Hi, Brandon--welcome to Parrots. I'm the (absentee) moderator!
>I also have a question...  Our cockatoo doesn't spend a long time preening
>himself like our other birds do (He's preening right now just to prove me
>wrong), and he doesn't seem to be very good at it.  He turned 1 year old
>this Christmas, so we were thinking that maybe birds don't get good preening
>habits until they get older.  Does anyone know if this is true?
Some birds almost seem to have to LEARN preening. I've had babies that
were trying to preen right after hatching, others just didn't seem to
care WHAT they looked like right up until they left here to go to new
homes. You might try gently misting him with warm water to dampen his
feathers--being wet seems to encourage preening behaviors, and he might
get better with more practice.
>Also, is he probably going to get a better sense of balance and stop
>breaking tail and wing feathers as he gets older?  Whenever new feathers
>grow in that are longer than the ones he has, he breaks them immediately!
That's also probably a baby thing. Lots of baby birds are clumsy, and
grow out of it as they develop more coordination. You might review his
diet and make sure he's getting a good variety of things, just so you
can rule out nutrition as a possible cause of brittle feathers.
Welcome aboard!
--Kathy
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