[Niny]

Hey guys,
As I'm sure you can all tell, I'm new here!
My partner and I just brought our new little girl cockatiel home 4 days ago. She is a 5-6 week old standard grey (though she hardly has any yellow showing through yet. I imagine this will change over time) named Tali.

When we first brought her home we unknowingly did the wrong thing. Since she was hand-raised we throught she would be ok with being handled lots right away, but this had resulted in he becoming a bit more aggressive after the first two days.
Noticing these changes in her behaviour, we changed our approach. Now we are just opening the cage and letting her wonder out into her play gym on her own. She's slowly getting more comfortable with coming out on her own and is happily nibbling at her toys. She's getting a lot better with us sitting closer and closer to her, and she'll even let me move her food/water/toys with her still on the play gym. She will hiss is I get too close though, and lunges at me when I have to put her back in the cage for sleep.

My next course of action is to get her used to hands, by having them sitting near her, without touching her, for 10 min stints for maybe 2-3 days.
I am concerned about bed time though. Does anyone have any advice on how to get her to go back into her cage on her on accord? I would rather not have to get her to 'step up' before she is ready if I can avoid it, since it might make her fear hands more.

This is my first cockatiel, and any advice would be appreciated. We really want to get her used to humans, so that we can train her later and have her out of her cage for the majority of the time.

Cheers

 

[stevechurch2222]

Welcome to the forum,glad to have you here,there is a sticky in the training and taming section of the forum that has a lot of great information that will help you with your training and taming of your cockatiel.

 

[Fredandiris]

She won't be showing much yellow after her first molt. Female normal greys keep their grey faces throughout their lives. Her age is a bit of a concern though. Are you sure she is 5-6 weeks old? Cockatiels generally don't fully wean until they are 8 weeks old at earliest and that's to be safe. My babies didn't wean until 7 weeks, but I had to keep them an extra week to make sure they were fully weaned. It's important to make sure she doesn't regress and start begging for food again. If she does, she'll probably have to be taken back to the breeder.

She may still be getting used to everything around her. Youve only had her for 4 days and sometimes it can take weeks for a bird to really settle in. What you're doing now is good. Take it at her pace. Eventually, you could try using a stick to get her step-up. I did this with one of my formerly aggressive birds and it got him used to actually stepping up. He wasn't as scared of the stick as he was of my hands. Eventually, I graduated him to a fist, as in I clenched my hand in a fist and held it out to him to step onto (he was a biter and always drew blood so I had to use this method). After a while, he got a lot tamer and would gladly spend all his time with me. Took a few months though so patience is key.

Good luck though, and welcome to the forum ( I'm a newbie to this forum too but I've had my fair share of experience with cockatiels though not nearly as much as other people on this forum).

 

[roxy culver]

5-6 weeks old is really really young to bring home a baby tiel. They don't normally wean til about 8 weeks of age. Are you giving her formula? If you don't already have one, getting a gram scale is a good idea so that you can monitor her weight to make sure she's eating like she should be. Would love to see pictures of her!

And yea, female normal greys wont get a yellow face. That's only males.

 

[Niny]

Cheers everyone, sorry about my disappearance.

I think I must have heard wrong regarding her age, or I'm mixing it up with one of the many many other tiels I looked at online and in shops. After looking at some photos of 5-6 week old tiels, I can defiantly tell you she isn't that young. She is fully weaned and has all of her feathers (just a little scruffy under her wings still, and her crest is more like a little puff of feathers)

We have been going at her pace and so far she has been really good! I am very surprised (and proud) of how fast she has been learning. She was progressing a lot faster than we had anticipated, so we decided to give clicker training a go a little earlier than planned. At the moment we are just trying to train her not to lunge at our hands- AND WHAT RESULTS! Wow!
She used to hiss and lunge if we moved our hand anywhere near her while she was on her perch. We have been moving our hands towards her little-by-little and clicking when she doesn't react after 5 seconds, removing our hand, then rewarding her with millit. We have been slowly getting closer and closer without her reacting and where able to touch her feet yesterday without any aggression. We have even gotten her to 'step up' a few times without her nipping, lunging or hissing. Once she is out of her cage or off her play pen she will happily 'step up' on her own every time, and she only shows aggression when she is in her 'territory'.

Today I think she was in a bit of a grumpy mood though. It was a bit of a 'one step forward, two steps back' kind of a day. She was funny to watch though, she spent a lot of the time biting things and head-banging her beak into her perch and scampering around her play pen.

 

[Niny]

Here's some pics of her.

 

[Loopy Lou]

Congrats on your bird!

Head banging eh? That's a distinct male trait :O

My birds go back into their cages because they don't get any food outside their cage unless it's from me. This works pretty well because 1. they know they have to go back in to fill their faces and 2. they come to me for yum yums more often

When it's a baby bird though sometimes they can get disorientated and maybe not know how to get back to the cage.

Aw the pic is lovely

My birds can have grumpy days too, same as us i guess!

 

[Niny]

Ooh, that's a great idea!
Once she realized that millit wasn't a threat to her she went absolutely berko over it! Now all she has to do is see it and she'll stand at attention.

She's fine with coming out of her cage. The first thing I do in the morning is open up the cage, put the play pen out and 10 mins later she'll be out of the cage and messing about. She still has a little bit of trouble getting around it, because she's still quite small. Sometimes I just want to put my finger in front of her and help her get to where she wants to be, but she'll just nip me if I try to pick her up inside her pen or cage (she's fine if it's from the floor/table/couch ect). She's a bit better with my partner though (he's the one training her). He was pretty bummed out today when she wasn't reacting to the training, but I assured him that she was probably just having an 'off day'.

 

[Loopy Lou]

Is she actually trying to bite your hand or using her beak to test out to see if you're sturdy to stand on? My baby Echo nibbles my hand all the time but doesn't actually bite. My male one Smokey does bite, but sometimes he's actually just bashing me with his beak but will still step up.

 

[Niny]

When she's calm and just gone through a training session she will use her beak as a third leg. Bit the biting i'm talking about is defiantly real biting, complete with lunging, and hissing.
When she does nip it's been pretty harmless. She hasn't drawn blood yet.