The BAAAAAWWWWWWWWWW Thread

These are the parents. Frostie the dad is on the left and Lexi the mum is on the right. I think Masie will have her dad's colouring (although her wings will be darker) and Tiny will take after her mum

Some more pictures.

Doge wrote: »

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Not sure if quoting is allowed in the BAW thread but thanks a lot for the updates!

How long does it take to determine the sex of the bird?

I heard it's to do with the pattern on feathers when it comes to cockatiels, the males change after a certain number of weeks but the females remain the same..

You are right about the patterns. Underneath the tail feathers, there are strips on all newborns. At about six months they go through their first moult. When the new feathers grow, if they are female, the feathers will remain stripped, if they are male, the feathers will be a block colour.

I ended up with two males called Rosie and Chloe because their previous owners thought they were females and by the time they realised they were male, the birds were too used to their names to change them. The birds didn't have a gender crisis at being called female names :pac: but it was confusing when I'd be talking about them to other people and I'd be saying "Rosie is the leader of the flock. The others follow him and Chloe is his second in command" and they'd be like, "don't you mean her?" It was confusing even for me. I have a sister called Chloe so it was hard to associate male pronouns with a female name. When my cockatiels had babies, I made the effort to give them gender neutral names, purely to avoid this confusion in the future.

The two babies I have now are "teenagers" in cockatiel years and if they survive the next few weeks they should be grand. They are exploring the apartment and becoming less dependant on their parents and I think they should survive to adulthood. I was absolutely gutted when Fluffy had a freak accident at the age they are at now. I've changed the environment and hopefully they should thrive

Paddy Cow wrote: »

Tiny is very tame and I'm able to put a harness on her. I've been bringing her out for walks and cycles hand while she isn't too pleased with the harness, she is young enough that she will get used to it. She likes sitting on the cross bar when the bike is moving and is getting loads of attention from people so she will be a super friendly birdy

For some unknown reason, for the last week or two, Tiny is not receptive to me anymore. She flys away from me and won't let me come anywhere near her

I guess because I didn't hand feed her she only accepted me because she was young and now that she is fully grown and integrated with the flock she is wild like them.

On the bright side, both of the babies have made it to adulthood and are doing well . I have a big flock now and the only one who is still tame is Frosty, the father of the babies. He still comes for head scratches and is very affectionate.

Some of the birds are semi tame in that they will land on my head or try to eat my dinner. They don't seem afraid of me but they don't want to be my friend either. I've read online that to hand rear a bird you need to take it from the parents at 7-10 days old and they will get used to humans feeding them and form a bond. I thought that was cruel to the parents and just handled the baby birds on a daily basis.

So anyways, my update is that the two baby birdies are alive and well and while they aren't my best friends, they aren't adverse to my presence either