Cockatiel and Budgie Owner from Australia

[bmsweb]

Hi Guys,

My name is Paul we had a pet budgie for a number of years (Marty) who passed away 6 months ago. In any case it didn't take us long to get another budgie (leeloo) who is such a sweetie! Just over 2 weeks ago we got a Young Cockatiel (Jazz).

On his first day he managed to draw blood . . my blood!! and it hurt big time Came across this site and read the post on taming and its done wonders. Couldn't get near him to even clean the cage! In just over two weeks of training he is extremely tame. You can get him out of the cage without a problem. He eats from our hand and loves interacting with my son and his Legos.

He has his first trick down . . . Turn. I can't believe he can turn on command. Birds are amazing!! My wife thinks of gone clucky over a bird. I want to buy him a new cage now.

Here is a video of him, nothing special, just playing around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arxb8pP5JGA

I will post a video with tricks once I teach him a few more. Great site with first rate info guys!!!

Cheers
Paul

[MandyG]

Jazz is such a cutie!

[Michael]

Nice video, thanks for sharing. Just one thing I want to mention is to be careful that the toys you give the bird are clean. Personally, I washed with soap some of the human based props for the bird if they weren't new. So I would suggest reserving a few legos just for the bird and washing them with dish soap and water. I just remember seeing a lego stuffed up with chocolate at some point in my life so just wanted to warn to check out that they are clean.

[Cozzy]

Gday mate, welcome to the forum...

[bmsweb]

Thanks Guys

Michael, thanks for the tip. I will give them a wash just in case. My son's legos aren't washed but they are extremely clean. My son is crazy about his legos and we have many static display model around the house. He actually put some aside for Jazz because he didn't want the bird to damage any of his parts. So it looks like both the bird and my son now have their own legos.

Today we are going Cage shopping.

[sophisity]

Welcome to the forum!! Jazz is so cute! Don't hesitate to post more pics or clips of your bird. I would like to see Jazz in the new cage you got

[bmsweb]

I would like to see Jazz in the new cage you got

Thanks Sophisity, I will be sure to post some more pictures and updates as I go. We ended up buying a new cage from ebay as it was almost half the price they were selling them retail. Its a shame that we have to replace the new cage we purchased when we bought him 2 weeks ago . . but hey he's worth it

[bmsweb]

Hi Guys,

Finally got the new cage and assembled it in front of Jazz. Not sure if that was a good thing or not. In any case he seemed to settle in pretty quickly, so all is good. Also tried to see if he would perform a few tricks in front of the camera but he was more interested in the camera than doing tricks!!! He learnt a new trick today, which we call Wings, but he wouldn't fully spread his wings while the camera was on


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xpgfqsrKyI

[Suzzique]

Great viedo! I think Jazz got the wings pretty good for being more interested in the camera.

You do know that cockaties are one of the few birds that you can tell the male from the female right? Girl cockaties have striped tails while males have solid colored tails. So Jazz is a girl.

[bmsweb]

. . Girl cockaties have striped tails while males have solid colored tails. So Jazz is a girl.

We called our Cockatiel Jazz because we didn't know the sex. The pet store said we won't know the sex until first molt and the following is what I've read:

"All cockatiels will have female coloring until their first molt. That means if the birds is under 6 months old, you will not be able to visually determine if it is a boy or a girl. You can usually tell after the first molt, but it may take another molt or two before the bird’s true coloring comes through"

I've never read about the tail being an indicator, I'll look into, thanks for the info.