Advice needed

So I'll try make it quick. My wife would like to get a 15 week old Sulphur Crested Cockatoo as she has always wanted one. We currently have 1 Cockatiel, 1 Indian Ringneck and 2 Green Cheek Conures. Are we biting off more than we can handle with adding a 'too to the mix?

I don't work so I am home all day every day. At most I am out of the house for a max of about 4 hours. The youngest in the house is a few weeks shy of 17.

None of my birds get along and are all housed separately. Each bird is out for at least an hour before I rotate to the next. This cycle happens for as much as is possible of the day.

Also have 2 small dogs.

At this point I can't think of anything else you might want to know so you can give advice. Feel free to ask if there is anything else I need to take into consideration.

You have plenty of parrot experience and sufficient time to devote to your flock, a huge plus! I'm not familiar with the SC2 but have Goffins/Citron and had a Moluccan. The white cockatoos are perhaps the most challenging but immensely rewarding companions. Your potential bird is extremely young, hopefully well socialized and weaned by the time you acquire. Will it come from a breeder, and if so are you the initial new home?

It is a bit of a weird situation from what I can make of it. The person selling them is collecting them from the breeder today. Apparently they are hand reared, weaned and cracking seed. I've heard such things about birds before and it has not been the case. Still they are happy for people to come and meet the birds and the pictures seem to be of very healthy birds. My main concern was the attention that they need with all the other birds we already have.

Cockatoos can be quite needy, so you may need to devote disproportionate time, especially at the beginning. Proper socialization to include an ability to self entertain (if possible) is crucial.

Cockatoos are the most re-homed birds of all. As you probably already know, they are extremely unique and demanding. I say this to anyone considering voluntary cockatoo purchase: I would strongly suggest that anyone reconsider the choice to get a cockatoo unless they have volunteered long-term with cockatoos (just because otherwise it can be hard to imagine their behavior long-term, outside of the snap-shots people see in pet-shops and on youtube). I would give my pre-cockatoo self the same advice, even though I can't imagine life without Noodles. I am not saying they are bad birds, but they are SUPER high-maintenance and it is very difficult to have a balanced life with a cockatoo.

If you get a baby, they need very firm boundaries and it is easy to mess them up because all they want to do is cuddle and they are super quiet and sweet (so people stroke them and dote on them and snuggle them and carry them all around the house). Then, they hit sexual maturity about 6 years down the road and attack people/scream because the same behaviors that seemed sweet are now sexual. This is around the same time that many are re-homed.
Don't get me wrong--- I love my bird, but they are totally unique in their needs and they are notoriously challenging birds to keep as pets (not because they are broken, but because captivity doesn't suit them as well as some and it is difficult to compensate in a home). Can it be done? Perhaps. Is it easy? Heck to the no lol.

If you are getting one no matter what, rescues are literally overflowing with them, so there are tons of adults in need of homes. Again, they are the most surrendered bird, so please adopt if you continue down this path.
One of the perks about getting an adult is the fact that they have already hit sexual maturity, so you don't have to worry as much about personality and behavior changing at puberty. They can live for ages, so getting an 8 or 9 year-old bird is still like getting a "baby" in terms of life expectancy and it is a more honest reflection of how they will behave for the majority of their lives. They can be sweet, HILARIOUS, loving birds, but it takes a ton of work (like, more than a child in many cases) to do right by them, so just keep all of that in mind before you take the plunge.

You might want to consider that your other birds are also much smaller and a tri-point bite from a cockatoo could do some serious damage if they do not get along. Noodles makes me extremely nervous around other birds----not so much because I think she would bother them, but if they came after her, she could kill them with one bite. Their bites can be seriously damaging to humans, let alone a feathered friend. Again, I am not saying it cannot be done, but it is certainly a safety concern given the amount of out-of-cage time cockatoos require.

I am not saying that there is no place in the world for these birds, but they are a poor fit for many people just because of all of their unique quirks (I don't know your experiences/personality etc, so don't take that statement personally). If you have cockatoo experience and know what you are getting into, then go for it, but if not, I would definitely volunteer with them before bringing one home because they are quite different from other large birds. Also, they get super attached, so once you decide to get one, it is super hard on the bird if you decide it was a poor choice years later.

Scott said:

Cockatoos can be quite needy, so you may need to devote disproportionate time, especially at the beginning. Proper socialization to include an ability to self entertain (if possible) is crucial.

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I would be cautious with this--yes they need to be socialized, but the time you spend with them shouldn't exceed the time you plan to spend with them for the rest of their lives. A lot of times, people spend too much time with their babies because they are new and so quiet/cute etc. These birds don't understand that you have a life outside of them, so if you set the baseline expectations for attention high, they will expect you to maintain that level forever and any decreases in attention will likely be met with upset/push-back.
You will need to devote a lot of time to ignoring unwanted behavior, teaching them how to play independently and getting them used to a routine (but not such a solid routine that they expect each day to be the same---they love routine, but they can get overly rigid).
Early exposure to lots of people, places, objects, pets (supervised), harnesses etc can help in the long-run.

I got the shock of my life when Rosetta arrived!

My previous cockatoo (a galah called Dominic) was a quiet, damaged personality who had barely any requirements beyond food and water. No matter how hard I tried, I could barely get him to interact, let alone play. Then, he died in his thirty-sixth year.

Enter Rosetta.

She arrived at the perfect (!) time for a cockatoo to enter a new situation. She was just on the point of entering her puberty and was as nesty and hormonal as all get-out (she still is). She *would not* be still, even for a moment. She was ON the GO all the time, running, flying, screaming, climbing and BITING. She was a mess! I couldn't get much sense out of the former owners (I strongly suspect they were telling me fibbers about why they needed to rehome 'Setta), so all I could do was to work with what I could see: a hormonal female that had clearly never had any boundaries set and had no clue how to interact appropriately. It was *very difficult* to handle her at first.

Now, I'm not telling you this horror story to put you off. I guess I'm telling you so that you can be mindful that a baby bird WILL change when it reaches puberty and a SC2 is a lot of bird. They are heavy and strong and the beak and claws can do significant damage. I posted photos of my arms, scratched and bleeding from having Rosetta simply landing and taking off from them. Getting a cockatoo is exactly like adopting a two-year-old that will stay two forever. You will have to be there for it every single day (no holidays) and you will have to be indefatigable in providing it with food and play and everything else. If you don't, then Problems will arise.

Cockatoos need more than just a few sticks and a boing. They need serious wood to chew on every day. They need foraging toys, both home-made and commercially bought. They need opportunities to work off steam (flying is themost efficient) and to spend time being actively taught by you (if you don't, you'll wind up with a whirlwind like Rosetta).

When a cockatoo *doesn't* get what it needs, the day usually arrives when the family decides 'someone else will have more to give than we do' and rehomes it. The bird is suddenly boxed up willy-nilly and shipped off to a strange place, often with loud kids or other animals where it has to learn all over again how to be social with a different set of humans. Some birds suffer this several times in their lifetimes and it's awful for them, often leading to personality disorders where they become more and more difficult to rehome.

This is why we like to 'tell it like it is' when a person mentions he'd like a cocky. It's so much better for everyone if you know the huge commitment you'll be making *before* acquiring a cocky than if you wait until you're dead tired of the massive workload and can't do it any more. If I'd known what Rosetta would be like, I think I might have thought again before buying her. There are some days when it's extremely disheartening and I feel I simply can't get through.

HOWEVER...

there are other days when she is sweet and charming and listens to everything I say to her. There are days when she trampolines on her pizza box (she loves doing that) and bounces on her boing and hangs upside-down from her swing and does all the hilarious things that make her my darling. There are some days when she doesn't scream for hours but spends her time chewing busily on the branches I provide and cracking the gumnuts open to get out the seeds and little gnatty things inside.

I have to say that overall Rosetta has improved massively since she arrived, mainly because it hit me early on to start training her to do little tricks. That concentration was all she needed to make her stop and think instead of going ape****. Without writing an essay about Rosetta, I'll just say that it has taken a LOT of concentrated hard work to help her get where she is and it'll take a lot more before I can just open the cage and let out for a few hours (not possible yet).

That's what you could be faced with in acquiring a cockatoo. 'Setta is a Little Corella. She only weighs about five hundred grams. A SC2 weighs nearly twice that much ('bout 800g) and needs a lot more space to spead its wings. TBH, I wonder whether corellas might actually be more needy than sulphur cresteds. They certainly play and need to play a lot more. I've never seen a SC2 doing the mad things corellas do...

Anyway. Sorry to rave on and on. Just sharing my experiences for your perusal. Let us know what you decide to do!

noodles123 said:

Scott said:

Cockatoos can be quite needy, so you may need to devote disproportionate time, especially at the beginning. Proper socialization to include an ability to self entertain (if possible) is crucial.

Click to expand...

I would be cautious with this--yes they need to be socialized, but the time you spend with them shouldn't exceed the time you plan to spend with them for the rest of their lives. A lot of times, people spend too much time with their babies because they are new and so quiet/cute etc. These birds don't understand that you have a life outside of them, so if you set the baseline expectations for attention high, they will expect you to maintain that level forever and any decreases in attention will likely be met with upset/push-back.
You will need to devote a lot of time to ignoring unwanted behavior, teaching them how to play independently and getting them used to a routine (but not such a solid routine that they expect each day to be the same---they love routine, but they can get overly rigid).
Early exposure to lots of people, places, objects, pets (supervised), harnesses etc can help in the long-run.

Click to expand...

True, but disproportionate time for a new cockatoo compared to that allotted with the four other household birds. One of the greatest gifts we can teach any bird is to self-entertain with toys, external media such as TV, radio.

Thank you everyone for your replies they have been a big help. Honestly at this point we are still undecided one way or the other. I have looked online for bird/parrot rescue places that are local to me and have been rather underwhelmed. It seems that there are very few reputable rescues. It seems that here in Victoria that problem birds are dealt with by "forgetting" to close the cage door or euthanasia.

The person selling the SC2 is VERY suspicious to me. We are to meet in a McDonalds carpark to see the bird. Apparently he was robbed and had 3 pairs of breeding Macaws stolen so doesn't trust anyone. The birds are going at a very low price. At around a sixth of the usual price for a tame SC2. He also made a comment about getting more birds tomorrow. So alarm bells are going off. Part of me wants to get the bird even if I am not prepared to keep it just because the person selling seems so dodgy.

We have thoroughly discussed getting a SC2 as a family and the general consensus is we have the experience and we have the time to give. I don't work and won't do anytime in the foreseeable future due to health issues. Without owning a SC2 we just don't know if we can manage.

At this point we are looking at this more as rescuing a baby 'too from what seems like either a breeder who is churning them out for quick $$$ or a thief selling stolen birds. We are hoping to be the birds forever home but if that's not how it works out we will make sure it finds one.

Talven said:

Thank you everyone for your replies they have been a big help. Honestly at this point we are still undecided one way or the other. I have looked online for bird/parrot rescue places that are local to me and have been rather underwhelmed. It seems that there are very few reputable rescues. It seems that here in Victoria that problem birds are dealt with by "forgetting" to close the cage door or euthanasia.

The person selling the SC2 is VERY suspicious to me. We are to meet in a McDonalds carpark to see the bird. Apparently he was robbed and had 3 pairs of breeding Macaws stolen so doesn't trust anyone. The birds are going at a very low price. At around a sixth of the usual price for a tame SC2. He also made a comment about getting more birds tomorrow. So alarm bells are going off. Part of me wants to get the bird even if I am not prepared to keep it just because the person selling seems so dodgy.

We have thoroughly discussed getting a SC2 as a family and the general consensus is we have the experience and we have the time to give. I don't work and won't do anytime in the foreseeable future due to health issues. Without owning a SC2 we just don't know if we can manage.

At this point we are looking at this more as rescuing a baby 'too from what seems like either a breeder who is churning them out for quick $$$ or a thief selling stolen birds. We are hoping to be the birds forever home but if that's not how it works out we will make sure it finds one.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry Talven, just reading this post is giving me a bad feeling..... it sounds as if you've ran across a thug, who may be interested in robbing you or harming your family..... I'm not sure what it is, I'm just getting an uneasy feeling from reading this post, somethings not right. Guessing this guy has all the bases covered for why he doesn't trust anyone, and is signaled the amount he wants from you....I maybe wrong, but I'm just getting a bad feeling about this.

I have to agree with Casper here. Even if you do get a bird, please don't get one from this person. The fact they want to meet you in a McD's carpark is so concerning??? You have no idea the environment the birds are living in and where they're getting them from.


They said also they get birds from other people so it sounds like he's buying babies and reselling them? If he's selling them at such a low price, I can't imagine what conditions their parents are in but there's no way it's good.


In the long run, even if you're "saving" the bird, all this accomplishes is allowing this person to fund whatever sort of operation they have going on.

Decided to stay well away from this. As much as we would love to have a 'too it really isn't a smart choice for us. We need a much larger cage which we just don't have the space for. We also have a 2 year old grandson who comes to visit fairly regularly. Not to mention just how dodgy this person seems to be.

Thanks to everyone for being my sounding board about this and giving such excellent advice. Much appreciated.

That is what we are here for! Almost nothing is more regrettable than making an impulse purchase of parrot - especially a cockatoo! Perhaps one day you'll have an opportunity under favorable circumstances.

I echo all that Betrisher has said but would like to add that the bird chooses who it chooses and it could be the 17 y/o in the house. Maybe not straight away but possibly later? Can you cope in this situation. People automatically assume that it will choose them, but it doesn't always work and can be upsetting. I brought this bird home, have given it everything and it doesnt like me. Why? No rhyme or reason, it is what it is. Please do some research have a look at mytoos.com the no frills 'too site. If you can get past that then you have my best wishes.

Ditto on the 'bad' feeling. To many weird preconditions and odd presentations.