New Cockatiel! Any name suggestions? About 8 weeks old. What color?

[galanie]

At 8 weeks there's no way you can tell what a cockatiel is, male or female. Sure, it has bright ear patches but on Pieds, and I think this one is at least part Pied, both males and females have really bright ear markings. And some pearl males keep their pearl markings a long time (pearl males end up solid colored - for those that didn't know

- so even at 1 year, you could be surprised.

I'd send some feathers in to a DNA sexing company. It's only like $20. Much more expensive if you let the vet do it, usually. You can google DNA sexing for birds and come up with a number of companies online.

 

[silkiechicken]

Thanks for all the gender and color guesses. He's of mixed lineage so can be anything!

If anything this little guy is going to speak parakeet. LOL They get to talk to each other all day long when the humans are all at work so any hopes of actual talking are probably going to be pretty low with the bird... who is at the moment walking all over the keyboard crying as the parakeets are doing laps around the room and hamsters are rolling around in their balls all over the place. My blue parakeet has taken a liking to the bigger bird, but she's a pain like that when it comes to any other animal. She gets into everybody's business and even tries to land on the hamster balls as they are rolling around the floor. But I don't have nearly as many small animals as ctrlover!

As for pellets, he has already picked up eating them, although he still "peels" some of the larger ones before he swallows them. He will try anything a few times if offered from the palm of my hand. Loves pecan nut bits and basil, but he's not so sure about carrots and fruit so far. Finally touched the millet and figured out they taste good too. No worries about him going hungry. I have his hand feeding formula and he's down to 5cc's a day before bed and he does eat on his own, and if you ignore his crying before bed time, and put him near food, he will eat up all the pellets presented. He's still "fat" and consistently about 90 grams in the mornings.

I did look into DNA testing and if I have time, I might just do it myself if I can get primers before the next bunch of mice to genotype.

For now, we've been calling him cornelius till something better comes up... names are so hard, most of the animals are named after some sort of physical descriptor. LOL