Did you just adopt a cockatiel recently? If so, you will need to learn a lot more about your beloved pet bird. Knowing its personality, habit and daily care will help you to take care of your cockatiel better.
However, there is one question remains within bird community when it comes to cockatiels. Is keeping cockatiels need to be in pairs? What exactly is the reason for this concern? This explanation below will help to understand your pet.
Advantages of Keeping Cockatiels in Pairs
There are some advantages of adding another cockatiel in the house.
- Make Cockatiel More Sociable
Cockatiel is a sociable creature where it loves to play outside and socialize with other birds. Unlike wild bird , this disposition leads cockatiel to be a good company for human. Moreover, if you add one more cockatiel, it will stimulate the other cockatiel to produce sound.
Either sex of the other cockatiel is fine but since young male one loves showing courtship, it is a good idea to add female cockatiel in your house. Moreover, female cockatiel is less noisy yet able to accompany your male cockatiel and keep it from feeling bored. That way, your cockatiel will not get stressed easily.
If you set up two cockatiels with different sex, it will help them to mate with each other. Young cockatiels are eager to courtship as well as a companion. By placing them together, they will try to attract each other. The male cockatiel will make some noises and do some tricking, while the female one will be on the receiving end. If you also have cat, make sure to train cat to obey your command as they love to disturb bird.
It will be an amusing moment where you can see both of them create bond and eventually become couple. Make sure not to put them in cage all day to give them more freedom to interact. You may find your house finding new member from their mating.
- Prevent Cockatiel Getting Depressed
As mentioned before, cockatiel is a social creature like how you can tame a feral stray dog that likes interaction; it loves to interact with any birds. When you get them out of the cage, you will see them trying to find other birds for company. Moreover, the bird is not the type that will endure being inside the cage all day long.
Hence, the bird will slowly get depressed if you keep it locked in without anyone to talk to. Finding a pair or partner of any bird is a good idea to prevent it. The cockatiel will have company in which they can have social interaction, thus fulfill their nature and make them happier.
Is keeping cockatiels need to be in pairs always have advantages? While there are surely benefits that you can get by teaming up cockatiels in pairs, there are also drawbacks resulting in doing so.
Disadvantages of Keeping Cockatiels in Pairs
There are possible disadvantages resulting in pairing cockatiels with the same species or with other birds.
Singing or talking bird is fine but what if two voices collide with each other? The first risk of keeping more than one talkative bird such as cockatoo is that it will get noisy a lot. Especially since cockatiel likes to interact with each other so you will expect them to have a lot of bird talking. While from bird perspective this setting is good, you may get overwhelmed and start to get disturbed by their noisy chat.
Furthermore, your neighbor may start complaining to you about the noise. You will need to be extra careful not to get your birds get out of the line.
Another risk of keeping more than one bird in the house is possible fight. We cannot expect two birds to get along instantly the moment we pair two birds. If they have not liked each other yet, they can start to fight. In the fighting it will include a lot of feathers down and noisy sounds. Do not ever consider wild bird like bondol eagle to be in the same room with cockatiel.
They can also get wild and become aggressive to anyone approaching them. While on the flip side of the coin pairing two birds is a good thing, if the birds do not get along, it will be different story.
Taking care of more than one bird means more expense to spend on them. You will need to prepare food, housing, healthcare to two birds. You will also need to train them altogether which will only decrease the focus since one cannot teach two birds at the same time.
Knowing cockatiel having long life span would not help either since it means you will have to prolong your expense for two birds as long as they live. This is why owners should get prepared if they really want to keep cockatiels in pair.
Regardless of the advantages and disadvantages, it does not hurt to really be trying to pair two birds at house. Here are few tips to do it successfully.
- Bring your cockatiel when deciding to buy another bird as partner. Your cockatiel will choose its partner for you.
- Do not choose bigger and more aggressive bird such as parrot or bird of paradise, it will only make your cockatiel having a hard time at home.
- Let the two birds out for certain period of time to let them interact and creating bond between each other.
- Maintain their diet based on what they are suitable with. Same species does not mean they have same preferences and need. Always look for their individual quirks to keep them both healthy.
- Prepare the expense of having to adopt two birds at the same time. Do not let either one of them to be on the negligent side because you do not prepare enough budgets for their well-being.
Pairing two cockatiels is a good opportunity for bird lovers to cultivate them even better. Note that it should work for long-term relationship between the two of them. Surely, there are some drawbacks in doing so. However, as long as one is careful and know how to do it properly, this action will be more than rewarding to bird owner.