Bonding between birds leading to aggression

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Hey peachy, welcome to the forum. Yours is the classic case of you never know what will happen when adding another bird to your flock. I doubt things will change if you separate them, As long as he can hear or see the other bird. perhaps it's the time of year and things will change but i doubt that too. Hubby needs to get involved again if possible. Wish there was a better answer.

What a sad, sad thing that's all

Years ago, my daughter had two conures that were bonded to each other and could not be separated.

The female Jenday became overly attached to my daughter, and would fly to her, leaving the male Dusky her (PARTICULARLY EVIL) mate. The result was predictable. The mate began attacking my daughter. When the mate became upset, the Jenday sided with the mate, and they BOTH turned on her...

It happens. And it took YEARS for her to be able to handle them again, (and she never could fully trust the Dusky.) I did, but only to the extent that I could throw him farther than she could, AND HE KNEW IT!

My answer to any biting bird is to go back to square one, and start over with taming and training, and reinforce the step up, and no biting stuff. Let him know, in no uncertain terms, that you're not going to put up with it.

Carefully handling them together might also help. "See, no one is hurting your little friend or taking your friend away from you... "

But this is one of those things that is an inexact science, and you don't know how the bird will respond, or if the bird will respond...

I would agree that hubby being more involved when he can, will probably reduce this.

My own personal thought would be to simply handle the conure MORE. Conures are pair bond birds. Hubby was his person. He transferred that to the other bird. If everyone else in the house gives him attention and affection, he will be less overly-bonded to the caique, and less prone to be aggressive with people.

Good luck!

peachy said:

It's interesting because my caique really isn't that enthralled by the conure. It's more of a one-sided relationship where the conure is obsessed with the caique and will follow her around constantly and stare at her all day. On the other hand, the caique would much rather be with me or my husband. She gets frustrated and irritated with the conure sometimes because he won't leave her alone. This makes for some dicey situations. If the birds are together, the caique will beg for me to pick her up, and the conure will try to attack me if I approach, and then the caique will attack the conure because he's blocking her access to me. It can be very stressful on all involved!

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Caiques are feisty...

But yes, one more quite often ends up being one too many...