Taming an older cockatiel can sometimes be more difficult than taming younger cockatiels.

A cockatiels tamability is based on their past experiences, which adult cockatiels have a lot more of than younger cockatiels.

The taming process is generally the same for both younger and older parrots, but the older ones can take much longer depending on their past experiences.

In this article, you’re going to learn how to tame an older cockatiel.

There’s quite a lot to discuss so let’s not waste any more time and get straight into the step-by-step guide.

Quick Navigation:

• Knowing Your Older Cockatiels Experiences
• Adult Cockatiel Taming Milestones
• Getting Older Cockatiels Comfortable With You
• Getting Comfortable With Hands
• Feeding Through Cage Bars
• Feeding The Older Cockatiel Outside The Cage
• Training Adult Cockatiels
• Accepting Affection & Scratches
• Short Summary
• Sources

Knowing Your Older Cockatiels Experiences

The obvious difference between a younger cockatiel and an older cockatiel is their experience with humans.

Taming young cockatiels is much easier as they’ve had little experience with humans.

In contrast, adult cockatiels have had previous owners and therefore have more experience with humans.

So, what are the past experiences of your adult cockatiel?

This is the question you should ask the facility you adopted the cockatiel from.

Most rescue centres will have information on where the bird came from and the conditions of their past home.

Having a good understanding of their past experiences will give you valuable insight into how you can tame this older cockatiel.

The main piece of information you should seek is if the cockatiel was neglected and in what way.

There are many good owners who surrender their older cockatiels because they can no longer care for them.

These cockatiels are easy to build trust with as they’ve already had positive experiences with humans.

Old cockatiels who were treated right will only need to get used to you and your home.

Neglected, and especially abused cockatiels will need to learn how to trust humans, which will be difficult.

Trauma is hard to forget or forgive, especially for birds as intelligent as cockatiels.

There are so many different situations adult cockatiels could come from, every situation will cause them to behave differently toward future owners.

Knowing your parrot’s history is very important for this reason.

Once you know a bit about your new feathered friend, you can start taming them accordingly.

Adult Cockatiel Taming Milestones

During the taming process, you should aim to gradually meet progressive milestones.

Those who take on adult cockatiels should be prepared to take longer to meet each milestone.

Before guiding you through each milestone, I want to mention that you should never clip a cockatiel’s wings to make them easier to tame.

This article explains the mental and physical health problems caused by wing clipping.

Please allow your cockatiel to be a bird and keep their flight feathers, if you don’t have the patience to tame a flighted bird, a dog or cat might be the better pet for you.

Getting Older Cockatiels Comfortable With You

Step 1 in taming an adult cockatiel is to get them used to their new environment and their new owners.

Depending on their past situation, your cockatiel may be fearful and won’t want to be near you at first.

Knowing your cockatiels history is going to be advantageous here.

If the cockatiel has suffered abuse from humans in the past, they have likely already made the connection that humans are a threat.

They’ll see all humans as a threat, not just the ones that abused them.

Understandably, this will cause delays in the taming process.

If this is the case, you’ll have to rewire the cockatiel’s brain into knowing that humans are good when they’ve already learned the opposite.

I mean, why would you trust something that has hurt you in the past?

What reason does this cockatiel have to think you will be any different than their past owner?

The best way to slowly build trust with a cockatiel is to be near them.

Set their cage up in a room where you’ll be most of the time, it could be the living room or a bedroom.

If they seem extremely scared, I wouldn’t get them out of the cage for a few days.

They’ll be more comfortable in a secure cage while they get used to their new home.

You should encourage every household member to speak softly to the cockatiel so they don’t get attached to just one person

Cockatiels feel calm when being spoken to in a soft voice.

You will be showing the adult cockatiel that you and other household members are a non-threat by continually being near them and not hurting or scaring them.

Once they start to get more comfortable, you’ll notice that they don’t get scared in your presence anymore and might even start preening.

Preening is a sign of contentment.

If they do this in your presence, it means they don’t feel threatened by you.

For Calmer Cockatiels

All of the above information is for those who have a fearful cockatiel…

If your cockatiel is already comfortable with humans, they’ll just need to adjust to their new home.

For calmer cockatiels, you can have them outside the cage as soon as you bring them home.

You should be able to give treats from your hand within day 1.

On the first day, you should let them hang out with you and other household members outside the cage so they get a taste of their new life.

Bring them to different rooms so they aren’t attached to just one room of the house.

Maybe start a little training if they seem comfortable.

Your main goal with a newly adopted adult cockatiel is to spend most of the day with them.

Spending most of the day with a new bird will build trust with them quicker.

Getting Comfortable With Hands

When your cockatiel seems calm in your presence, you’ve passed the first milestone.

The next milestone is getting the cockatiel comfortable with your hands.

This will be the longest milestone for abused cockatiels.

Cockatiels will fear human hands if they’ve been mistreated by them, which is why this step could take the longest.

This shouldn’t be a problem for cockatiels who were treated right.

Cockatiels need to get used to our hands so we can interact with them and offer food.

Keep in mind, that cockatiels need to make themselves vulnerable to trust human hands.

Mistreated cockatiels will hesitate to do this.

What you should do is introduce your hands slowly, carefully, and gently.

For starters…

See how your cockatiel reacts when you put your hand on one side of their cage.

If they scurry away to the other side, they are still very fearful.

If they sit still when you do this, it means they are a little trusting but I wouldn’t push that boundary too hard.

You don’t want to give them a reason to fear you.

Providing food and water will show the cockatiel that your hands are their carers and are a positive thing.

The more you take care of them, the more they’ll trust your hands.

Depending on the cockatiel, this may take a while, so patience is required.

Feeding Through Cage Bars

Offering food is a great way to help your cockatiel see your hands as something positive.

Sunflower seeds are my boys’ favourite treat, offer your older cockatiel something like that through the cage bars.

Accepting the treat means they’re comfortable at this milestone.

If they don’t take it or they hesitate to take it, your cockatiel isn’t completely trusting of your hands yet.

To help reduce their hesitation, you can try offering the treat from further away.

For example, offer the treat on the right side of the cage if the cockatiel is near the left side, that way they’ll have to come to you for the treat.

This is less intimidating than bringing the treat right to their face.

You can also try offering longer treats such as millet spray so you don’t get your hands unnecessarily close.

Offer treats throughout the day and they’ll eventually trust the hand that feeds them.

The keyword here is “eventually”, lots of patience is required when taming older cockatiels.

Especially while getting them comfortable with your hands.

Feeding The Older Cockatiel Outside The Cage

The next step from feeding inside the cage is to feed them outside the cage, which is outside their comfort zone.

Accepting food from your hand outside their comfort zone is a huge indicator of trust.

The reason why it’s such a huge step is that cockatiels feel more comfortable inside their cage.

Especially if they’ve been neglected outside the cage.

Being outside removes their security and makes them more vulnerable.

However, if it seems like your cockatiel isn’t comfortable outside the cage, don’t force anything.

Definitely do not lure them outside the cage and shut the door behind them, that’ll just make them more scared.

Forcing anything will cause a triple backflip in the taming process.

You’ll be back at square one with an untamed and fearful cockatiel.

At this stage, you should focus on giving treats to your cockatiel outside the cage while also giving them a choice to be outside the cage or not.

This will build trust and they’ll eventually be comfortable interacting with you more.

Training Adult Cockatiels

Since older cockatiels have had past owners, they’ve likely engaged in some training.

What sort of training?

You likely won’t know unless you contact the former owner.

Which you probably wouldn’t be able to do.

Older cockatiels who are willing to take treats from your hand outside the cage are partially tame and likely ready to begin some training.

The two training programs you should begin with are:

• Target Training

• Step Up Training

Target training is a good start because it’s hands-off training.

This means your cockatiels won’t need to be in close contact with your hands during training.

Target training can also be used to lead into other commands such as “step-up”.

In case you don’t know, step-up training is teaching your cockatiel to do this:

If you or your cockatiel aren’t comfortable stepping up onto a finger, you can just as easily use a handheld perch and transition to the finger in your own time.

Any type of training is great for building trust with your adult cockatiel.

Multiple training sessions a day will quickly build a solid relationship with your cockatiel.

After a while, your cockatiel will allow you to give them affection as the bond between you two grows stronger.

Accepting Affection & Scratches

If you’ve managed to tame an older cockatiel enough to start step-up training, I’d call that a success.

They trust you enough to train with you actively, that’s a huge accomplishment.

Continue to grow the relationship with your newly tamed cockatiel by training and hanging out with them.

You now know that they trust you and enjoy your company, but do they love you?

Our cockatiel’s love is what we strive for as their dedicated owners.

You’ll know your cockatiel loves you when they put their heads down asking for a scratch.

For cockatiels, bowing their heads is a form of submission.

If your adult cockatiel asks you for a scratch, you should feel honoured.

Not only do they see you as a caretaker, but also as a flock member and companion.

Although this milestone is the ultimate goal for most cockatiel owners, it CANNOT be forced or rushed.

Trying to force affection onto your cockatiel will backfire on you.

You need to wait until THEY bow their heads to you.

Hold your finger near their heads and they’ll bow if they want affection.

This is asking them permission to touch.

If they don’t want it, they’ll probably just stare at your finger, in which case you shouldn’t attempt to scratch them.

Short Summary

The past experience of an older cockatiel will impact the way you tame them.

Cockatiels who were treated right by their former owners are typically easy to tame.

However, cockatiels who were neglected, abused, or traumatized are a challenge to tame.

The main focus of this article was taming older cockatiels who may have suffered neglect from their former owners.

To tame an older cockatiel, you’ll need to gradually meet each of these 6 milestones:

• 1) Getting the cockatiel comfortable with their new environment and new owners.

• 2) Getting them comfortable with hands

• 3) Being able to hand-feed them through the cage bars

• 4) Being able to hand-feed them outside the cage

• 5) Teaching them essential commands such as “step-up”

• 6) Getting them to accept affection and scratches

Each of these milestones will need to be met gradually.

You cannot skip a single one of these milestones.

Each milestone will need to be met and comfortably maintained before moving on to the next.

Forcing your way through these milestones will set you back to step one.

It will break any trust that has been earned so far.

As you progress through each milestone, your older cockatiel will start to trust you more and they’ll eventually be very loving towards you.

Just remember to have patience…

Being understanding, careful, and patient is key to taming an adult cockatiel.

I hope all this has been helpful and good luck on your taming journey.

Read next: 10 Taming Tips For Brand New Cockatiel Owners

Sources

• https://www.wikihow.com/Tame-a-Cockatiel
• https://birdsupplies.com/blogs/news/5-ways-to-tame-a-fearful-bird-for-a-happier-pet
• https://brunkerroadvets.com.au/article/bird-taming-training-and-talking/
• https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/taming-training-talking-to-birds
• https://www.cockatielcottage.net/bite2.html
• https://www.clickertraining.com/node/285
• https://pets.thenest.com/taming-older-cockatiel-11055.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34dkGwMPsU4&t=1525s
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JsIr7Q6Xi4&t=10s