How Much Out of Cage Time?

[liz]

He will fly one day and you will lose him, guaranteed.

I used to work at a farm store. One of the customers always came with a parrot on her shoulder. She had been doing it for many years. She said he won't fly away. But he caught a strong wind and did and she could not get him back.

[Trick or 'Tiel]

A parrot should only ever be taken outside in a harness or carrier, or if the parrot was professionally trained for freeflight. Everyone is telling you that you will lose your bird someday because they are correct. All you need to do is get a harness and train him to wear it and then you can take your bird outside with no worries.

[Pajarita]

Hmmm, I would not say that professionally trained birds are OK with free flight... too many of them have been lost to their 'professional' trainers.

[triplepi]

Guys, this is legit,

This article feels spot on in my opinion. I wish I had read it earlier.
Long story short, I was tasked to rescue a hand-raised lovebird from a neglecting family.
(You shoulda seen the mountain of crap inside the cage she was in 24/24h, 7/7d)
It took 6 months, but I finally gained the trust of the little creature.

Thankfully, she is now very friendly, if only reluctant to cuddling which is a stark contrast to her behavior from the start of our relationship. (Biting and being territorial)

So, all the learning and I did during that time amounted to this : understanding hormones and acceptable activities, better understanding and respecting her limits, having her out of cage as often as possible and giving her lots of attention to reward pleasant behaviors.

All in all, this is reflected in the text you wrote. I am certain any bird owner should follow these guidelines, especially if one has such a little pest as I did. Training this bird was an enriching hardship I would absolutely go through again if it's to see another bird find a piece of happiness and confort.

Thank you, peace

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum, Triplepi, and thank you so much for rescuing this little girl. But, my dear, lovebirds are INTENSELY pair-oriented and they need the company of a mate to be happy. If you have ever seen a bonded male/female pair of lovebirds you will understand that a human can never, ever provide the kind of attention they need. It's impossible. In Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, they are called 'inseparables' and they are! They spend their entire life together - never been more than a few inches away from each other... they even sleep leaning against each other. And they need this 24/7/365 love and attention to thrive. This doesn't mean that she will forget you or stop loving you - she won't. I had one that was given up because of aggression (she was just overly hormonal and very lonely) and she ended up getting two mates while she was with me (her first mate was an old, liver-damage male who died) and, even when she was sitting on eggs (plastic ones, of course), she would come out of her nest as soon as I walked into the room to fly to my shoulder, kiss me and spend time with me (her name was Matilda because she was an Australian cinnamon but my grandkids called her 'the Princess Bird' because they said she had 'privileges' that the other birds did not ). PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE consider getting her a mate.

[frostysulli]

I have a cockatiel, Loki, that I adopted from the humain society about a year ago. I love him to death, but I dont know how to spend time with him. He loves being in his cage. He sits on his favorite perch for hours before moving and sitting on his water dish for the next few hours. His cage is in my living room and I can't leave the door open for him to come to me, because of my parents' dog, which has tried to eat him before (my parents don't like when I put the dog away for any amount of time). I dont know what he went through when he was younger but he doesn't even let me give him treats, he cowers away from them, so I don't really know how to train him, or how to get him out of his cage. Any ideas?

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum and thank you so much for adopting instead of buying a baby!

I am afraid that if your parents do not allow you to lock the dog for a few hours, you can't let him out of its cage. It would be too dangerous. Having said that, I have dogs (too many ) and they are all rescues so it's not as if I trained them from puppyhood not to react to 'prey' animals (I also have cats but they are locked when the birds are out) and they have all learned. The last one is a 15 year old pocket pitbull female that I took in fairly recently and she used to go after both the cats and the birds when she first came (pitbulls have a high prey drive) but she learned not to. She still wants to (you can see it in her body language) but she stops herself from doing it when given a loud SHHHHHH! followed by a "NO! Leave it alone!" as soon as she sits up and tenses and I am sure that in a few more months she will even stop this so you might be able to teach the dog not to react. My golden retriever, whom I've had for many years, learned to freeze when a bird perches on him - and he belongs to a bird hunting breed so it's not impossible. Of course, they are always closely supervised by me when the birds are out (I keep them all in the kitchen by closing the baby gate I have at the entrance and I sit in the kitchen with them).

As to training him... well, I'll be honest with you, I am always of two minds when it comes to training aviary birds (which is what cockatiels are - they are not companion parrots). On the one hand, I do completely understand the human's desire for the closer relationship and ease of handling that implies having a bird step up to a finger (I love birds and I also crave that) and I do firmly believe that taming them so they are not afraid of us is essential for their wellbeing (because of the chronic stress that living with a giant predator alien must mean to them) but, actually, this can be accomplished without any training whatsoever. It just takes patience - lots and lots of patience. I have a few birds that I cannot handle AT ALL but they no longer fear me - quite the contrary, they trust me. Not with the same deep trust that human-imprinted birds have for their chosen humans but they no longer try to bite me or get away from me and they even obey a few commands so they are able to come out of their cages to fly for hours because they will go back into their cages on their own when I tell them to "Go home". I have a parent-raised GCC that learned to go back to her cage when told to and a pair of quakers that I got recently that do not like hands and would not even step up to a stick but I have taught them to step up to my hand (kept flat) covered with 'their' kitchen towel (they have been clipped all their lives and could not fly at all when they first came -they are better now- so, in order for me to put them back on their cage, I had to teach them to step up to something. So, taming and teaching them to trust a human is entirely possible even with parent-raised birds (which is what your tiel is). But, in order for you to be able to do this, you need to be able to let him out of its cage (for some birds, you have to wait weeks and weeks of opening the cage and just wait for them to feel comfortable enough to come out on their own) and, if you cannot do that, there is very little you can do in terms of teaching the bird to step up or anything.

But you can easily teach him to take treats from your hand. All it takes is the right diet and that means no free-feeding protein food because, if you do, for one thing you will end up destroying its liver and kidneys, and, for another, you will never be able to train it. So re-evaluate its diet and find what his high value item is and it will be super easy to get him to take a treat from your hand.

Having said all that, I would like to go a little further on my advice. It deviates from your question but my goal has always been to benefit birds by improving their lives and, for a cockatiel, that means having another bird. Cockatiels are not companion parrots, they are aviary, and even when they are hand-raised and imprinted to a kind human, they are never truly happy without having, at the very least, a mate (best thing for them is a small flock but that is impractical in captivity). It has nothing to do with what the human does or doesn't do - it's the way they evolved and you cannot change evolution. A cockatiel can learn to trust and even love its human, to step up, to perch on its human's shoulder, to enjoy head scratches, etc but what the bird feels for its human will NEVER compare to the enrichment of having a companion of their own species means. So, I would ask you to think a bit about this and see if you can find it in your heart to get him a mate. He is VERY lonely and stressed out as he is now... he has nobody and they need 24/7/365 company. In truth, for a cockatiel to be happy all it needs is a mate, a large flight cage, a good diet and a solar schedule.