Bathing your pet is important. If your pet isn’t a cat, that bathes itself, then you will have to bathe your pet yourself.
This article looks into bathing your baby cockatiel
Table of Contents
Can you bathe a baby cockatiel?
Many birds should be, and enjoy, being bathed a few times a week, this is true for adult birds.
This is what you need to know about bathing a baby cockatiel:
Bathing a baby cockatiel:
While adult cockatiels can be bathed frequently, baby cockatiels should not, in fact, baby cockatiels should not be bathed.
These baby birds should only be bathed at around 5 weeks old.
If you bathe, or even mist, a baby cockatiel that is too young this could drop its body temperature very quickly.
Young birds, who have no wings, aren’t good at regulating their body temperature so bathing them, and even misting them, can cause them to get too cold.
If your bird is getting quite dirty then you can wipe the dirt off of the bird using a q tip dampened with warm water, or you can use the end of a paper towel damped with warm water.
Wipe the dampness off of the bird once you’ve cleaned it to keep the bird from getting too cold
You can start bathing the bird once the bird is fully featured, this should be at around four or five weeks old.
Shallow dish bathing:
Once the baby bird is old enough to be bathed you can bathe it about one or two times a week depending on how dirty it gets.
When bathing the baby cockatiel use a shallow dish and only fill the dish till it’s about 2 inches deep.
The water should be lukewarm to keep the bird from getting too cold. You can also lay a towel below the bowl to keep the area clean as the bird will likely splash around.
Once this is set up, you can let your bird jump into the water and splash around and clean itself.
Keep an eye on the bird so you can be there should an accident happen.
Avoid using regular soap to wash your baby cockatiel with, soap can be irritating to the bird’s skin. The soap will also strip the bird’s feathers of their natural oils and cause issues like dermatitis.
Once the bird is done bathing it will dry off on its own by shaking the water off of its feathers.
You can alternatively dry the bird using a small towel wiping along the feather grain, or, you can use a heat lamp or a hairdryer (at a safe distance from the bird).
Bathing the bird with a spray bottle:
If the bird isn’t heading toward the water bowl you left out for it, you can mist the bird, use a spray bottle that releases a fine mist to do this.
Add some plain lukewarm water into the spray bottle and mist the bird. The bird will clean itself by preening its feathers and flapping its wings.
Once the bird is done it will move away from the spray area, don’t follow the baby cockatiel around when it does this, the bird is done bathing
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Why Are My Parakeet’s Feathers Turning Brown? Baby Cockatiel Not Digesting, Baby Cockatiel Not Pooping, Cockatiel Diarrhea Egg-Laying, My New Cockatiel Is Scared Of Me, Can 2 Male Cockatiels Be In The Same Cage?, Cockatiel Flirting Behavior