# Just wondering if any 1 can help me



## smokie08 (Oct 26, 2008)

I have 3 baby cockatiels that are only about 1 or 2 weeks old and I was wondering at what age can I seperate the babies from thier parents and at what age can I start selling the babies? Cause I am totaly new at this breeding stuff with cockatiels.


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## Renae (Feb 9, 2008)

You can seperate them at 3 weeks, some do it at 2 weeks. You just gotta be prepared for hand feeding and all that other fun stuff!

As for selling the babies, they should be at least 9 WEEKS old maybe 10 depends on them and if they're weaned by that time 'cause some take longer than others.

I just wanted to add Sue said this in Bea's thread: (I hope Sue doesn't mind)



sweetrsue said:


> If you pull at 3 weeks they get both the benefit from the parents and the benefit from being hand fed. If you wait too long tho it's hard for them to take to the spoon.


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## Bea (Jul 26, 2007)

If you're not planning on handrearing them then you should leave them with the parents until they're eating on their own which is usually at around 8-10 weeks.  If you are going to hand rear then 2-3 weeks is the ideal age to start.


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## smokie08 (Oct 26, 2008)

well thanks and I am not hand rearing them. The only time I would do that is if a baby is not being feed by it`s parents. The only thing that I am going to be doing is starting to handle them so they get use to being held by people but no Hand-raising them because it is to much much for me to do plus it takes away the parenting nature from my cockatiels and I don`t wont that.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

I co-parented my chicks. Meaning that when they were two to three weeks old I'd take them out of the nest once or twice a day for handfeeding, and I let the parents take care of them the rest of the time. The parents still did most of the feeding, but the handfeeding that I did REALLY helped socialize the chicks. 

Baby cockatiels are instinctively wary of anything that isn't their parents, and they did a lot of screaming at me until I started handfeeding them. I was handling them but it did NOT lead to progress. But after I fed them once or twice they realized I was their friend and they weren't afraid of me any more. I think I got the best of both worlds - the benefit of handfeeding AND the benefit of parent-rearing.


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## allen (Aug 25, 2007)

in reading this you need to be prepared for hand feeding in case of an emergency like with miracle the father started poking the crop so i was forced to hand feed if i had not then miracle would of died as well 
you need to read this sticky 
*How to be prepared for hand raising babies*


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## SweetSimmy (Sep 1, 2008)

yeah when my bf breeds them. he doesnt hand feed the babies. So he usually seperates them at 3 months


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