by Pajarita » Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:34 am
Ok, let me try to rephrase what I said before and make it clearer for you. When it comes to birds being overly hormonal (the only way a bird would masturbate and/or regurgitate on their own), It makes no difference if you have a male, a female, two females, two males, or a male/female pair what makes the difference is the solar schedule (which is, actually, quite difficult to do right) and the diet. No cockatiel (actually, no parrot) should be free-fed protein food (pellets, seeds, nuts, etc). Period. Parrots did not evolve to eat seeds (high protein, high fat), they are NOT natural seed eaters (most passerines are the ones that were meant to eat seeds - birds like canaries, finches, etc.). Parrots evolved to eat plant material and, although one could accurately say that seeds are plant material, it actually refers to things like leaves, buds, stalks, flowers, fruits, etc. They do eat seeds but these are almost always what we call 'green seeds' -which are the ones that are inside the fruit- and not in abundance at any time during the year (the only places where seeds are abundant are fields planted by humans which nature did not take into consideration during their evolution). So, male, female, two females, two males, a female/male pair is the same in terms of the actual care they need to receive.
The ONLY differences are that: 1) a male/female pair is best because they are monogamous and mate for life so nature decreed that they are to live their adult life with the same mate (I strive to give all my birds a mate because it enriches their lives in a way that cannot be reproduced by anything we might do or give them). And 2) that, when a hen lays an egg, she should get an extra dose of avian calcium.
Cockatiels are not big on fruits. Of all the tiels I had, there were only two that would take a few bites of an apple slice, the rest did not touch them. What they do love is leafy greens and cruciforms (like raw broccoli). My tiels would not wait for me to actually serve the greens, they would start eating them right from the tray with the food. And they do eat veggies as long as they are small in size (like corn or peas) or cut into small pieces and kind of soft (they always ate all the veggies in the gloop with gusto). Mind you, even when they eat gloop (whole grains mixed with veggies) and their greens, you should still supplement them with a good quality multivitamin/mineral. I use ABBA 2000 (a powder soluble in water) three times a week in their water. I recommend the same kind (soluble powder) because sprinkling powder on their food is not efficient and liquid drops in the water are already degraded by the time you use them.
I've never noticed a marked difference between the behavior of a male versus a female. There are differences, of course, but not so much in 'curiosity' or 'attentiveness'. Males vocalize but, when kept the right way and with a mate, they only become a bit insistent at the beginning of the breeding season while females with mates do not make a single peep ever. BUT birds without a mate will vocalize a lot because, basically, they are 'calling' for a mate. Females which do not make a peep when with a mate will make a monotonous call incessantly during breeding season. PLUS, tiels without a mate will try to fly away (to look for a mate/flock) while birds with mates will be content in their environment as long as they are receiving the right care (they don't need to go looking for anything because they have everything they need and want where they are). I'll tell you a story. I used to run a parrot rescue and had a very large bird room where all my birds (except for the handicapped, sick or whatever) lived cage-free (this is when I had the more than 30 tiel flock) and, once during a big storm, a large branch broke off a tree and flew through the air, crashing against and breaking a large hole in a window in the birdroom. I had over 240 birds and the ONLY ones that left were three budgies, one quaker, one senegal and two doves. Not a single tiel or any other bird left and one of the budgies, the senegal and the quaker came back the next day on their own. The doves ended up flying with a flock that belonged to a man who had a nice flock of them so I gave them to him (I only had the two and doves/pigeons love to live in flock) and the other two budgies must have been eaten by a hawk because the silly birds, not knowing of danger after living all their life in captivity, because I saw them flying above the tree tops (a very dangerous thing to do for a little prey bird).
So, if you ask me, the best thing both for the birds and the human care-giver is to have a bonded pair of parrots (and this goes for any species but, most especially, for the aviary ones). They are happier and healthier that way and they are MUCH easier to care for than a single lonely needy bird which will never be 100% happy all alone with a human.