I've been summoned?
I have 2 male cockatiels, a 6 year old normal, and a 1-2 year old pearly pied (the pied isn’t visible but that’s what he was sold as) the pearl, Storm has lost his pearls in the year that I’ve had him. I’m considering getting him a mate. I’ve learned a lot about genetics and have done hours of research but I wanted to talk to people who have experience breeding cockatiels. I don’t think I have the time or skill to hand feed and was wondering if handling young chicks is ok? If I got a female I would get a 2ish year old tame pearl (and hopefully pied if it works out). I have a large flight cage and my birds are fed pellets and a Variety of different veggies, grains, and healthy seeds blended into chop. I will also add that Storm has been very hormonal lately and trying to mount my other male.
Storm is the younger of the two? Odd that he was sold as pied but isn't visibly pied. In the hundreds of birds I've bred that carry pied, they've always expressed it. Which is coincidentally why I hate breeding pied to anything not pied because the chicks always show it in varying amounts. Normal that the pearling fades. That happens in males.
A good cockatiel pair will produce on average four chicks and produce them often. I usually advise pulling to handfeed when the chicks would be on 3x a day. Handfeeding really isn't that hard. Especially with tiels. They
like to eat. And baby tiels begging are so cute when you aren't handfeeding 25+ at a time. Then the little shrill screamy/begging and the tee-tee-tee-tee while they are eating makes you want to live in a library.
Well-bonded pairs that are used to you may allow "co-parenting", by which I mean you can pull chicks from the box to handle them and put them back. Generally speaking they will not be as tame as babies that were hand reared. Additionally, parent-raised tiels are very inexpensive and often (IME) don't always go to the best homes. Someone who's paying $100 for a handfed, tamed baby is
usually going to take better care of it than someone who got it for $20.
I got both of my males wild and I hope to sell babies pretty quick after weaning (within a month or so) and I hope to sell them tame. I won’t be hand feeding but I’m wondering if it would stress the parents to much to hold the babies when they are still being parent feed to get them used to people without having to have such a large commitment.
You can try this and see how it goes. Some pairs tolerate it and others don't. Do watch for pairs that feed to heavily as you may have to intervene. I had a pair that consistently over-fed which caused crop issues. Some tiels will also pluck/chew the feathers off their chicks for reasons I have never fully understood. Sometimes it's obvious, like a pair carrying Ino and throwing a chick that looks different. Other times it's a lot harder to pinpoint the reason. Usually I pulled chicks before the parents would do that. Some pairs are happy to raise large clutches, and others prefer single chicks and will ignore the younger chicks to feed the oldest.
Also does anyone have suggestions for where to sell babies? I have quite a few ideas but I’d like to hear from other people.
Always see if you can establish a relationship with a local, mom and pop pet store. Big Box stores (
Petco and
Petsmart) won't accept privately bred birds from individuals, but in many cases the smaller, privately owned stores, or even franchised ones, like Petland, are happy to meet new breeders and be able to sell more in the store. At my store we also hand-fed the chicks so the breeders were responsible for pulling the chicks and getting them started for a few days before transporting them to us and we finished them out. Obviously the breeder received less money when selling them to us young, but the breeder also wasn't investing the time and energy as well as the expense of handfeeding formula into the chicks.
