Hello from New Hampshire

[DurableGoods]

We have four cockatiels that we acquired through friends giving up birds, then trying to find mates for each. We now have two mated pairs.

One 7 year old male, Zoe. (I didn't name him!) Was hand raised and still steps up, very sweet bird, hates to be touched.

His mate, Rupert, a female (I didn't name her, either!) Was hand raised but lost all interest in humans after she was mated to another male. He died a year before we got her about a year ago. We think she's about 4-6 years old.

Steve and Susan, mated siblings, rescue cockatiels from a humane society, perhaps 1-2 years old. Almost no human contact from their previous owners, very wild birds. Steve will tolerate some gentle touching during training sessions (see below.) And he's just learning to step onto my finger (if heavily bribed with millet seed.)

I found this forum while looking for the Bird Tricks forum. I have several of the Bird Tricks cds, and love the training methods, but find them hard to customize to my situation. BTW, I found the cockatiel food recommended by Bird Tricks at our local feed stores. I like it because it has no food coloring or filler, and the birds eat ALL of it, rather than pecking out the color/flavor they like and leaving the rest.

I had only Zoe, then acquired the other three will trying to find a mate for him last year. (Long story, I won't go into that!) Then I had multiple injuries and surgeries over 8 months, couldn't devote any time to any training til six weeks ago. I now try to work with them for 15-20 minutes every morning.

We have all four birds in one cage right now. I'm trying desperately to get them to at least step up and sit quietly on my shoulder before I move them to a bigger cage. I'm finally making some progress by working with them in the morning, while they're still a little hungry, and bribing the males with millet to step up to my finger. Both females refuse to have any of that (though the older female seems almost ready to participate), and in fact, I've only recently gotten the females to even eat millet sprigs from my fingers.

I think they like their "flock", though if they would do better as separate couples, I could do that. And I want to get them hand trained before I set any of them up in a bigger cage. And I don't know how to train them once they are outside their cage, because they can fly off even when their wings are deeply clipped.

So I don't repeat questions that have already been asked, I'll check out the previous posts. But any and all suggestions on training from scratch with four birds, or referrals to past threads on this, will be deeply appreciated! :^)

[micki]

hi and welcome to the forum.

[mmr]

welcom. Where in New Hampsire do you live? My sister lives in Henniker.

[catschair]

[my-africangrey-echo]

Hello and welcome to BB Glad to meet you!