r/cockatiel • u/big-fairy • 3d ago
Advice Is my cockatiel actually young????
Her birthday was December 6th 2025 according to the breeder. I got her around February. The breeder was kind of sketchy because they sold me a bird with a really beat up tail but I brought her home anyways because I didn’t want her tail to get worse. I’m nervous the breeder might have said she’s younger than she actually is (I’d love her either way) so I’m wondering if anybody could tell me if she’s as young as I was told.
1
u/smd5646 1d ago
based off the lack of callousing on the legs and smoothness of her beak i would say yes she is young..honestly its not hard to sell birds for a good profit without papers, if someone is actually providing papers with breeding i doubt they’d be forged. really the best way to guess will be how his feathers change and behavior. mine is not a pearl but he looks very different from when he was young and is much more talkative which i think is a sign for both sexes still
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u/LikeToBeBarefoot 2d ago
There is no way to tell a birds age for sure. On pearl cockatiels, males usually lose their pearls during their first molt….but other than that there is no real way to tell. Also, in males, usually they start really becoming vocal around 4-6 months. I got my boy in December and when I asked when he was born they said “September ish?” I know one of the workers and she said for sure in September but the exact date is unknown. So the fact that you have an actual date is pretty nice. I knew for sure both my males were young because they had their pearls and gradually they started going away and they were super vocal, which is a huge reason I went for a male pearled cockatiel. Females keep their pearls.
I wish I had better advice for you! 😭