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Love Tiels · by **Love Tiels** on Sat Feb 26, 2011 5:48 pm

HI eveyone.. Bare with me and my story here:

I have been looking for months for a inexpensive cockatiel for mine.. I found this add on craigs list for my home town in Nov.. I have a male and wanted him to have a friend in his big cage.. I went to get HIM and man, HE was just to neat! total yellow head and plume? and nice colored feathering.. Later ID as a cinnomon Pearl. I think.. U tell me..

My male is a normal gray teil whos name is Pretty bird.. Who I got back in 2001 from my son.. As time goes on PB does not like HIM at all and I had to pull PB out a few times as HE was attacking PB a lot. NOW I know why.. A few weeks after I got HIM, ppl came over and commented on the eggs on the bottom of the cage.. WHAT??? ( I keep the cage mostly coved to keep drafts out so U can not see the bottom of the cage directly) Yep, Eggs... Ok.. now are they fertile or not.. NO.. NOT.. ( reading on this site how to see if they are fertile or not after a week)

And now I know SHE was not really attacking him just wanting him to mate and he wouldnt'. BUT mine has been alone for over 10 yrs and likes his perch much better.. I dont' think he knows what to do actually..
I found him on the cage floor looking at the 2 eggs (now 3) the other day!! O boy.. I tryed to get a pic of it but he saw me and climbed back up.

As they are not fertile which I am greatful for,, as she has layed 5 to 7 eggs every three weeks.. I read on here, ( great site!) to keep the cage dark and covered for 14 hrs.. I keep it covered from 9-10pm to 10 am the next day and NO direct lights around them but a lamp and a aquarium.. that is only 12 hr.. Hard to do in the living room as everyone is up and going at 9-10am..

I tryed to get her some more calcium, as in boiled eggs-cheese (again reading on this site ) but she wont' eat it at all. YES they are on seed food and I have not found any pellets at all.. I dont' have a CCard so I can not order any.. she seems to be doing good thou with all the eggs she lays. The ppl I got her from RAISED cockatiels and just got out from under them last year. I am surprised they could not tell HE as a SHE!! OR did they?? they would not return my calls/emails.. makes U wonder for sure!! I like her and wil keep her for now.. I might try to find her a better home with a willing male in a month or so.. I tryed seperating them but they screemed for each other and drove me crazy so they are better together it seems.. NOT sure how PB wil be once I find her a new home later. OR are they bonding as they did screem for each other. I stil see he wont' have anything to do with her as she would like to mate as I know she wil lay more eggs. LOL..

HE that is a SHE, named her Pretty Girl.. Feb 24, 2011..

With eggs:

Warm weather is coming here next week and the cage needs cleaning and I wil do so then.. Amazing how nasty they can get through winter!! I clean the pearchs by-weekly the cage floor every 4 days with two birds now..
Love Tiels I Think!! LOL..

Bluesbird Exotics · by **Bluesbird Exotics** on Sat Feb 26, 2011 6:53 pm

She's gorgeous! What a magnificent crest! But that's too much egg laying

If you can't get some good-quality pellets for her, surely you could feed her a decent diet of healthy fresh food. I serve fresh food finely chopped and stirred into brown rice and quinoa. Since quinoa is high protein, I mix one part of it with 4 parts of rice. The best vegetables are the ones with red or orange color all through: carrots, red peppers, and sweet potato. Squash and cauliflower are good too. Greens that are high in calcium and vitamins A and C are broccoli, collards, dandelions, kale, mustard, carrot tops, spinach (only if organic and sparingly even then), arugula, and chard. Lettuce (other than Romaine), celery, corn and peas are very low in nutrition and take up space in the crop, killing the bird's appetite for the healthier foods she needs. Because the chopped veggies and greens are so tiny and the grains are sticky, while my birds are eating the grains they love, the veggies are getting eaten accidentally! YAY!!!

It's very inexpensive to feed these fresh foods to a bird, since they eat VERY little. If you eat some and give a little to your birds, all of you will be healthy! I hope you will keep her. You and both birds seem very happy together from your description. I don't know why you would consider separating them when they scream for each other :cry:

I promised myself long years ago that I'll never separate birds who love each other. That what their screams tell me -- that they love each other, even if they aren't having sex ... yet. Please keep her.

Love Tiels · by **Love Tiels** on Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:32 pm

I new she layed to much, but trying to get her to eat other than seed and some crust from wheat bread has not worked.. She is down to 1 egg now, the other two broke.. she screams at U when she knows her eggs are gone!! I covered them earily as she would not stop.. I wil try those foods and see how she and PB does.. ON them being compatable, I dont' know. I wil prob keep her as it as been sence Nov when I got her.. Just wish they got along better BUT again thankful for NO babies.. YET.
So it is called a crest? I always thought of them as plumes or such.. dumb me.. LOL.. She does have a nice one..

Thanks for the response and advice.

christie · by **christie** on Sat Feb 26, 2011 11:33 pm

I don't have time for a full reply right now. I see you have been reading on the site and probably have come across the reccomendations to keep birds from laying. If you can change her cage up entirely, add a grate and move everything around it may help. You can always buy a prepaid CC at the grocery store to order pellets if none of the stores around you carry them.

She is a beautiful bird, cinnamon pearl pied.

bostonbudgie · by **bostonbudgie** on Sun Feb 27, 2011 8:00 am

What a beauty!

I would invest in a decent book or two as a guide. "cockatiels for Dummies" is pretty good. Barron's book on "cockatiels" and "the complete book of cockatiels". the newer the edition the better.

christie · by **christie** on Sun Feb 27, 2011 11:32 am

I wanted to add, if you change up the arrangement and location of the cage, stay with long nights, and she is still laying eggs, try talking to your avian vet about hormonal treatments to stop the cycle. Once she stops laying, you could go a long time without it happening again, it's just a matter of breaking the cycle.

I snagged this from another thread, but the info is great.

MFids wrote:Wrote this for someone else...

When you remove her eggs, you need to save them incase she starts up again, or buy plastic/wooden eggs. After you removed her eggs, did you change around her diet? Make sure she got at least 12-16 hours of sleep? Change around her cage? Perhaps change the location of her cage? Made it so that she could not nest down at the bottom? Here's a list I've created...

Remove Eggs
Rearrange the cage
Perhaps move the cage to a new location
Use a cage grate
Get a new cage
12-14 hours of complete darkness
Decreace calcium and protein within the diet
Remove anything that could be taken as a nest
Remove anything that could be used as nesting material
Don't allow her in any dark place or enclosed area
IMPORTANT: save the eggs in the fridge
If she lays more than 3-4 eggs, put them back in the cage
Leave the Eggs
Leave the eggs alone in the cage
[Optional] Replace with fake eggs (prevent eggs from breaking)
Increase calcium
Let hen sit on eggs for 3-4 weeks or until she gets bored of them
Once done sitting, toss

Main thing though, is if she's laying soft-shelled eggs, then she needs more calcium and vitamin D in her diet.
http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww22eii.htm

MFids · by **MFids** on Sun Feb 27, 2011 2:27 pm

I'll go against what I normally suggest and say she probably needs *more* daylight hours, not less. I say this because if her cage has been covered, she may view the *entire* cage as her place to nest - and possibly why she's gotten upset with PB... So providing more hours to sleep is probably counter-productive. One of the hens I took in became a chronic egg-layer when her cage was covered practically 24/7 - because she was "too noisy". They would remove the eggs, she would lay more. To top it off, they "forgot" to take care of her, so when I got her, she was nearly 50% underweight, and so weak that when she flew, it was easy to catch her mid-air.

Pretty Girl is a cinnamon pearl pied. Pieds *cannot* be sexed via their head feathers, but if you are lucky you may be able to sex them via tail/wing feathers. My first cockatiel, Casey, whom I've had since she was 5 months old, is a cinnamon pearl pied! She's almost 9 years old! Here's a couple pictures of her!

Now as far as sexing, I have pictures of a normal male, pearl female, and whiteface female. Pearl cockatiels can differ, so you can't always go off the markings - except for the fact that males usually loose their pearls and look like normal males. Also, keep in mind this works best on cockatiels who are over a year old, and does not work with all pied cockatiels, particulary heavy pieds.

Normal male cockatiel

Pearl female

Whiteface hen - these pics were not taken for my 'sexing' guide, but rather to show how badly she's gone after herself (she's a bit of a mutilator, hence the bad feathering)

Now, I don't know about albinos, but lutinos are rather easy to sex! Below is a picture of a young male lutino, that under a black light, his female markings light up. As a mature male, the only part of him that would light up would be his head. Please click on the images to enlarge!

This technique does not work with pied feathers (and I suspect with albinos as well - but can't confirm) since the pied removes all traces of color/markings from the feathers. These pictures are not as good as the previous two, but shows Casey under a black light. Her pied feathers do not light up like the males immature feathers do.

If it helps, here's a couple of pictures of Tomi Girl, another pied hen.

MFids · by **MFids** on Sun Feb 27, 2011 2:45 pm

Lot of pictures in my last post, so figured I'd split it up.

Give your hen like 9 hours of sleep per night, for like 4 weeks. If this doesn't help, switch back to the 14 hours of sleep per night. 10pm-10am is 12 hours, so put her to bed around 5-6pm and get her up around 9-10am. If you need to, move her cage to another location where it's completely dark and quiet. Keep her on a dark schedule for a month, and then switch her back. The idea is to try and kick her out of the habit by messing up her schedule.

As for foods, well, look at these two threads! Just keep in mind she should be getting 15% *healthy* legumes, 30% *healthy* grains - these two being either cooked or sprouted, 45% fresh/steamed mix of vegetables (think, sweet potatos, carrots, peppers, collard greens, kale, dandelion greens, etc), and 10% fruits (berries, some apples, mango, etc).
Bird Safe Fresh Foods & Toxic Food Lists & More
Converting Parrots to a Healthier Diet - Tips

Do you not have any petstores in your area that carry pellets? You could always contact various pellet companies and ask for free samples. Some will give free samples, while others will sell you a sample pack or have a money back guarantee. Pellets should not consist of more than 25-50% of a cockatiels diet (regardless of how "healthy" they may be, too much of a good thing is bad for the little guys!) Also, keep in mind that dye-free/sugar-free pellets are probably some off the 'better' stuff. At the bottom of the following website is a list of pellet manufacturers that you can try contacting for samples!
http://www.artemisaviary.com/pellet.html

Now, you can keep PB and PG in separate cages, just keep the cages next to each other during the day! They don't *have* to be in the same cage! They probably are not mates, but they *are* flock members, and flock members will call to each other. Tomi girl is the odd-ball of my group of 5 cockatiels. She does not like any of the others, and gets quite pissed if her *bubble* gets invaded - but if separated from the flock she *will* call to them! So don't worry about separating them if it's obvious that they aren't paired up! And btw, drafts don't kill birds! Think of all the birds living in the wild and having to put up with breezes and winds! Birds also don't get colds, or anything that can be constitutes as a cold... yes, they can get sick, but they can't get a cold! If their cage is in an area that may be a little too breezy, and they appear uncomfortable, then move them! Otherwise, they may enjoy that movement of air!

Love Tiels · by **Love Tiels** on Sun Feb 27, 2011 5:33 pm

Thank U all for the great advise for Pretty Girl= PG for short on typing.. when she gets done laying, which now as two broke last nite but she layed another one already, she should stop pretty soon.. She will go a few weeks without laying and I wil try in that time period to do what was suggested. I can not move the cage my moms home is not big enough and it is a faily large cage. I can seperate them thou, as PB can go into a smaller cage and I had it that way but he just would not shut up or stop walking his perch even beside the bigger one.. I wil have to maybe do her in the smaller cage and place her in my bed room, I dont' know I will work with both and see how it goes..

Their is a grate on the bottom but eaiser for me to have the paper on top of it than on the bottom.. NO tray came with the cage so we got it really cheap..LOL... This was not a problem with just one tiel, but now with her it seems to be.. NO other material is in with them for nesting other than the newspaper on the bottom, she likes to shred some but not to much.. I tryed a basket with some shredded paper, but she just layed beside it.. (before I found this site on how to not incourage egg laying with nesting material)

Great on the sexing pics. I learned a lot from the links on this site and found she fit the cinnamon perl pied as U say MFids.. I for one did not want to raise any tiels and would not really concider PB to be a good breeder for her with inregard for the color of the chicks.. Seems ppl want the colored ones and not the grays.. A house down from me has a pure yellow..

The ppl I got her from raised them for years!! I just dont' understand how,, with what I found here on this site, how they could not see HE was a she.. I think she is just fine and I wil probible keep her and work with her later on out side the cage.. Getting her fed right and trying to figure out a way to keep the laying off for a time is the challenge right now.. BUT she is my first female and I wil just have to dig in and get it right!! For both of us... LOL...

Thanks all.. Keep the advise coming as this has been great for others out their too!!

MFids · by **MFids** on Sun Feb 27, 2011 8:16 pm

If you moved PB into the smaller cage, then I would say to move PG instead, as that will help to upset her schedule more, especially if PB is used to *his* cage.

Can you get us pictures of both cages?

You never know what PB might be split for, but if you have no experience raising and breeding, then it's better not go there until you are ready! If it makes you feel any better, Casey masturbates on her perches and in food dishes... she's had a male who fell for her, and tried to win her over, but when she was pleasuring herself, he'd walk on over all excited and all masculine like, trying to impress her, and she's stop and walk/fly off! :oops:

Casey is quite motherly with her eggs, and she doesn't mind me handling her eggs, either, but she doesn't understand the entire mating and incubation process! She was hand-raised from the day she was born, and I've had her since I was 13 years old! She's 9 now, and I'm almost 23, so I hope to have her for several years to come!

As for the whole sexing thing, well there are still people out there who would believe that a clear face *always* means male - hence Tomi Girls name! The idiots who found her called her Tom thinking she was a male, and I told them she was a female, but they didn't believe me one bit! Then "Tom" laid an egg!

Since PB is a normal grey, as you say, if he's not split to any mutations, all of his offspring will be grey, regardless of what hen you pair him to.

Love Tiels · by **Love Tiels** on Sun Feb 27, 2011 11:10 pm

Sorry late here, watching the emmys!! I knew if they do mate, that the chicks will be more gray than like her, so I would not really want that.. Yes I have a pic of the two cages. The small one is the one the female came in, but works really if U need to seperate them for short term.. We got the big one in 2003 or so, not sure.

IF i find I need to keep them seperated every now and then, and I get my own place in a few months, I wil get another bigger fight cage or make one, 6x6x3' deep for them and use the big one for times of seperation.. PB seems to do better with her in the big cage IF she has eggs and some times not, than in the smaller one in my bedroom and listen to all the screeming they do. LOL..

: The smaller cage came with the female

MFids · by **MFids** on Sun Feb 27, 2011 11:53 pm

Not ideal cages, I see.... Not much you can do with the smaller cage, but the large one you should try spacing the perches out more throughout the entire cage. The cages also *do not* need to be covered to keep drafts away (unless it bothers them). The main thing, if you can, improve their diet and get them more toys (preferably no mirrors)

Here's a picture of my cage, although please note, these birds are usually not caged, and I did buy them extra toys just for being caged... this picture was taken at the local bird shop where they are currently being boarded (went on 2 vacations, out of country, and although I'm back in the country, I'm not home yet!), but perhaps it'll give you some ideas. That is, if the picture comes out right. Inside the cage is 5 cockatiels, a budgie and a bourke. The last time I saw them, most of the toys had been chewed up/destroyed... so I know it's kept them entertained!

If you can't afford to buy a lot of new toys, that's fine! You can make them! The below website is great in that regard! Lots of ideas! Be sure to look at all the links in the left hand collum, as well as the PDF Enrichment Activity Books on the first page!
Parrot Enrichment

So even if you have a limitted budget, there's still options out there! And keeping PG busy with something other than eggs is great! Toys and bathes can be a great distraction!

Love Tiels · by **Love Tiels** on Mon Feb 28, 2011 12:51 pm

Great cage U have!! but U have many teils and I only had the one for years and now 2. That large cage for TWO cockatiel is fine and even with another one would be OK.. but no more..

I want to "make" a bigger one with more room so they can get away from each other if not get some others, prob parakeets to help fill their days.. At 6f L x6-7f Tx3-4f W is a nice size and I had one years ago for parakeets and loved it, U just need the room to house it..

When I got the female, I added in more perchs to the cage in the middle and close to the bottom so they can swich off pretty well with out to much difficulty from perch to perch. I tryed to stager them so the their droping stays off.. TRYED is the word here!! LOL

PB did not need many perchs and when he wanted down, he climbed,, but liked it up high as most birds do.. HE does not like toys and I have many but he stays away from them as far as he can get!! I hung them on the out side of the cage for weeks but as soon as they came in, he would not go near them.. I never had probs with a mirror with him and it is stil in their now. It is the only one he likes really but prefers his "towel" that hangs by that perch, he places his head in it and talks.. I guess it is his comfort blanket.. IF he sees U with a hand towel , he starts to talk and whistle!!

PG the female, came with some toys and she really likes them so I have more in, but at the back as PB just stayed in a corner and would not move until I moved them back.. goofie for sure! U would think he would love to investigate them, but no. I was hoping PB would see her playing with them and know they are not going to hurt him any and check them out. I am stil waiting for that day. HE did go check out the eggs!! Small steps here for sure!!

Remember,, I have had Pretty Bird for 10 yrs now.. I AM NOT a novice here, just with the female.. I have kept birds before and love them,, but I also realize every species is different and their needs are different too..

As for covering it up, I run the celling fan (hot flashes here! and mom keeps the temp up to much!! continuous battle!!) and that creates a cool breeze on them. In the summer time I remove it all and place them by a window, which now is not their, so they will go into my bedroom this summer or Another house soon I hope so they can get some sunshine and good light.. All in time..

THIS pic is when I got the new bird in Nov 2010, so the big cage looks bear but now looks more lived in u could say... I wil get a new pic up soon..

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