lovebird extremely hormonal

My 1 ½ year old solo female lovebird tries to mate with everything excessively. It doesn't matter how much we rearrange her cage or remove toys that we think may provoke the behavior. Paying extra attention to her and taking her out more doesn't help either. She constantly regurgitates on all her toys. This has been going on for at least 6 months. It wouldn't worry me so much except that she really irritates her vent area with her beak. She situates herself either on the bars of her cage or hanging off of a toy so that she can reach her vent with her beak and will go at it for about 10 minutes several times a day. Her vent area looks red and puffy. I figured I would share in this forum to see if anyone else has had a similar experience with their single bird. My Boo Boo's CAV gave her a clean bill of health and ruled out any medical reason causing her to act this way. He seems to think she will just grow out of the phase eventually. I wonder if the solution is to get her a mate (not for allowing them to hatch chicks though!). We have two GCCs and some budgies housed in different cages in the same room as her, so she can't be too lonely. I just want to find some solutions to help my little girl.

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is your vet actually Certified in avian medicine because "They'll just grow out of it" is not a response I would be happy to hear from a vet after 6 months. A bird's hormonal time normally lasts about 1 month so something is happening to keep pushing it further. Did they do a gram stain or anything? Because if you have confirmation she is a girl then surely she would have laid an egg by now if she's that hormonal and instead it could be something irritating her like say an infection of sorts.

Is she getting 12 hours of the cage being dark and quiet so she can sleep? If you feed warm foods cut them out for now, also lower her sugary foods and feed more veg. Outside of that get her moving and playing with you, recall training would be a good thing to learn now so she expends energy flying to you and back to a perch.

Mating won't help the situation, it will just keep pushing her and she could easily dislike a new bird then your time is split and the problem persists. Also she could then start laying eggs non-stop which can become detrimental to their health very quickly.

LordTriggs said:

is your vet actually Certified in avian medicine because "They'll just grow out of it" is not a response I would be happy to hear from a vet after 6 months. A bird's hormonal time normally lasts about 1 month so something is happening to keep pushing it further. Did they do a gram stain or anything? Because if you have confirmation she is a girl then surely she would have laid an egg by now if she's that hormonal and instead it could be something irritating her like say an infection of sorts.

Is she getting 12 hours of the cage being dark and quiet so she can sleep? If you feed warm foods cut them out for now, also lower her sugary foods and feed more veg. Outside of that get her moving and playing with you, recall training would be a good thing to learn now so she expends energy flying to you and back to a perch.

Mating won't help the situation, it will just keep pushing her and she could easily dislike a new bird then your time is split and the problem persists. Also she could then start laying eggs non-stop which can become detrimental to their health very quickly.

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Thanks for your reply! Our vet is a certified avian vet and she did have a gram stain that came back normal. Boo Boo hasn't laid any eggs yet. We haven't provided her with any sort of nest or area conducive to nesting hoping to discourage egg laying. She gets about 11 hours of sleep covered in her cage. The sun is up earlier now so the birds are also up earlier. She eats Zupreem fruity pellets, but mostly goes for her seed mix. I will try engaging her even more and getting her to play.

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