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Where to start?

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Where to start?

Postby Linlin » Sun Jun 02, 2019 12:15 pm

This is my first time owning a cockatiel, i handfed it (don't know the gender yet) since it was about a week old until now (More or less 1 M.O) it's starting to fly around the room (under supervision). But not sure why, it's nice to my hands (allow scratches, looking for food from hands) but it won't perch in my hands. Whenever it perches itself to me it would always be on the head, or shoulder.
It's also capable of perching, but for some reason, it wouldn't perch at it's own perch in the cage and prefer to stay at the bottom of the cage. What should i do? Is it fine? Is it goind to learn to perch at some point?
Also sould i start training it when it's fully weaned, or should i start training it before weaned
I'm currently trying to wean it by placing bowls with seed, chops, and a water bottle (all in different bowls).
What should i first train it in? I'm bot aiming to have a fully trained parrot that's capable of magic tricks or so, just a well behaved parrot that is capable of some tricks, and i plan to enjoy my time training it, no rush or anything
Thank you for all your answers and sorry for the long topics
Any insight would greatly helps since i really don't want to start to bad way with my cockatiel
Linlin
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 4
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Cockatiel
Flight: Yes

Re: Where to start?

Postby Pajarita » Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:13 am

Welcome to the forum, Linlin and tiel (you did not tell us its name). The bird doesn't perch because it's a baby. Four week old babies are still inside the nest in the wild so, although it can physically perch, it's not yet time for it to do it all the time.

The baby is also not anywhere near weaning so I would suggest you continue handfeeding it (four times a day) even if you do put some soft food in the cage for it. Now, tiels do not eat chop so putting it there is not going to do any good. They eat leafy greens and they love grains so what you need to feed it is cooked whole grains mixed with finely chopped veggies. Gloop is great for little aviary species and the only difference with a baby is that you would cook the grains softer than al dente and start by mixing them with pureed baby food (use things like sweet potatoes, berries, etc. but no spinach and very little kale, please). Birds can learn to drink from bottles but, in all honesty, they are not mice and a drop at a time from a bottle is the most unnatural medium for drinking water one can think of when it comes to birds so I would strongly suggest you use a bowl of water for it.

You cannot start training until the bird is, at least, over its juvenile molt so relax because you stil have months before you can start training. This doesn't mean that the bird is not going to be learning, it will. But it will be things like its name, the daily routine (you know it needs to be kept at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk with no artificial lights on, right?), how to eat (you know you cannot free-feed seeds once it's older, right?), how to perch, how to fly, to trust you and, later, to love you as well as simple commands like 'Step up' (which doesn't need to be taught to them because they always want to be on us), 'Step down', etc. But none of these things are taught on a training session, these are things that they learn as we go along from repetition and praise when done correctly (no rewards, just verbal praise). Also, a tiel is NOT going to learn to do a magic trick, my dear. Tiels are WONDERFUL little birds, they are beautiful, smart, loving and have, by far, the sweetest temperament of all the parrot species but they are NOT companion parrots, they are aviary and, although they can learn to do things, the actual range is VERY limited because they are more flighty and have a shorter attention span than companions. And, in truth, trying to teach a tiel the same tricks that, say, a senegal might do, is not kind to the poor little bird. There is a reason why a tiel is under $100 and a senegal will cost you $700 to $1,000 even though they are almost the same size. They might all be parrots but each species has different needs and cockatiels, being a very flock oriented aviary species, can only live a healthy and happy life when they live with, at least, a mate of their own. They do learn to love humans but they need other tiels. See Liz's thread on the Parrot Care forum about her little rescued flock of tiels and you will see what I mean.

Please do more research and don't believe everything you see on Youtube or read in the internet because it seems to me that your expectations are way too high.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: Where to start?

Postby Linlin » Mon Jun 03, 2019 10:32 am

I'm sorry if it seems that my exoectation is too high, but no
In all honesty i don't have any expectation on my olive (the name of my tiels)
I just want it to be able to at least comfortable with its' own cage, doesn't bite (angry painful bites to its' owner, etc). I truly don't mean i want my tiel to be able to di magic tricks or so
And when i said train i really mean train as in as you say, step up, and simple command like it
I'm asking bcs i don't want to do things wrong with it
I used to have a lovebirds, and it weans at around 5 weeks, so i might just be paranoid
I also plan to get another one once i know its' gender (dna sexing bear my place is currently closed until next week)
Thank you very much for the answer though it is highly appreciated
I'm just scared that i might donsomething wrong with it, like maybe wrong cage, or wrong perches, or wrong more things.
Thank you very much
Linlin
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 4
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Cockatiel
Flight: Yes

Re: Where to start?

Postby Pajarita » Mon Jun 03, 2019 11:42 am

Ahh, then we are good! See, when people use the word 'training' they usually mean formal training - as in pre-determined sessions of so many minutes each, teaching things like tricks and always rewarding with a high value item so, when you used that same word, I assume that's what you mean. I don't train at all, if one goes by the common usage of the word, but all my birds know A LOT of commands and are quite obedient even though I don't reward them (I do give them treats every now and then but not as a reward for doing anything, just as a nice thing to do). And you do not have to worry about a cockatiel biting you hard. They just don't unless they are VERY unhappy and completely misunderstood - like I said, they are the sweetest, sweetest things! And you don't really need to DNA a tiel because they are dimorphic (the males looking different from the females), you just have to wait until the juvenile molt and see their adult plumage -well, let me rephrase that, there is a mutation, the white face white or yellow lutino that you need to observe behavior to sex but, aside from that one, all other mutations can be visually sexed once they achieve the adult plumage (only, sometimes, it takes more than one molt for this to happen). If you tell me what mutation yours is, I can tell you what to look for when it molts. Olive is a beautiful name (one of my grand-daughters is named Olivia) but it's a girl's name, isn't it? Is this because you have a feeling it's a girl?

As to cage, the biggest you can find. Perches? Tree branches are the best! Aside from that, it's light, light schedule, diet and number of hours of one-on-one plus number of hours of out-of-cage.

Now, lovebirds do not wean at 5 weeks of age, either. I had a pair of lovebirds raise four babies in my birdroom and the babies never even came out of the nest until they were almost three months old. I am completely opposed to breeding birds for the pet trade but the female had found a little hole on the back of a cabinet and had made a nest under it so I could not see it at all and, by the time I found out (I had a cage-free flock of over 30 of them at the time), the eggs were already half-way incubated so I let them have it. You really cannot go by what breeders or petstores tell you because it's a business to them so the faster the babies wean, the faster they can sell them and put the pair to produce more 'merchandise' so they ALWAYS wean too fast - to the detriment of the baby bird.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: Where to start?

Postby Linlin » Wed Jun 05, 2019 7:11 pm

Hey thank you for answering, and sorry for the late reply, been busy with work, renovating the cage etc, read your reply first of course.
i'm not sure about his / her parents since it was in a communal cage and it already hatch when the breeder was only checking it's nesying boxes to move it to a personal cage (at leastvthat what he told me).
So an update, i've said before that i'm going to get olive a new friend so it won't be lonely at least when i go to work or something.
So yeah i got it a new friend.. a little bit out of prediction though, i got myself a cinnamon conure.. named it lily.. it was a little bit of an impulse buy i guess.. i was planning to get myself another cockatiel i swear, but it just climb to my hand when i was about to pick up another cockatiel and just sleep at my hands.. i just can't...
So the question being, is it fine? I've searched about cinnmon conure of course, and it was said to be the kost docile, gentle, calm demeanored out of every conure and possible out of another parrots..
The past day, olive have been rather accepting of lily and have start preening it (also don't know it's gender). Lily seems a bit annoyed when olive preens too much though..
Any insight on what should i do or something?
Linlin
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 4
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Cockatiel
Flight: Yes

Re: Where to start?

Postby Pajarita » Thu Jun 06, 2019 8:42 am

By a cinnamon conure you mean a Green Cheek Conure (GCC), right? I don't know where you read that cinnamons are any different than any other GCC... I don't have any personal experience with them because, although I have two of them right now (one is a yellow sided and I think the other one is too -it was very badly plucked when it came and, although its feathers are now growing, the chest is still pretty plucked) and have had more GCCs in the past, I never had a cinnamon but, for what I know about mutations, they are not any different from either the phenotype (normal coloring of the wild bird) or any other mutation. The ONLY ones I can think of that were a bit different were the lutino or albino cockatiels that were weaker and died younger than the other mutations because most breeders got them by inbreeding but I don't think this happens any longer - at least, not much anyway because breeders are being more careful and also because there is now much more stock to breed from (they are even getting rid of the bald head they all had in the past).

Now, I am not sure that a GCC will be a good companion to a tiel... They are very different. Not so much in terms of diet because you they are both very low protein birds so you can feed them the same food but it will have to be gloop for breakfast because that's about the only food they will both do well on and you will find that the GCC will love its fruits while the tiel will love its greens but they can both eat the budgie seed mix dinner (be careful about not feeding them the normal cockatiel or conure mixes that have lots of sunflower seeds (bad for them!). The difference is in their temperaments. The GCC will bond very deeply with you and will require many, many hours of one-on-one while the tiel will not and will require many hours of flight time so I hope you have enough time because having birds with different needs is not easy... But you will need to keep both at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk (at least, 1.5 hours each event) and both are small so if the GCC is kept happy (not very easy to do this unless you are home all day long), and they like one another, it should be OK.

Please do not forget to feed them baby bird food, especially the GCC which is going to require it for a couple more months if it's a young baby.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: Where to start?

Postby Linlin » Fri Jun 07, 2019 1:44 am

Thnak you!
Yes i mean a cinnamon gcc
I always stock up a baby food and i'm willing to feed them until they are weaned.
For a few days now they are fine, my gcc started to get comfortable arpund the cage and the house and my tiel seems to be pretty interested with it's new friend
Thank you very much for all your answers, it helps a lot
Linlin
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 4
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Cockatiel
Flight: Yes

Re: Where to start?

Postby Pajarita » Fri Jun 07, 2019 7:40 am

If you always keep some handfeeding formula at home (I do too, puppy, kitten and bird), make sure it's still good because it doesn't last forever.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes


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