Hi from TX. New to forum. First time bird mom. Mom to Cap'N Jack, 4 wk cockatiel.

[CapNJacksMama]

Hi!
I'm a new mom -- and when I say new I mean: I've never owned birds before, we got a baby cockatiel on January 11th and he's almost 4 weeks old now.
My husband has had birds before but he's never hand reared them. He's wanted to have a bird again a long time and when he saw the baby cockatiels at the pet shop he wanted one. He asked me if I would take care of it during the day since I'm home with the kids and I said yes. We thought it over a few more days and decided to do it. Now we have a pet bird. =0)

I have to say I'm really surprised they let me walk out of there with as little information as I had! They gave me some very basic instructions for hand-rearing and when I got home we started realizing we had a lot of questions. The more I've researched the more I've learned that I don't know!! But we love our little bird, and we're being very diligent in taking care of him. He's growing well and appears to be healthy. Thank goodness for Google!!

He'll be 4 weeks tomorrow (we're guessing.. they told us he was "about two weeks" when we got him and we've used lots and lots of picture comparisons online to estimate he was about 16 days when we got him, based on the amount of pin feathers he had. We're using that guess to calculate his age.) Right now I don't have any real "problems" but I just want to keep learning and staying on top of information to keep taking good care of our little bird, which we've decided to call Cap'N Jack.

I was trying to upload some pictures but our internet is wonky and I'll have to do that later. I have a Flickr set with almost daily pictures of our cockatiel growing. I didn't know they grow so fast!! http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsambe...7628990533783/

[Birdmanca]

Welcome to Tailfeathers. You can ask a lot of bird questions on this site, and get a lot of replies from the members.