they would eat in the wild is. Try it, you'll see it works. I've never had much success with tiels eating fruits but they do love their greens (mine would not even wait for me to stick them between the bars of the cage, they would start eating it while I was trying to do it ) and they do like their veggies. Once you get her to eat the whole grains barely cooked, start adding fresh corn (they LOVE it!), then baby peas, then diced carrots, chopped broccoli, etc. Mine would eat all the veggies in their gloop except the green beans.

Now, canaries require a special mix of seeds, there are some in the petstores but they are not really very good. I think that ABBA 1700 is, by far, the best canary seed mix there is but it's only sold in specialized bird stores and Amazon. com (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_ ... Caps%2C133). They also need a different green and fruit every day but, if the bird was not raised eating a variety, although it will gladly eat any green, it will take a while for him to try different fruits (they also love corn on the cob -by far, their favorite thing in the whole wide world- cooked sweet potatoes, grated carrots, cooked pumkin or butternut squash and grape tomatoes cut in half)

[BozidarL]

Im gonna try to cook whole grains and do that with Sunny. Just a quick update on the Red fella.
I placed him in his new cage (smaller one, but dimensions are ok, its wide...) and he loves it. I also gave him some sliced tiny pieces of apple and put some of his Canary Vitakraft Premium seeds on top. HE ATE IT ALL! I loved it!!! Also, Im gonna try giving him 70-80% of the seed diet combined with different fruits n veggies every day. Tommorow Ill give him some tiny pieces of carrots and calary, then some salad or broccoli... I love that this birdie is so intelligent and adaptive!
Thx for helping out, you make my life a loooot easier.

Canary food (almost the same package): https://ecs7.tokopedia.net/img/cache/20 ... 03c8f8.jpg

[Pajarita]

You don't need to mix the seeds with the fruits and greens for the canary. He will eat them on its own. And it's best not to mix anything wet with the seed, it grows fungus that way. Just put half a bowl of seed in his cage, blow on it every morning to remove the empty husks and refill as needed (I don't wait until the whole thing is gone, I always add more before that). He will need a cuttlebone and a vitamin/mineral supplement regularly (it's the only way he can get vit D3). The 'fortified' seeds are a joke because what they do is coat the seeds with the vitamin/mineral supplement but as canaries 'peel' the seed and discard the 'fortified' hull just to swallow the seed inside, no supplement gets into them (don't forget that birds don't have saliva in their beaks).