ArowanaLover
Sprinting down the street
- Joined
- 2/9/15
- Messages
- 597
A few days ago I picked up a mate for my cockatiel Nigel. I have an agreement with a pet store where I buy juveniles from breeders, tame them, and then sell them to said pet store. The biggest pain is the drives to acquire the birds. On top of this, the return is only $25 for the cockatiels, which sucks because thats only about one item in the saltwater aquarium world (where EVERYTHING is overpriced). I figured that I would both raise my profit and lower my drives if I was to purchase a female. Having done so, I am now aware that this bird, while meeting all other requirements, is not very tamed, is this optimal? She (yet unnamed) has bitten me several times in our interactions (though today she seemed a lot less nippy and didn't bite me nearly as hard). I let Nigel perch (I set a perch on the outside of her cage) near her, but she has not returned much...I'll use the word "friendliness." How should their first free interaction be, I don't want any harm to come to either of them. Also, when should I introduce the nestbox, I'm thinking 1-2 weeks after their introduction?
Concerning the yet unnamed cockatiel: She is pretty cool, she isn't very coordinated though, she really likes to skitter about on the bottom of the cage with her beak touching the floor (strangely she always grabs a piece of food when she does this and it is always when she is resisting interactions with me). She doesn't eat millet so I can't really reward her, instead I've made her know I mean her no harm by lightly petting her back (sometimes she runs, others she doesn't), this, while not working on the scale as millet, has worked pretty well, I've seen some positive results in only day 2. She is really pretty, excluding a subpar clipping and a shoddy amount of tail feathers (I suspect she wasn't paid much attention to at the breeder who admitted she had never been handled before, however it was a score because she is a awesome looking bird otherwise, the breeder had 80 pairs (just of cockatiels, she had an incredible amount of birds) though, she said she could afford to give me this one before it went into circulation).
Concerning the yet unnamed cockatiel: She is pretty cool, she isn't very coordinated though, she really likes to skitter about on the bottom of the cage with her beak touching the floor (strangely she always grabs a piece of food when she does this and it is always when she is resisting interactions with me). She doesn't eat millet so I can't really reward her, instead I've made her know I mean her no harm by lightly petting her back (sometimes she runs, others she doesn't), this, while not working on the scale as millet, has worked pretty well, I've seen some positive results in only day 2. She is really pretty, excluding a subpar clipping and a shoddy amount of tail feathers (I suspect she wasn't paid much attention to at the breeder who admitted she had never been handled before, however it was a score because she is a awesome looking bird otherwise, the breeder had 80 pairs (just of cockatiels, she had an incredible amount of birds) though, she said she could afford to give me this one before it went into circulation).
