Hello, I am fairly new to being owned by a cockatoo. Peaches has been with us since February, so almost 4 months. Short background, we are her third family. Peaches was with her first owner for 17 years. She was a restaurant owner and took Peaches with her everywhere. When she passed Peaches went to her second family, an elderly couple. Peaches spent those 7 years mostly in her cage. Back in February her second owner died and now Peaches has me.
Peaches has a large cage, spends a great deal of time out of it, on top of it, the door is open. She gets 30 min of one on one attention in the morning by either myself or my husband, again in the afternoon and again before her bedtime which is 7pm. She is covered at night.
She seems to love both myself and my husband. She cuddles, preens our chins, wants to be close. We can handle her in any way, she doesn’t bite us. I’ve been told that we are lucky.
In April Peaches laid an egg on the couch. Then two nights ago after she had gone to bed I heard the strangest sounds coming from her cage. In the morning found another egg broken on the bottom of her cage.
She has laid two eggs in a two month span. Is this normal?
I’ve read about nesting behaviors so don’t offer her paper to tear or boxes to destroy. She does repeatedly do one behavior, when she’s on the couch she digs/ scratches with her feet, beak down, opening and closing her beak quickly, and kneads her toys, her small stuffy, or tries to do it to my hand, which I won’t allow. It hurts. Is this a hormonal behavior that we should discourage?
She seems to be a happy bird. Very little screaming, which she will stop if we show her the squirt bottle. She doesn’t like to be sprayed.
I did try a search of this site but mostly found egg/nesting issues.
If you’ve read this far, thank you, and thank you in advance for any assistance you can offer me with understanding cockatoo behaviors.
Peaches has a large cage, spends a great deal of time out of it, on top of it, the door is open. She gets 30 min of one on one attention in the morning by either myself or my husband, again in the afternoon and again before her bedtime which is 7pm. She is covered at night.
She seems to love both myself and my husband. She cuddles, preens our chins, wants to be close. We can handle her in any way, she doesn’t bite us. I’ve been told that we are lucky.
In April Peaches laid an egg on the couch. Then two nights ago after she had gone to bed I heard the strangest sounds coming from her cage. In the morning found another egg broken on the bottom of her cage.
She has laid two eggs in a two month span. Is this normal?
I’ve read about nesting behaviors so don’t offer her paper to tear or boxes to destroy. She does repeatedly do one behavior, when she’s on the couch she digs/ scratches with her feet, beak down, opening and closing her beak quickly, and kneads her toys, her small stuffy, or tries to do it to my hand, which I won’t allow. It hurts. Is this a hormonal behavior that we should discourage?
She seems to be a happy bird. Very little screaming, which she will stop if we show her the squirt bottle. She doesn’t like to be sprayed.
I did try a search of this site but mostly found egg/nesting issues.
If you’ve read this far, thank you, and thank you in advance for any assistance you can offer me with understanding cockatoo behaviors.
I've read that 12 hours of complete darkness and sleep might help with this. I'd investigate more on Google though or look for experienced bird owners videos on YouTube
