Cockatiel band/age

Question
 I just purchased a cockatiel from a a bird store here in NC, and she has a band on her leg.  I have 2 questions in regards to her band.  The first is where can I go onliine to find out what the numbers and letter mean?  The second was,  the people at the store told me all the cockatiels are about 4 months old.  Well I read your answer to someones question where you said the sideways # is the year of birth.  She has a sideways # and its 05.  If they said she was about 4 months,  and the number sayd 05,  does thid mean they lied to me about her age?  And we wanted a tiel under a year old so we can get her attached to us...Does the age really affect the attachment?  What should we think/do?

Answer
Hi, Chrissy.  Thanks for posting your questions!

There may not be a place online you can go to...just depends on who/what company issued the leg band.  Can you provide me with the numbers and letters off the band?  I'll see if I can help you with this.  Some bird leg band companies allow the breeder to decide what goes on the band to a certain extent (such as individual bird numbers), then there are the companies who don't dictate at all what the breeder puts on the bands (and the breeder doesn't include the year of birth)...this is why is just depends!

Usually the year of birth is printed in the opposite direction from all the other letters/numbers.  The year of birth is usually vertically on a leg band.  I'd rather know the others numbers/letters and their positioning on the band before I say if the 05 is a year or other identifying number.  Usually the year contains all the numbers in the year, such as 2005, not just 05, but again, this just depends on what company issued the band.

If the band contains the breeders initials and/or a parrot society initials (such as the cockatiel society), then it will be relatively easy to get more information on your new tiel.

It would not be the first time a pet shop lied to a customer about the age of a pet they are selling!  Your best bet when wanting a tame parrot would have been to purchase a just weaned tiel baby (about 2 months of age) from a tiel breeder that has handfed the babies.  Handfed babies imprint on humans which makes them tame.  Hopefully, your new tiel was handfed by the breeder and was not "ruined" at the bird store and is still tame/friendly.

Age affects attachment in the sense that the older a bird gets without having one-on-one human interaction, the less tame the bird is.  In other words, as a breeder trying to raise/sell tame pet birds, I want the baby parrot to see me instead of it's parents when it finally opens it's eyes at 7-10 days of age.  I want that baby to imprint on me, I want that baby to know that it's food comes from me, I want that baby to think I'm it's mommy/daddy so it will be friendly to me (humans).  If you let the parents raise their babies, they will imprint on their parents and not be friendly toward humans.  As a breeder, I want to get this baby into the hands of it's humans as soon as possible so the baby can imprint on the humans that it will be living with so it will be friendly with them and not me any longer.  This is where time is of the essence when it comes to birds.  

Once a tame parrot goes to a pet shop and is placed with other birds, they tend to bond with the other birds (lose some of their tameness) because birds prefer other birds to humans.  Also at pet shops, birds (and other animals) are poked at all day by customers and some learn to dislike humans, or at least human fingers and hands, because they've been poked and tormented all day every day.  This isn't to say a 4-month old baby tiel can't be friendly.  There are exceptions to everything, especially when it comes to birds, so the 4-month old baby tiel you just bought may or may not be friendly...it just depends!  What I'm trying to get at is that age can be a big factor, depending on the bird and how it was raised and what it has gone through in it's lifetime up to this point.  On the other hand, I've seen people take 6, 7, 8-year old untame birds out of horrible situations and give them a good, loving environment, and the parrot is friendlier/tamer than a just-weaned baby parrot.  

Send me the numbers and letters off your tiel's leg band, and I'll see if I can decipher what they mean and give you a website if possible.  Then you can go from there.    

Chrys