Male Budgie Agression Towards Mate

[hmlp2590]

Hi all! New to this forum and I'm hoping I can get some insight. We have 3 budgies at home and 2 of them, Igor (m) and Shiva, mated. Shiva laid a clutch and we got 1 baby budgie out of it.

For the last couple weeks Igor has been showing a lot of aggression towards Shiva. This was totally unusual behavior as he is usually very sweet and even tempered. He started to pluck the feathers out of her face and head. We separated them for a bit and then put them back together so he could help her with the baby.

Last night, it escalated to a point I've never seen before. He attacked Shiva so bad she has no feathers on the back of her neck and had a nice sized gouge out. She retaliated and he has a small scrape above his eye.
Obviously, we took him back out and he's been put into his own cage.

Has anyone experienced this before? I've been trying to research and coming up rather empty on solutions. I don't want to have to keep them separate forever, and I'm wondering if this aggression will stop once the baby goes to his forever home at my mother-in-law's?

Any advice/help is much appreciated!

Thanks for reading!

 

[EllenD]

First thing is to separate them into their own cages immediately, right now if you haven't already. If you don't they are both going to get severely injured or killed, as will their chick. If they haven't shown any aggression towards the chick yet, it will happen, and it could be from either of them if you leave them together...Mom can raise/feed the baby without dad as long as she has ample food, water, and a Mineral Block/Cuttlebone to keep her Calcium up.

This happens with birds, and sometimes there is a distinct reason and sometimes there is no reason at all, at least one that we can see or that makes sense to us...But that's just it, we as people tend to kind of humanize our pets, and we assume that a "breeding pair" of birds that are bonded are going to be like a pair of people that are a couple with a child, and that's just not how this works. Budgies are not monogamous with one mate when other mates are available, with male Budgies in flocks going from one female to the next to the next. So it could be that the chick caused some jealousy, it could be that Igor is wanting to hurt or kill the chick and Shiva isn't letting him, it could be that Igor has become excessive in his preening of her, and now he's wanting to over-preen her or even start to mutilate her, it could be hormonal aggression, or it could be something entirely different. Sometimes we just don't know, and all we can do is keep them safe and protect them from each other.

You may or may not be able to put them back together into the same cage, but definitely not until the baby is fully weaned and moved out into it's own cage...And it will need to be moved into it's own cage after it weans, because if it's a male it may start breeding with mom, and if it's a female it may start breeding with dad, and you don't want any in-breeding...

My suggestion is to keep them in separate cages sitting next to each other so they can see and talk to each other. When the chick fully weans it needs to go into a totally separate cage from the parents, and I would start out gradually by only letting Igor and Shiva be together outside of their cages, and the same goes for the baby if you're going to keep it. And if you see any aggression between the 3 of them outside of the cage then you'll need to separate them and not let them out together ever unsupervised...You may not ever be able to put them in the same cage again, sometimes it's just not worth the risk...

It's hard, I know, but they just aren't people...We had a newer member rescue a Budgie from death inside of a dumpster, he brought her home and did an amazing job bringing her back to life, and she bonded with his current male Budgie, and they had a clutch of babies. He was very clear that he wanted them to "live together as a family" and "raise their children as a family", and then one day he came home to find the female had decapitated one of her chicks. This absolutely crushed this member to the point that he really hasn't been back on the forum since it happened about 2 months ago. We tried to explain to him that parrots are not humans and they don't have human relationships, and that what happened is completely normal, etc. But the last thing I saw him write was that he was re-homing them all, he just couldn't take having to separate them from each other or keeping the chicks separate from the parents or each other, even though we told him they were all going to start in-breeding if he didn't separate the parents from the chicks, and the chicks from each other. So his solution was to re-home them, because he wanted them to have a human-like family with the same type of dynamics and relationships, and that's just not how birds work. So your only job is to keep them all as safe as you can, and right now that means keeping Igor and Shiva completely separate from each other in their own cages and only allowing them to be together out of their cages under supervision, and if they show aggression towards each other out of their cages then you'll need to not allow them to be out together at all...Same with the baby, as you don't want more chicks that are in-bred. This could be temporary and things may go back to normal once the chick is weaned and in it's own cage, but it also might not.

 

[hmlp2590]

@EllenD

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!! I really appreciated your thorough response!!
We will continue to keep him in the separate cage but still next to the main cage so they can talk.
I'll watch out for signs of aggression from Shiva towards the baby as well, but so far, they seem to be doing much better without Igor in the cage. The baby is coming out more than he was before.

Thank you again for your thoughtful and helpful response!!

 

[Laurasea]

EllenD is a wonderful member. And I miss Amsterdam, was thinking of him the other day, didn't know he was rehoming.... He did such a wonderful job saving that bird..
Good luck with your budgies... I'd say the male wants to mate and have a new clutch, as in nature it's a waste of their resources to only raise one baby. Many species with one offspring ( that normally have many) will kill or abandon the " Singleton"
So you definitely want the male out of there and keep close eye on the female too...

 

[ParrotGenie]

It is best to keep them separated. I seen this many times and unfortunately you have a aggressive male and usually don't work well, even if separated for a while to break aggression is usually temporary and not worth the risk.

 

[birdlover12345]

I'd say keep them separated but within sight of one another. After a while of seeing each other without the aggression occurring it might calm them down and get them used to non-aggressive cohabitation again.

 

[EllenD]

EllenD is a wonderful member. And I miss Amsterdam, was thinking of him the other day, didn't know he was rehoming.... He did such a wonderful job saving that bird..
Good luck with your budgies... I'd say the male wants to mate and have a new clutch, as in nature it's a waste of their resources to only raise one baby. Many species with one offspring ( that normally have many) will kill or abandon the " Singleton"
So you definitely want the male out of there and keep close eye on the female too...

I think about Amsterdam often, and I felt so horrible about what happened...He's a very sensitive guy and he unfortunately had a set-way of how he wanted things to work-out in his head that was totally opposite of nature's plans...I had written him a long message, trying to explain things to him and to get him to understand that he did nothing wrong, he was an amazing Parront and that what happened with his Budgies happens every single day, all the time...The last I heard from him he had messaged me back, thanking me for my my message to him, but he didn't even mention not re-homing them, he simply said that he needed time to get-over what had happened...Then he never came back, I don't think he posted after that ever again...So I'm assuming that he probably did go ahead and re-home all of them, which breaks my heart because of what a great Parront he was. The transformation of that female Budgie from when he found her inside that trash dumpster to what she looked like and the condition he got her in was nothing less than amazing. I hope that he still checks-in here and will one day come back, but I also understand that if he did re-home all of his birds then it's probably much too painful for him to come here and listen to all of us talking about our birds...But I still miss him quite a bit...

HMLP2590, I'm so glad that separating Igor from mom and baby has worked-out well for you. This is an extremely common situation that happens to all parrot-breeders at one point or another, and it's not because of anything you did wrong, it's just how they are (hormones are horrible things sometimes, lol)...Quite a long time ago I finally stopped trying to fight or change nature when it came to breeding birds; I'm stubborn, and I really had convinced myself that I would be someone who could overcome all of the common issues that always come-up with hormonal behavior and aggression, and I even tried Community Breeding with one of my flocks of English Budgies, thinking that I could make it work with multiple breeding-pairs living together in the same aviary, with each pair raising their clutches together but independentaly of each other and with no problems...And finally after nothing I was trying was working out, I realized that you can't fight nature, and you certainly can't change nature. No one can, no matter how experienced or knowledgeable they are, it just doesn't matter, nature is going to do what it does and you just have to roll with the punches. So now I approach all of these situations with the exact same approach/point of view, and that is that our only job as Parronts and/or breeders is to simply keep our birds safe and protect them from themselves, since we are the ones who are choosing to keep "nature" in a captive environment. That's all we can do as their owners, their family, and their Parronts, just keep them safe and protect them from themselves and from what "nature" is going to do...