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IN THE WILD

Cockatiels originally come from Australia.  They are usually found in large flocks along with budgies and rosellas.  Cockatiels usually nest in tree stumps and logs.  These nesting sites are usually damp from rotting material, this is important for the cockatiel eggs, as they are porous and requires the extra humidity for the chick to develop properly and hatch.  The female is usually the one who looks after the chicks, while the male is out looking for food.  Though it is his job to look after the nest at night so that she can get a break.  It is not uncommon for the male to travel many miles is search of food for his mate and the chicks.

IN CAPTIVITY

It was 1960 when Australia closed its borders to all exports and imports of animals.  Since that time all cockatiels have been captive raised.  Cockatiels were originally more difficult to breed than the budgie.  Even 15 years ago most breeders had to keep them in a large flight to breed them.  Today, cockatiels will happily breed in your living room.

In 1964, Mrs. Moon of the USA first produced the Lutino, “white”, cockatiel, which sold for $500.00US.  Now days there are quite a few colour mutations available.  One of the newer mutations is the striking Whiteface cockatiel.  Average life span for a cockatiel is 20-25 years, we have had a pair of cockatiels that lived to 33 years old for the male, “Cocky” and the female “Corky” live to be 35 years old.

AS A PET

Cockatiels have become one of the most popular of the pet birds.  A hand-raised cockatiel can make a fantastic pet for both the beginner and the experienced pet owner.  The male cockatiel can talk, but he uses the words that he learns to personalize his courting song.  The female doesn’t usually speak.  Unfortunately, you cannot accurately sex baby cockatiels as all baby cockatiels look like females. The exceptions with sexing babies is with some of the genetic mutation pairings you will know which is male and which is female and sometimes a young male cockatiels may start trying to court before puberty.  Sexing adult cockatiels is usually quite simple, you go by the markings on the underside of the tail and flight feathers.  The females have yellow bars (white bars in the case of the white-face cockatiels) going across their flight and tail feathers while the males flight and tail feathers are clear.  There are two instances where the visual guide does not work: First, the pied cockatiel (this is where the body colour is broken up with irregular white areas), the pied gene tends to affect the bars on the flight and tail feather and it will quite often produce an odd shaped bar that runs part of the length of the feather on both the males as well as the females.  The other time that you cannot visually sex a cockatiel is with the "White" (white-face lutino) cockatiel, this bird is pure white with absolutely no markings.

CAGING

A minimum size cage for one cockatiel is 17”*15”*24” high, but the larger cage such as the Hagen Motel cage that is 19”*19”*27” is a better size.  This gives the cockatiel plenty of room to move around with toys and dishes in the cage.  The perches in the cage should be 3/4” diameter to spread his weight evenly on the perch. If the perch is too small it can cause sores on the bottom of the feet.

DIET

Cockatiels do best on a seed mix that is at least 2/3 “canary” seed (that’s the name of the grain), such as Feathered Friends Budgie/Cockatiel Mix.  Cockatiels love sunflower, unfortunately, sunflower, if fed in too high a quantity, can damage a cockatiels liver.  A cockatiels diet in the wild is grain that does not contain a lot of oils and proteins.  A sunflower seed contains approximately 47% oil by weight, which is high in protein, the high oil content is one reason it is used as a cooking oil.  A cockatiels liver cannot process that much protein.  We recommend that you give a cockatiel no more than 6-8 sunflower seeds a day.  Quite a few “commercial” mixes use a lot of sunflower, oil sunflower (close to 70% oil), safflower (47% oil) as well as filler seeds such as red millet (which has no nutritional value).  The same “commercial” mixes use food colouring on some of the seeds as well as pellets.  A cockatiels colour vision is remarkable and they will usually ignore these coloured seeds.  Thus you end up paying for scatter on the bottom of the cage.

Cockatiels require gravel in their diet to grind up the seed in the gizzard. Cockatiels also require vitamin supplements, Feathered Friends Aqua-Vite and mineral supplements, such as Complete Mineral Supplement, as a seed diet alone is deficient in both.

Cockatiels enjoy having “treats” in their diet.  A treat is any food that is not a staple and it should be fed to them accordingly.  Spray millet is a favourite of all cockatiels.  There are many good treat mixes, such as Feathered Friend Budgie/Cockatiel Treat Mix.  Cockatiels might also eat some greens, such as broccoli, kale, spinach, carrot tops, dandelion and chickweed.  Lettuce should be avoided, as it is mostly water.  Always feed greens in small amounts and if you hang the greens in the cage, the cockatiel is more likely to try it.