Baby Goffin Cockatoo

[Amy36]

Hello,

I am currently owned by an African grey who is 1 year old and also just purchased a baby Goffin Cockatoo. I want to be sure that I am caring for the Goffin correctly.

He is 13 weeks old and was suppose to be weaned but he is constantly crying like he is starving. He has not lost alot of weight from what I can see but I did give in from all of the crying and fed him warm soft comfy food.

Is this bad? He also wants me to always hold him. I do not want to hold him
to much because I am afraid he will never want to play by himself with toys.

Any advise will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Amy

[Lori~D]

Your right about not coddling him too much but he does need some as a baby. Im not familiar with weaning ages of Goffins so hopefully someone else will come on but when a new baby (especially cockatoos) come home they tend to regress a bit sometimes. It wouldnt hurt to offer him some thicker handfeeding formula from a small spoon once or twice a day esp. at bedtime until he settles in. Cockatoos are the longest to wean and stay with thier parents well after Fledging and the parents of some of the larger Toos will offer food to the baby for almost a year sometimes. Again, not familiar enough with Goffins though.
You will have to leave him alone with his toys from time to time even if he cries Just start out with short periods and increase those times - right now he is settling in.

[Amy36]

Thanks so much, your information and ideas helps alot.

Amy

[jenseits]

Yeah, 13 weeks seems awfully young to me, but I wouldn't know about those things. You might want to head over to the forum on mytoos.com and use their site search to research weaning information. Be SURE to read the agenda and a bunch of the threads before you post though (you're going to get grief for buying a baby, be forewarned, but it's an incredible resource for cockatoo owners if you're dedicated to doing what's best for your new baby). Again, 13 weeks seems young to me, and you might need to get some expert help on handfeeding him.

[moluccanman]

I agree with the other posters about the young weaning age. Tango, our Moluccan Cockatoo was weaned at 16 weeks and we thought that was young.

BTW, mytoos.com is an excellent site. I think it might be a tad towards the negative.

Cockatoos in general require a great deal of interaction. I just spoke to one of the board members of the Gabriel Foundation and 160 out of their 450 birds are cockatoos.

Start giving that G2 plenty of things to do. Toos need a job each day. Our M2 loves to entertain the neighbor kids. You can see a short 1:45 video of 2 antics
here

[Amie]

I haven't had much experience with Goffins, but we sponsored a U2 baby for a while, and he wasn't ready to wean until I think he was almost 20 weeks old. I think you should call your vet and get some pointers on handfeeding, and actually make an appointment and be TAUGHT how to handfeed if you haven't done it before. A lot of bad things can happen if you handfeed improperly or wean incorrectly. It isn't hard once you learn, but ignorance can hurt our fids a lot more than we think.