Complete Psittacine by Eb Cravens

When a long-time owner departed Hawaii Island for the mainland and left the bird with her parents, these adults soon tired of taking care of a cockatiel they had never chosen to acquire. This is not unusual with surrendered or ‘inherited’ psittacines.

April and I stepped in to help. But, no previous history was known about this cockatiel. The person who dropped it off at our farm was not informed about it at all. The parrot that had never been named and was just called ‘bird’ had been living in a small cage eating unsurprisingly a 100 per cent seed diet.

A period of laying eggs had demonstrated definitely that she was a girl. When the ‘tiel arrived, I was amazed to see that it was a cinnamon white face mutation, rather rare in Hawaii.

She had spent numerous years in a home with no other parrots. Accordingly, we quarantined her for only a week in a cage in our house. She was an affectionate thing, preferring women, to whom she would bow her head and solicit long neck scratch sessions. She was also obese! Likely eating cheap cockatiel seed was her one diversion in life since her primary caregiver had departed. I have noticed in the past that often small parrots will over eat when they are being fed lackluster seed diets, because they crave green micronutrients and trace minerals not present in large enough quantities in their nutritional regimen.

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