Considering re-homing one of my conures - Looking for advice

[Eralus]

We've currently got three birds.

1. Edgar - Green Cheek Conure
2. Allen - Green Cheek Conure (Pineapple if that matters)
3. Poe - Indian Ringneck

We've had Edgar and Poe for a few years. Both are quite friendly and get along well with each other and with me and my wife. Edgar was a rescue and developed a strong bond with me and Poe has a strong bond with my wife. Allen is our little problem child who we got more recently. Neither of us seems to be able to develop a bond with Allen and she only comes over to us if Edgar is there first.

We got Allen roughly a year and a half ago from a pet shop. We were told at the time it was a male conure and was hand-reared. After a few eggs, we discovered that one part of this was blatantly wrong, and we suspect the other is rubbish too.

Allen is very skittish, and at times quite aggressive. We've been working with her the same as the other birds since we brought her home, but while she has shown a small improvement, she is still hard to handle as she bites very hard, almost always drawing blood, and often without any apparent reason. And while she's in egg-laying mode everything gets amped up a few notches making her almost impossible to handle. She also bullies Poe quite a bit, but this particular behavior kind of comes and goes.

We honestly never intended to have a female bird, and while we've tried to take the egg-laying in stride, the increased aggression is making things difficult. We're starting to consider finding her a new home, but there are a few factors that are holding us back from this option.

Edgar has bonded with Allen by this point. They regularly cuddle up together, preen each other, share a cage, and when Allen starts her egg-laying, Edgar also shows some increased aggression (Although still far less than Allen) and has drastically less interest in being around us and largely goes wherever Allen goes. We're fairly confident we can find Allen a good quality home, but we're also concerned about the effect her absence might have on Edgar.

Re-homing is not an option I like, but at this point, I'm not sure what to do with her. She's effectively like a wild bird in the house with barely concealed intolerance of everyone but Edgar.

In terms of their environment - They sleep in cages at night (Poe in one, and Edgar/Allen sharing another). During the day they all share the same space - I converted my small balcony into an aviary so they have plenty of space to fly about. They get the average enrichment toys like foraging trays for their seed/pellets and a baffle cage with treats. they also get fresh veggies every morning. They spend time in the house with me every morning before I leave for work and a few hours every afternoon when I get home.

I'm here seeking advice and I'm open to all suggestions. I'm not sure what is relevant to this sort of discussion, so I'm happy to answer any questions about behaviors, environment, or anything else that may be relevant that I haven't covered here. I've attached a picture of Edgar (Left) and Allen (Right). Edgar regularly cuddles up into my hand like this. This picture is from one of the exceedingly rare times Alan joined him.

 

[CasaDeMouse]

Conures usually mate for life. That should be one consideration.

My female has also drawn blood with just about every interaction. I'm hoping after her season is over we can go back go cuddles and snuggles like we used to. Right now, I'm just trying to provide basic nutrition and offers for baths and snacks when she does leave the room. No matter.

I hope that helps!

 

[hiriki]

Thanks for posting!! Your babies are quite cute!!

So, if you got Allen a year and a half ago as a juvenile, then I think the number 1 thing you should be aware of--or, if you already knew this, you should remind yourself constantly--is that birds do go through puberty. For green cheeks, puberty starts at 1-2 years of age, and during puberty hormones will be out of wack.

Some of this info may be stuff you already know, so feel free to skim or provide context as to what you've already tried. Hormones in birds cause a lot of the behaviors you described from Allen, particularly cage aggression and also just random/unpredictable biting. Whereas we as bird parents can usually tell if a bite is coming based on body language, a hormonal bird is much harder to read and more likely to bite. Adult birds of any age will go through hormone cycles, with spikes during mating seasons (spring is usually particularly bad), but every mating season is different, some worse than others, and I think a lot of people would say that nothing compares to the terror of bird puberty lol.

There are some things you can do to lessen hormones, which I'll list shortly, but I just want to say that rehoming should, ideally, be your last resort. Remember that birds are very intelligent--even animals like cats and dogs have the capacity to understand and mourn when they've been abandoned, but birds are uniquely intelligent. One of your birds is a rescue, so I'm thinking you've possibly been to a bird shelter before and seen how stressed the birds there are. It's so, so common for birds of all species to be relinquished due to puberty, but puberty is temporary, and the trauma of abandonment will stay with them for life. I personally have 4 birds, and of those 4, two of them have absolutely no interest in bonding with me. Even so, I know that the stability of a familiar home is what's best for them, and I enjoy them to whatever capacity they will allow me to enjoy them.

Anyway, here's what I would suggest that you try first in order to get her hormones under control so that you can hopefully try to hand tame her in the future:

• Separate the two conures.
  I realize they're bonded at this point, and ideally once hormones are under control you can cage them together again, but right now allowing them unlimited access to each other will just encourage them to mate and nest, which will keep their hormones constantly high. You can cage them directly next to each other, so that they can see and chat with each other, and you can absolutely let them out at the same time, but when you're not around to monitor them they should be caged separately.
• Discourage mating behaviors.
  This means the literal act of mating should be discouraged, as in one bird mounting the other, but also birds will regurgitate from their crop into another bird's beak as a mating behavior, and that should be discouraged if your conures are doing that. And, birds will sometimes rub their butts on perches or toys in their cage even if they don't have access to another bird--that should also be discouraged. Most of the time, a bird will pick a specific toy or perch that they target for things like that, and if you notice it you just want to move or take out that particular object from the cage.
• Prevent nesting.
  If your female is consistently laying her eggs in the same location, she likely considers it to be a nest, whether its a box or a basket or a food bowl. If it's a box/basket/snuggle tent, just remove it. If it's a food bowl, move it to a different location to break her out of that mindset of "this is a nest." Remove any dark hidey holes or nooks. Note that if she has already laid eggs, the cat is out of the bag and you shouldn't just remove them because she will just continue laying and potentially reach a point of calcium deficiency. Instead, you want to replace them with infertile wooden eggs and then remove them as soon as she seems to have abandoned them, at which point you can work on getting rid of the nest.
• Review your own behavior to make sure that you're not triggering hormones.
  This is unlikely tbh because you mentioned she's not hand tame, but if you're not already aware, touching a bird's back/tummy/under the wings can stimulate hormones. When you pet any of your birds, but especially your hormonal female, you want to focus on only the head.
• Make sure your birds get 10-12 hours of relative darkness & quiet every night.
  During breeding season, the longer the better so you may want to aim for 12. Everyone puts their birds to bed differently, personally I have my lighting in the bird corner on a timer, and as soon as those lights switch off for the night it's my cue to pull the curtain around their cages which shields them from the artificial lighting in the rest of the living room. They have natural lighting from the windows, but they have a full 12 hours free from artificial lighting and they're blocked from distractions in the living room keeping them up. A lot of folks will cover cages with a blanket. Whatever you do, aim for 10-12 hours of "bed time," and try not to keep your birds awake at night with loud conversation or TV. If you're curious, this is because less sleep = shorter nights = it must be spring/summer mating season, time to make babies.
• Tweak the diet.
  Honestly, this would be my last resort if everything listed above didn't work. If you do the above for a full month and you don't notice any improvement then maybe you can look at diet next. High fat diets (typically seed diets) can sometimes impact hormones, and some folks have also suggested that high sugar can impact hormones, so if you feed a lot of fruits maybe cutting back on that. Soft foods (by which I mean literal pastes or sauces, like almost liquid) are a definite no, and it's best to avoid warm foods as well, so if you feed any table scraps you want to wait until they cool first.

Once hormones are under control, actual training can begin. Honestly, I go overboard when I post advice sometimes and I've already given you a lot to read, but there's some good stickies you can read already on the forum about bite training.

Bite pressure training?

Can someone kindly give me the run down on bite pressure training please. Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

www.parrotforums.com

Shunning technique-what to do why they fly to you

So my little Ruby has taken to biting now. It's the weirdest thing because she'll step up on my hand and then sometimes bite my fingers or hand even though I never hold her there. First I made no reaction but after several times of this back to back I started telling her a stern No. She looked...

www.parrotforums.com

 

[Eralus]

Thanks for posting!! Your babies are quite cute!!

So, if you got Allen a year and a half ago as a juvenile, then I think the number 1 thing you should be aware of--or, if you already knew this, you should remind yourself constantly--is that birds do go through puberty. For green cheeks, puberty starts at 1-2 years of age, and during puberty hormones will be out of wack.

Some of this info may be stuff you already know, so feel free to skim or provide context as to what you've already tried. Hormones in birds cause a lot of the behaviors you described from Allen, particularly cage aggression and also just random/unpredictable biting. Whereas we as bird parents can usually tell if a bite is coming based on body language, a hormonal bird is much harder to read and more likely to bite. Adult birds of any age will go through hormone cycles, with spikes during mating seasons (spring is usually particularly bad), but every mating season is different, some worse than others, and I think a lot of people would say that nothing compares to the terror of bird puberty lol.

There are some things you can do to lessen hormones, which I'll list shortly, but I just want to say that rehoming should, ideally, be your last resort. Remember that birds are very intelligent--even animals like cats and dogs have the capacity to understand and mourn when they've been abandoned, but birds are uniquely intelligent. One of your birds is a rescue, so I'm thinking you've possibly been to a bird shelter before and seen how stressed the birds there are. It's so, so common for birds of all species to be relinquished due to puberty, but puberty is temporary, and the trauma of abandonment will stay with them for life. I personally have 4 birds, and of those 4, two of them have absolutely no interest in bonding with me. Even so, I know that the stability of a familiar home is what's best for them, and I enjoy them to whatever capacity they will allow me to enjoy them.

Anyway, here's what I would suggest that you try first in order to get her hormones under control so that you can hopefully try to hand tame her in the future:

• Separate the two conures.
  I realize they're bonded at this point, and ideally once hormones are under control you can cage them together again, but right now allowing them unlimited access to each other will just encourage them to mate and nest, which will keep their hormones constantly high. You can cage them directly next to each other, so that they can see and chat with each other, and you can absolutely let them out at the same time, but when you're not around to monitor them they should be caged separately.
• Discourage mating behaviors.
  This means the literal act of mating should be discouraged, as in one bird mounting the other, but also birds will regurgitate from their crop into another bird's beak as a mating behavior, and that should be discouraged if your conures are doing that. And, birds will sometimes rub their butts on perches or toys in their cage even if they don't have access to another bird--that should also be discouraged. Most of the time, a bird will pick a specific toy or perch that they target for things like that, and if you notice it you just want to move or take out that particular object from the cage.
• Prevent nesting.
  If your female is consistently laying her eggs in the same location, she likely considers it to be a nest, whether its a box or a basket or a food bowl. If it's a box/basket/snuggle tent, just remove it. If it's a food bowl, move it to a different location to break her out of that mindset of "this is a nest." Remove any dark hidey holes or nooks. Note that if she has already laid eggs, the cat is out of the bag and you shouldn't just remove them because she will just continue laying and potentially reach a point of calcium deficiency. Instead, you want to replace them with infertile wooden eggs and then remove them as soon as she seems to have abandoned them, at which point you can work on getting rid of the nest.
• Review your own behavior to make sure that you're not triggering hormones.
  This is unlikely tbh because you mentioned she's not hand tame, but if you're not already aware, touching a bird's back/tummy/under the wings can stimulate hormones. When you pet any of your birds, but especially your hormonal female, you want to focus on only the head.
• Make sure your birds get 10-12 hours of relative darkness & quiet every night.
  During breeding season, the longer the better so you may want to aim for 12. Everyone puts their birds to bed differently, personally I have my lighting in the bird corner on a timer, and as soon as those lights switch off for the night it's my cue to pull the curtain around their cages which shields them from the artificial lighting in the rest of the living room. They have natural lighting from the windows, but they have a full 12 hours free from artificial lighting and they're blocked from distractions in the living room keeping them up. A lot of folks will cover cages with a blanket. Whatever you do, aim for 10-12 hours of "bed time," and try not to keep your birds awake at night with loud conversation or TV. If you're curious, this is because less sleep = shorter nights = it must be spring/summer mating season, time to make babies.
• Tweak the diet.
  Honestly, this would be my last resort if everything listed above didn't work. If you do the above for a full month and you don't notice any improvement then maybe you can look at diet next. High fat diets (typically seed diets) can sometimes impact hormones, and some folks have also suggested that high sugar can impact hormones, so if you feed a lot of fruits maybe cutting back on that. Soft foods (by which I mean literal pastes or sauces, like almost liquid) are a definite no, and it's best to avoid warm foods as well, so if you feed any table scraps you want to wait until they cool first.

Once hormones are under control, actual training can begin. Honestly, I go overboard when I post advice sometimes and I've already given you a lot to read, but there's some good stickies you can read already on the forum about bite training.

Bite pressure training?

Can someone kindly give me the run down on bite pressure training please. Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

www.parrotforums.com

Shunning technique-what to do why they fly to you

So my little Ruby has taken to biting now. It's the weirdest thing because she'll step up on my hand and then sometimes bite my fingers or hand even though I never hold her there. First I made no reaction but after several times of this back to back I started telling her a stern No. She looked...

www.parrotforums.com

This was tremendously helpful, thank you. This is the second egg-laying Allen has gone through, so I'm at least a little familiar with her egg-laying behaviors at this point. I'm going to address a few points you mentioned for a bit more clarification on my end:

At the moment, as I said they are caged together at night. I'll take that suggestion and get another cage to try having them separate. Should I wait until she has finished laying to try this? (She's laying at the moment, although not in her cage) and is it still ok to have them out together during the day while I'm at work? I don't like limiting my birds to cages all the time, hence the converted balcony. They're all fully flighted and it just seems cruel to me to limit them so much for a majority of the day.

I notice quite a bit of mating behavior from Allen, even when not laying, so I'll keep an eye out for any specific items that trigger it. I hadn't considered this.

We've already worked hard to get rid of any small dark hidey holes, but the creativity of this damn conure is impressive at times, finding crawlspaces I had never considered. I pray she never realizes she can get behind the fridge. The first egg she lays tends to involve a bit of panicked cavity-seeking, and she doesn't seem to be willing to lay unless she is wedged somewhere warm and enclosed. After this, she seems to settle on laying in one of their foraging trays outside. I'll pick up some fake eggs and work on replacing them. I thankfully know enough to avoid removing them. WHen she has finished laying, I'll re-arrange the trays to hopefully avoid her recognising this impromptu "Nest".

I know enough to only touch her head, and she's way too skittish for me to get anywhere near her back anyway. I genuinely don't think this one is an issue in this case.

In terms of sleeping conditions - The birds have their own room at the back of the house. They go to bed at about 6pm every night, and they get up no earlier than 6am in the morning. At the moment, it's winter and the sun goes down at around 5:30, so they're heading to bed a little earlier than usual some nights. I don't cover their cages though since they're in an enclosed room with the door shut.

In terms of diet, they get "Chop" every morning, which is just a big mix of previously cut up vegetables, cooked beans, oats, and a little bit of brown rice. They do get fruit, but only maybe once or twice a week. I don't have any paste foods I feed them. The only table scraps they eat amount to sharing my cornflakes some mornings.

Thank you for the advice, it has given me a few new things to consider and try. I agree re-homing is a last resort, so I would like to avoid it if I can.

 

[hiriki]

I would wait until she's finished laying and nesting this time to try to move her, so if she laid eggs in the cage then don't relocate her to a different cage until she's abandoned them. If the eggs are outside of the cage anyway, it doesn't really matter since you're already separating her from the eggs on a nightly basis, so you can separate them freely whenever you're ready... and if you let her keep the cage the eggs are in and move her mate, then it should also be fine to separate them now. Being separated from her mate may make her abandon the eggs early, but it likely won't trigger her to lay more, which would be the main thing you want to avoid because of calcium deficiency.

I just reread your post and see that the eggs are outside of the cage. I think you can freely separate them at night and it shouldn't trigger laying behavior.

Regarding the out of cage time......... Allen would definitely give me a nasty bite if she heard me say this, but I really don't think you should give her unmonitored access to Edgar right now, or in fact, she probably shouldn't be out of her cage unmonitored right now at all, setting Edgar aside. The reason is as you mentioned: her hormonal bird creativity around finding hidey holes. I've heard of motivated hormonal birds chewing holes in furniture to make a nest! Forget about blocking off the undersides of furniture, she'll find a way. That's obviously only possible if you leave them unsupervised, though. (You won't want to limit her unsupervised out of cage time until she's abandoned the eggs outside of the cage, though.)

Your best option depends on the type of cage you normally buy, I think. If you have small cages for them, you can simply move Allen's cage into the "aviary" room during your workday where she's able to talk to Edgar and see him, but she's not able to mate with him or find those sneaky nest locations... then at night, you pick that cage up and move it back to the bird room. If you have larger cages, then I think you should set up her large cage in the aviary, again putting her in there during the day so she can talk to Edgar, and then having a smaller cage for her "sleep cage" in the bird room. Either way, you can let her out any time you're in the room, then back home when you leave, and you'll want plenty of destructible toys in there to keep her occupied (removing any that she likes a little "too much" lol).

I know that involves a lot of cage purchases, since you're already going to have to invest in a new cage just to separate them at night, but I think it would be extremely difficult, maybe even impossible, to get her hormones in check while she's got unlimited, unsupervised ability to be constantly hunting for a nest and mating with Edgar all day long.

The key thing to remember is that puberty is temporary, and hopefully so is this whirlwind of hormonal obsessions in her little bird brain. Once she calms down, you can slowly increase the amount of time she spends in the bird-proofed aviary room unsupervised, and as long as she doesn't snap right back to her hormonal ways, you may be able to let her free roam most or all of the year and just put her back in that horny bird jail cage during particularly nasty mating seasons! Right now, we're just trying to get her to "snap out of it."

 

[Eralus]

I would wait until she's finished laying and nesting this time to try to move her, so if she laid eggs in the cage then don't relocate her to a different cage until she's abandoned them. If the eggs are outside of the cage anyway, it doesn't really matter since you're already separating her from the eggs on a nightly basis, so you can separate them freely whenever you're ready... and if you let her keep the cage the eggs are in and move her mate, then it should also be fine to separate them now. Being separated from her mate may make her abandon the eggs early, but it likely won't trigger her to lay more, which would be the main thing you want to avoid because of calcium deficiency.

I just reread your post and see that the eggs are outside of the cage. I think you can freely separate them at night and it shouldn't trigger laying behavior.

Regarding the out of cage time......... Allen would definitely give me a nasty bite if she heard me say this, but I really don't think you should give her unmonitored access to Edgar right now, or in fact, she probably shouldn't be out of her cage unmonitored right now at all, setting Edgar aside. The reason is as you mentioned: her hormonal bird creativity around finding hidey holes. I've heard of motivated hormonal birds chewing holes in furniture to make a nest! Forget about blocking off the undersides of furniture, she'll find a way. That's obviously only possible if you leave them unsupervised, though. (You won't want to limit her unsupervised out of cage time until she's abandoned the eggs outside of the cage, though.)

Your best option depends on the type of cage you normally buy, I think. If you have small cages for them, you can simply move Allen's cage into the "aviary" room during your workday where she's able to talk to Edgar and see him, but she's not able to mate with him or find those sneaky nest locations... then at night, you pick that cage up and move it back to the bird room. If you have larger cages, then I think you should set up her large cage in the aviary, again putting her in there during the day so she can talk to Edgar, and then having a smaller cage for her "sleep cage" in the bird room. Either way, you can let her out any time you're in the room, then back home when you leave, and you'll want plenty of destructible toys in there to keep her occupied (removing any that she likes a little "too much" lol).

I know that involves a lot of cage purchases, since you're already going to have to invest in a new cage just to separate them at night, but I think it would be extremely difficult, maybe even impossible, to get her hormones in check while she's got unlimited, unsupervised ability to be constantly hunting for a nest and mating with Edgar all day long.

The key thing to remember is that puberty is temporary, and hopefully so is this whirlwind of hormonal obsessions in her little bird brain. Once she calms down, you can slowly increase the amount of time she spends in the bird-proofed aviary room unsupervised, and as long as she doesn't snap right back to her hormonal ways, you may be able to let her free roam most or all of the year and just put her back in that horny bird jail cage during particularly nasty mating seasons! Right now, we're just trying to get her to "snap out of it."

Thanks again for the advice.

There's little to no danger of Allen finding any enclosed spaces in the aviary, I've made it very open and there's nothing she can get behind or inside. The tray she's currently occupying is literally just a round tray hanging from the ceiling. I think she only settled there because there are no other options available to her out there.

She is monitored while inside, but currently hard to manage with the single-minded focus on cavity seeking lol.

I'll pick up a cage today and start the separation from tonight onwards. I won't separate her from the aviary at this stage simply because her eggs are out there and I'm, reluctant to move them or separate her from them for fear of causing more laying (She laid 13 in total last year. Scared me to death tbh). But I'll keep that option in mind once this egg cycle is over.

Is it possible to avoid egg laying entirely by keeping things like this in check, or is this going to happen every year no matter what I do?

 

[hiriki]

Generally, if you're able to keep hormones in check, you won't see eggs--but it depends on the hen. I have a jenday conure, the rescue told me she was a boy but I knew jendays aren't dimorphic so I flipped a coin and decided she was a girl... lol. Anyway, I recently after 10 years got her DNA sexed and was shocked that she actually IS a girl. Never laid a single egg! For the first time this year she did have a short affliction of hormonal behavior, STILL no eggs. On the flip side, I've had cockatiel hens who lay eggs if you look at them funny, but they rarely laid full clutches or bothered to sit on them for long as long as I was consistent in keeping their hormones in check... but then again, there's other folks on this forum who deal with chronic egg layers and nothing seems to work to get them to stop.

If that's the case for Allen, pop in with her to an avian vet and you might be able to get hormone shots. In the USA, they're still a kind of off-label treatment but they're well known to be effective. You mentioned it's winter where you're at so I'm sure you're not in the USA but if you're able to find a certified avian vet in your area, they'll probably be familiar with hormone injections. It's a once yearly (maybe every 6 months?) injection that has been a game changer for some people.