How to Add Another Bird & Mixing Species
April 27th, 2009Jamieleigh
I have a cockatieal and he is the love of my life. I just got him a few new toyes and a larger cage than what he had. however I am a full time college student and my boyfriend works fulltime….when i am home he is at work and when he is home i am at school. coco (my tieal) is hardly ever home alone for longer than 2 or 3 hours. this past weekend i went to my mothers and my bf came with me….we were gone for 13 hours and when we came home coco was destructive and very loud. he used to have a mate but she died flying into a wall ( this was before we got him from our neighbor) we were thinking of getting another tieal however we do not know if coco being a male and haveing no idea how old he is how he would adjust. we were also thinking maybe insted of another tieal maybe getting a parakeet or two to keep him company when and if we are ever gone for that long again. I dont want him to change twords us for getting another bird…like i said he is my baby. i actualy get depressed when i am gone from him for more than a day. I just want him to be happy.
- Winter
There’s a lot you can do for your cockatiel that doesn’t lead to you getting another bird. Remember, if you are already having problems with one bird… another one or two is not going to help you help your first one any better. You simply don’t have enough time in your day.
With that said, all Coco needs is a little independance and self-entertainment. Although you gave him toys, they may not be the right kind of toys. And yes, there is a difference.
Birds need both shreddable and food finding toys. Petstores and online petstores carry a wide variety of foraging foods for small birds such as cockatiels and parakeets. When you leave, you need to either take Coco with you, teach him to be more independant on his own or leave him with things to do. Or all of the above, which is best.
Our 100% natural parrot toys provide both – they can be used as food finding toys and they can be shredded apart afterwards.
These toys will give him something to do while you’re away and build some independence.
As far as getting a pair of parakeets for your cockatiel – parakeets and cockatiels don’t get along so great and the size difference isn’t preferable, either. Parakeets tend to pick on other birds, especially if there is more than one of them. They will literally pull the feathers out of the others birds, even if they are larger than them. They usually pull around the eyes and legs. They just don’t mix well with other species.
Although a lot of socialization training can be done to get two species to get along well, it’s a lot of work and dedication and you want to set yourself and your birds up for success with it. A cockatiel and parakeet is going to be tricky and if anything were to happen, the cockatiel could take the parakeet out a lot easier… it’s just a dangerous mix I don’t recommend attempting.
You can literally feed your cockatiel his whole meal within these toys and it takes him hours to eat – just like it would in the wild. It’s good for them to be given this kind of mental challenge to overcome. You may need to start with treats inside the toys first, just to inspire your bird’s curiousity first.
Parrots are more likely to go after treats than their normal pellet within these toys if they aren’t hungry right away. This is what I have done for Magoo, Chet’s cockatiel, in the pictures above. I started with millet and seed because I knew his want for millet would overcome his fear of the new toys.
Food finding toys build independence so you will eventually be able to leave again for 13 hours and not come back to a destructive bird.
Trick training also builds independence because it gets your bird’s mind going. So when you are home, challenge your bird with some training. We start with the very basics in the trick training course where we simply teach you how to teach your bird that it can learn. It’s simple and usually only takes a day or two to see results.
Using training and providing your cockatiel with the right kind of toys, you will be teaching him self entertainment and in no time you will be able to leave the house without a destructive cockatiel to come home to.
And remember, traveling is good for parrots! They do it in the wild! You can always take your bird with you as an option as well, especially on short trips. It’s just another form of desensitization.
I let my male cockatiel and pair of budgies out every morning for a couple of hours play time together. The budgies mostly ignore the cockatiel but he follows them everywhere and does what they do – preening, chewing wood, knocking toys off the top of the cupboard etc. He is enamoured of the male budgie. The budgies ward him off with a feint nip if the tiel gets too close but otherwise they even get in each others cages together without problems. They go back into their separate cages after play time but the tiel hates to be separated from the budgies and screams for them if they are out of sight. I put the cages together outside during the day. My tiel is naturally a very nervous bird (much more so than my first tiel which escaped) and I feel he needs the ‘Flock” feel of having the budgies around.
The downside is he prefers playing with them to training. He can wave, nod. shake no, turn circles, bow, follow a stick, and also put paper clips in a cup and go through a drainpipe tunnel, but the latter two tricks he is bored with and won’t generally do now. He has also mostly stopped talking and whistling tunes, partly because he thinks of that as a mating display only, and partly because he prefers to talk – or shriek – budgie. He does come voluntarily to me for head scratches, rides and company – sometimes even on command when we are doing flight training!
Should I wean him off contact with the budgies to get him to play more with me and train better? How do you manage to have so many birds together and still train each individual (as in your cocatiel video where you train it with other birds next to it) and have each one relate well to you and not prefer the other birds? I thought I would like to get another tiel but I am afraid that then neither of them would relate to me.