My Life With Cockatiels
Almost 8 years ago now, my daughter-in-law was given a cockatiel named Simon. We already had canaries, so she thought that Simon would be happy living with us. I accepted adding Simon to our bird family even though I knew little about cockatiels.
Simon wasn’t very tame, but when he flew to the floor he would hop onto my finger and make his way to my shoulder where he would whistle to me. One night Simon was yawning (I know that now) and I thought he was choking. I screamed to my husband to see what was wrong and he tried to pick Simon up. Much to his surprise Simon bit him badly and his finger took 2 weeks to heal.
From then on my husband was in Simon’s bad book and visa versa. Soon after Simon came to live with us, my children thought that he was a very lonely bird, so they went out and bought me Stella — a beautiful Lutino. Stella was very tame, but Simon didn’t appreciate her presence at all. However, Simon and Stella tolerated each other as long as they were sitting on different perches.
At one year of age, Stella’s hormones started up and she tried and tried to instill an interest in Simon, but no-go. He just wasn’t interested in her at all. My sister-in-law had a young cockatiel named Aussie, the same age as Stella, who was very tame and wanted to breed but only knew how to enjoy himself on perches. She suggested we swap our male birds — and so we did.
At first Aussie was terrified of Stella, who was very persistent. She would chase him around the large cage until he was tired and panting — poor little fellow. Stella became very jealous of him as well. She didn’t want to share him with me at all. When I had him on my shoulder and then returned him to the cage, she would yell at him. Can you believe it?
One day I witnessed Aussie trying to mount Stella. I guess she taught him what to do. It was so funny to see, because he fell off numerous times before he got it right and stayed on. That’s the beginning of a number of years of breeding baby ‘tiels. The first few eggs were empty. Then some babies died in their eggs, but then there were babies and babies and non-stop babies until I’m at my wits end tying to have them stop and rest.
I have made this take a break from breeding. I only recommend breeding companion parrots if you know they have good, loving, caring homes available. I’ve been fortunate that all my friends and family have learned about birds from my experiences and many have provided homes to Stella and Aussie’s babies. Others who want one of my babies must pass my screening process so that I am sure they know about care and diet and will give the birds a good home. I always ask them to bring the real cage with them so I know what the baby will be calling home — no tiny cages for my babies!
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About the Author: Miriana lives in Canada with her husband Jim. Miriana has become an expert on cockatiels and budgies while Jim continues to love his canaries. Miriana is a member of EliteParrotsClub.com and enjoys learning new information there. You can join her by visiting http://www.EliteParrotsClub.com
