Cockatiels...

[Nicola]

Hi everyone! The new cockatiel, Rosalie, is going great and has settled in amazingly! No attacks from anyone or to anyone thank god and I think she is just happy to have birdie friends. She ate some carrot for the first time yesterday, and I don't think she has had much experience with food other than seed before... thank god the 9 other gobble mouths are there to show her the ropes

I have a question though. Is there anyway to tell the age of a cockatiel by physical aspects or behaviour? I'm not sure how to tell as I havent had ANY experience with cockatiels before.

And one other thing, what vegetables/fruit can cockatiels eat? As she is in with the budgies I have to be careful with what they CAN both eat or what they WILL eat if you know what I mean.

[Hezz]

Sorry, Nic, can't help with the behaviour, but I can't see that there is anything a budgie can eat that a cockatiel can't ....... so look at it from that perspective and once she is fine with her veggies, maybe just offer her some bigger pieces ...... ??

[kikkinu]

I am new to cockatiels as well. But if you can post some pics I can maybe shed some light as to her age as i ve been reading alot about them.

If you can maybe post some with the carrot food as im curious as to what your feeding her, so maybe i give it a try

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[Nicola]

Thats what I assumed hezz, as they aren't much different from budgies apart from appearance.

I don't have any carrot pics at the moment, but I prepare it the same as the budgies (when I don't have time to make it all fancy) I cut the top and bottom off the carrot, peel it and then cut it in half (vertical) down the center. I then cut those 2 halves across horizontally so instead of having 2 pieces you have 4. Hopefully thats understandable If the carrots really big when you cute it horizontally you can cut more pieces.
Ill just find some pics of Rosalie now

[Nicola]

Here you go kikkinu. Any guesses as to the age?

[sydney]

Theres no way to tell the age but deffo a mature birdie there

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[kikkinu]

There are some ways to roughly tell a bird's age by looking at them. Their size does not change, but there are some other things that do. (Oh, and when I say you can tell a bird's age, I mean you can tell whether or not they're a baby; you can't tell the difference between two years and eight years, I dont think).

For me, the give-away is the facial structure. Young tiels have immature "baby" faces. Their "eyebrows" aren't as bunchy and prominent, their beaks are smoother, and they generally look happy and dopey all the time. ^_^ But this is something you grow to notice after you spend a lot of time around birds. If this is your first tiel, you probably won't notice the difference.

Birds also lose their baby feathers at their first molt. For males, this often means a drastic change in the way they look. The only thing is... I don't know enough about Pearl Lutions(or maybe you have a Cinnamon Pearl Lutino not sure) to know if their adult feathers look different from their baby feathers. But usually, even despite the color, baby feathers are a little more scruffy and disheveled, and after the first molt, a bird often looks a lot smoother and cleaner.

In other mutations, baby birds often have white spots on their chest and inside their wings, bars (stripes) on their tail and on the feathers around their legs (which looks like stripey underwear ^_^), and a darker face. In other words, with the exception of the spots on the chest which are a pure baby feature, they often have "female" coloring as babies. They might still have a few stray baby feathers at up to one and a half years old.

I would say she's definitely older than a year cause she's full molted. Now to help you determine more, you would need to notice behaviour.

Hens may become quite broody between 10-18 months, and start to burrow under cage litter, or find a dark, hidden place to lay a clutch of eggs (with or without a partner). If no males are present, the eggs will not be fertile, ofc.

The older they get the less they do that, and probably will start getting calmer as they age.

[kikkinu]

Btw you got an awesome Bird there!!!