# Chronic Begging Cockatiel Chick



## Sehnonimo (Jun 20, 2010)

Hello, everyone! I'm new to the forum and I mainly joined to ask this one question, hoping that someone can answer. My baby cockatiel, Socorrito's story is long and has been emotionally draining, and still going. Here's the bullet points leading to my question:

* One of my female cockatiels and my male cockatiel laid eggs. I've had cockatiels for 10 years, and I've never had a fertile egg on my hand. I've never encouraged breeding, and I'm so used to infertile eggs. But one day, I heard chirping coming from the cage. Only one egg hatched, and we named the baby Socorrito, meaning "little help" in Spanish.

* He's had crop problems nearly from the beginning. He was with his parents for the first few two weeks of his life, and in his first week, he started having problems emptying his crop. His crop looked real backed up one night when he was a week old. Everything went back to normal for about a week. Then his father started plucking his crest. After I took the male out, the female fed the baby chick, but didn't pay much else attention to the baby bird, and I grew concerned. I eventually took her out as well. A DAY after I took out the mama, and before I really even got a chance to feed the baby, I realized his crop was backed up. I took him to the vet, and there was a blockage in the baby's crop. (The seed treats I gave the parents were being eaten whole, for some reason, then given that way to the baby.) I took him in twice, as the problem needed more intensive help from the vet. After all this, I had to give the baby thin formula and meds to get his crop working normally. This took a while, and between the two times I took him in, he lost a significant amount of weight. A week after the second extraction, he finally started gaining weight.

* He will be 7 weeks old tomorrow, and is only 53 grams. He's still growing in a lot of his feathers, and you can see the stress marks on his tail feathers. I feed his twice a day, 7 cc's per feeding (his crop won't take any more), and he's starting to nibble on solid foods. He took his first flight, today, too! Aside from the crop problems, the vet has given him a good bill of health, but although I asked, he didn't really give me advice on how to stop the excessive begging. Every time I enter the room or he hears me, he starts begging, and I can have him out with me for a long time, and he'll be begging all the while. I know it's probably because he's malnourished, what with everything that has happened, but I can't give him any more food without risking any more crop problems. 

Does anyone know what I can do about the chronic begging? Is this something he'll eventually outgrow when he starts eating on his own?


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

Begging is something all baby tiels do...we have a 12 week old who even though she is now eating on her own she still begs. Its an attention thing. He knows that when he begs you come spend time with him even if it is just to feed him so he's saying "come see me!" All my other tiels have grown out of it, so he should too once he realizes he doesn't have to beg to get you to spend time with him.


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## Sehnonimo (Jun 20, 2010)

Aya, twelve weeks of this insistent, non-stop crying! I'm just glad it a noise I've gotten used to and can kind of tune out. Still, it make me so nervous. This is my 1st baby tiel, and I constantly feel like I;m doing things wrong because his growth is so stunted. Well, here's to a hopefully quiet cinnamon tiel in the future!


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

What I've been trying is to reward her when she doesn't beg for attention. Like I'll pet her when she's being quiet and not pet her when she begs, trying to show her that she doesn't need to beg to get pets. It might help...


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## srtiels (May 1, 2009)

OK...at this age the baby should get fed *3 times* a day, and 10 % of body weight. I would feed morning and lunch feedings 5cc and just slightly increase the night feeding to 6-7cc MAX.

The problem with overfeeding in accordance to the weight of the chick is that the opposite happens and they can lose weight. Less is more, and the body uses the nutrients better to build muscle mass and weight. When feeding too much the body is using all its reserves for digesting.

When little most babies have a large semi-hard crop full of food...this is normal, and it rarely goes down because the parents are adding to the crop all the time. And the seed does appear whole, but it would have been hulled prior to feeding. If the chick had slow crop empty time it may have been because the partents would not have been feeding enough fluids. This can also lead to slower digestion, and also stunting.


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## Sehnonimo (Jun 20, 2010)

Alright, thanks for the input. I will try and feed him the amount you specified and hopefully it helps. I had read that at his age, he should be getting two feedings a day, but it's so hard to find a stable source of information sometimes, you know?


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## Jess (Jun 20, 2010)

Any updates on the little one?


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