Aggressive male Kakariki

[kealr]

Our male and female Kakariki have got chicks now, 6 little ones.
They have just been 'at it' again and the female is again sitting on one egg.
Has anyone ever had a problem with the male becoming aggressive to the chicks. Ours seems to be attacking them, plucking their feathers out. it sounds like he's really trying to hurt them. He didnt do it last year to the first few chicks we had...?

Just wondering if anyone else has had this problem and what did they do..?
T.I.A

 

[LordTriggs]

You need to separate the male into his own cage IMMEDIATELY before he kills the chicks and potentially the female too. They might be able to go back to being together once the chicks have grown up but the male might still be out for blood. Also keep an eye on the female turning on them too, you'll then need to remove the chicks and get hand feeding using a brooder

 

[EllenD]

Okay, so you have 2 major issues going on that are going to end-up killing your female as well as the chicks you already have...The first problem is the male needs to be separated into his own cage IMMEDIATELY, RIGHT NOW, because he's going to kill the female or the chicks or both if you leave them together (very common), and also because you are breeding your female to death!!!

You cannot allow a female parrot/bird who just laid a clutch of eggs an has 6 living chicks to feed/lay on be bred again that quickly!!! She is going to be extremely malnourished, and she could very likely become Egg-Bound with every new egg she has to lay due to Calcium and Phosphorous deficiency...She could also just simply collapse and/or just die at any moment from sheer-exhaustion, the amount of energy they use to make eggs, lay eggs, and feed chicks (6 of them) is tremendous, and now you've allowed her to be bred again immediately and start making and laying eggs again...Needs to stop right now or you'll have a dead female and dead chicks...

You need to remove any new eggs that she has already laid/is sitting on and any additional eggs she does lay and boil them for 20 minutes to ensure they cannot hatch, because she just simply cannot care for them, and she will likely kill them anyway if you allow them to hatch because she'll know it's too many chicks too soon...And you don't want to go through seeing her do this, it's ugly...

Remove the male right now and keep them separated for the next couple of months at least (They only breed twice per year in the wild, once in the spring and once in the mid-fall, so plenty of time in-between to recover), so she's at very great-risk for Egg-Binding and death...Boil each egg for 20 minutes, let them cool, then put them back in her cage and allow her to lay on them untill she gets bored with them and stops laying on them, then you can remove them and throw them away...That's the only way to get her to stop chronically laying them (if you just remove them and don't put them back in for her to finish laying on them for as long as she wants to, she will typically just lay more, which will kill her)...

The male cannot be allowed to be in the cage with her again any time soon (maybe never again) because he's going to eventually hurt her very badly or kill her, and again, she cannot be bred again until next spring-time now, and it's a bad idea anyway because, no offense meant, but you obviously don't know much about breeding birds/parrots, so you need to get some mentoring/experience/training and education first...And again, please boil the eggs and do not allow them to hatch, because this will be too much for her and she will most-likely die...

***Also, if you see the female AT ALL straining, like she has to poop but cannot, that means she is most-likely Egg-Bound, which is 100%-Fatal without medical-intervention immediately from an Avian Vet, so you need to watch her closely because if she does become Egg-Bound you must take her to a Vet immediately...Also, if she doesn't already, put both a Cuttlebone and an Avian Mineral-Block inside of her cage immediately as well...