brought my new babies home now what.

[jewels04]

The cockatiels came home this evening and i'm kinda at a loss for what to do. Their semi-friendly, kinda nippy and obviously very nervous. I'm guessing their approximately 2 years old, from the quick glance I got at their leg bands.

Ok onto my questions. Supposedly their a male and a female but i'm not entirely sure if the one is a girl they said the birds never bred and she has never laid an egg. I am really considering seperating them and just housing them next to each other. They don't seem bonded though. Thoughts about this is it a good idea?

Next question is they came with higgins vita cockatiel. Is this a good food?

And finally the male swears, he says the S word and since that is all he knows he says it a lot. How can I discourage this?

 

[Julianna]

Congrats on your new birds! Give them some time to settle in and get used to everything, and then you can let them out and start building up trust with them. If you want to know for sure what gender they are I would just get them DNA tested. Then you could get a better idea of whether they'd do better separated or in the same cage, too. I'd keep them together until they've settled in, since that's how they were before. That way it would probably just be less stressful for them. To discourage the swearing, you can try to teach him some other noises or words and praise him when he does those sounds but not when he swears. Hopefully he'll learn that he gets rewarded for all the noises except swearing. Sorry, I don't know about the food. Good luck!

 

[MikeyTN]

What color are they??? Are you able to post a picture of them? The swear part is hard to stop them from doing so, IF you could say another word that's close to that word he's saying to persuade him to say something similar instead that's a better word. If they're not too attached to each other, yes you can separate them apart in cages right next to another. That would be fine to do!

 

[jewels04]

One is a standard grey and obviously male. The other is a white faced pied and they were told she was female. They seemed to be pecking/arguing a lot last night after we got them home, if I talked they would both come up to me and listen to what I was saying but they would hiss at my children when they first come up but than they calmed down. I don't plan on separating them right away I want them to settle in and at least for now I want their wings clipped for training they are very efficient flyers seeing as their wings have never been clipped.

I have a feeling they were a little abused when I cleaned their cage I was finding pen caps, skittles and m&m's in the bottom so i'm wondering if the daughter was throwing stuff to get them to be quiet.

 

[crimson]

it sounds like your calmer house is much better for them, it won't take them long to figure that out.

as for the swearing(which I had to laugh) not much you can do to stop that, other than coming up with another word that sounds similar.

let them settle in, if they really don't get along, then put them in separate cages, but if they are out for free flight time, let them out together.

 

[jewels04]

Well i'm not so sure my house is calmer but at least we're not throwing pen caps and skittles at them. They got their wings done today and even decided that playing on top of their cage was ok. Now to get them to stop biting but I know we'll get there. I don't know how long they were neglected for before we got them so it's a work in progress and we'll get there soon enough, no rush.

I have laughed too when the boy swears he says "Bentley you little s@$#!" His name was Bentley but we might change it.