Skittish and frazzled parakeets

User Question
Your website is the best around regarding parakeets. I'm a new owner, i've had my parakeets for about 3 months. They have a pretty large cage, toys, treats, water, food.. all as i've read in your website.

However, I've not been able to get them to perch on my finger. Even after all of this time, they are still very skittish and frazzled when i come near them. Also, one of the parakeet's tails looks a lot shorter than before, almost as if it's tailfaithers have drastically fallen off. Should I be concerned?

Any tips on my frazzled parakeets. Their names are Thelma (blue, and the smaller of the two) and Louise (green, and definitely the leader), by the way. However, at this point, I'm still not certain they are both female.

Lisa's Answer
I have full instructions on how to hand train parakeets here -

http://www.lisashea.com/petinfo/articles/bird_hand.html

it can easily take a few weeks to months to hand train a bird depending on how it was raised before you bought it. You just have to be patient and work through the steps.

Parakeets do moult seasonally, so the feathers might have come out so that new ones can grow in. On the other hand, the other keet may be harassing the short tailed one and deliberately yanking out her feathers, which would be not good. Keep an eye on the keets for a few days and try to see if you spot any sort of feather-pulling behavior going on.

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