Unwanted mating

[Pureblood]

Hey guys,

so I have three lovies and it was obvious that two of them liked each other more than they like the third one.

About two days ago I noticed them mating and today I caught them in the act again haha

Anyhow is there a way to prevent this as I am not interested in the female laying eggs and I don't even know why they are mating as they don't have anything in the cage that could resemble a nest and encourage the female to want to lay eggs. Could it be that they're doing it but nothing will happen, that it's just a drive and they're satisfying it let's say?

The female is 13 months old and the male is 9 months old.

All tips are welcome!

 

[LordTriggs]

separating them is the only sure way to stop it. You'll most likely have to get separate cages for them and place them all next to each other

if eggs do get laid you can freeze them to kill off any embryos inside and replace those eggs with fake eggs so your girl can sit on the eggs and do her business and get bored of the eggs

 

[Pureblood]

if eggs do get laid you can freeze them to kill off any embryos inside and replace those eggs with fake eggs so your girl can sit on the eggs and do her business and get bored of the eggs

That's what I had in plan if any eggs do get laid.

 

[EllenD]

Yes, the only way to stop them at this point is to separate them immediately, otherwise at this point you're definitely going to end-up with eggs, as you most likely will anyway.

I suggest buying some plastic, fake eggs, either online or at any bird shop, and replacing the real eggs with the fake ones, then freezing the real ones for 24 hours and then pitching them. i'm assuming that she will have to lay any eggs on the bottom of the cage or in a food dish, so make sure there is no bedding or anything that could be construed as nesting material. If and when she lays an egg, replace it with a fake one. Allow her to lay on the fake eggs as long as she wants to, she'll eventually realize that they are not going to hatch and stop laying on them. At that point you can remove the fake eggs.

But you definitely don't want any baby birds for a number of reasons, mostly because of a lack of hand-raising/feeding experience, but also because you've got a third bird in the same cage, and this creates a very dangerous "community breeding" situation, which very often ends in both dead adults and babies. Even if they all get along right now, it's very common for another bird outside of the pair to try to get to the babies to kill them, and then the parents, both of them, step in and try to kill the other bird, and it can end quite graphically, and it happens out of nowhere with no warning...trust me, I know...Save yourself the heartache of finding a decapitated baby bird and 2 dead hens...


Anyway, the best thing you can do is to put the male in a separate cage ASAP, but keep their cages right next to each other so they can still see each other and talk to each other. You can have out-of-cage-time with them together, ONLY SUPERVISED, and if they start to look like they are going to mate then separate them.

Another thing that can help is to put them all on a "Natural Light Schedule", which you can search this forum for and get a detailed explanation for, but basically consists of them being in a room with a window close, so they are able to see both sunrise and sunset. Then you uncover them at sunrise, and cover them at sunset. This helps tremendously to ease their hormone. However, at this point they are already mating, so in order to prevent an unwanted clutch right now, which you will probably get anyway, you need to move the male to his own cage asap. And then be sure to provide the female with both a Mineral Block and a Cuttlebone at all times, as well as plenty of fresh veggies and a fortified pellet diet, as the number one reason for a hen becoming egg-bound, which is fatal without medical intervention, is a lack of enough calcium in their diets, and general malnutrition.

 

[Pureblood]

Yep Ellen, I don't want any babies because I neither have the experience or the requirements that babies need, so it is definitely not an option to have them hatch.

Yeah, I am up for pretty long and my days start early so their uncovered periods are pretty long. Guessing that makes them think it's daytime more than it actually is? I'll start covering them earlier now to ease the hormones.

The problem is that I cannot separate the male as I don't have an additional adequate-size cage. Only an emergency travel cage which is small and I wouldn't want my bird spending a whole day in it, let alone wait for a cage to be bought (as my cages are custom made). Uh... lots to think about.

I'll amp up the veggie intake, they have everything else diet-wise that they need.