Caught my cockatiels trying to mate, need advice incase they succeed!

I recently adopted two cockatiels to join my flock, I already had one male cockatiel and the previous owners believed these two to be male as well. However after they had settled in I was confident from their body language that I'd adopted a male and a female. Today I spotted him trying to mate with her. My birds are cage free except for bed time, and I've made sure the room has no hidey-holes to try and discourage breeding behavior. I never intended to breed my birds and I still hope this was a one off attempt though I doubt I'd be so lucky. So I need to know what to do please. Should I accept that they are going to breed and offer a nesting box so they don't start laying eggs somewhere that's dangerous for the chicks? Or should I stick to trying to discourage the behaviour and see what happens?

Oooh that’s a tough one!

Cockatiels are one of those species where the hens can and do lay eggs with absolutely no input from a male and zero access to anything even remotely resembling a nesting site. Personally I’d recommend you discourage nesting but you may find with all those hormones whirling around that your hen may produce an egg (or several) anyway! My previous cockatiel Kang had no male companionship but would lay eggs on the bare floor of her cage and got EXTREMELY broody and aggressive if anyone or anything approached her!

If one of your females does lay you may find the other female may become aggressive towards her too, so if you possibly can do try to ensure nobody gets too carried away and starts producing! If you do find eggs appearing and you don’t want babies it’s best not to bin the egg, otherwise your hen may just produce even more. You can either buy plastic substitutes or boil her egg, allow it to cool and give it back to her to sit on. I have a lorikeet doing just that right now - eventually she will realise the egg is not viable and will lose interest.

You will need to be super vigilant if they’re free range as you say, or you may just need to bite the bullet while the hormones are raging, allowing alternating free range and cage time. Nature will most likely take its course if they’re left to their own devices!

It's hard to say, but same-sex birds can mate and lay eggs (infertile of course---even a sexually stimulated single bird can lay eggs).
If you truly are concerned that the eggs could be fertile, you can either let them go to term or remove the egg temporarily (boil it) and return it (once cool) with a small mark on it (in case more show up). Boiling will prevent further development (housing chicks is WAY more complicated than it sounds and often a massive undertaking--you may need to deal with all sorts of drama and you will definitely need a separate cage for each baby eventually in order to prevent inbreeding and genetic problems). If your bird lays an egg (fertile or not) you never want to fully remove it until interest is lost (or you prompt the cycle to continue).

Remove all access to shadowy spaces/huts/tents/under furniture/low shelves etc indefinitely. These things are triggers. Make sure there are no nesting materials (paper shreds etc ) in the cage.

A nest box will only encourage the behavior--- if a bird is "pregnant" with fertile eggs, it will successfully lay eggs with or without a box. If you add one, you will just increase the hormonal urge to repeat the process.

I have a question. If a female bird is hormonal and going ape and likely to start laying infertile eggs anyway, what's the harm in allowing her to mate with her male friend in order to release some of her pent-up sexual energy? She might or might not lay any eggs, but those can be taken away one by one and boiled, right?

I don't understand what the logic is in denying a bird any sexual release. I reckon that's cruel, especially if an opposite-gender bird is within seeing and smelling distance. Why not let them mate and feel better? In my experience, none of my birds has ever laid an egg because I didn't provide nesting materials. I know that some species (lovebirds, cockatiels etc) will lay without a nest, but you can still simply remove the eggs. AFAIC, keeping a bird at a continually high level of frustration during the breeding season is far more likely to cause problems than simply letting Nature take its course.

Looking forward to replies.

The issue would be the potential for live-offspring, if one has a problem with boiling the eggs. Personally, I feel that would be a difficult choice (although I would do it for the sake of the bird). I just think it is best if it is prevented altogether, and often, the lack of a male/nesting materials is prevention enough. Avoiding triggers is key, be they warm food, inappropriate petting, dark spaces, or other birds. If a bird is never stimulated to the point of going mad with hormones than it is a non-issue. It doesn't have to be that way after all. A lot of it is environmental and totally avoidable.

In many respects Betrisher is right. Personally I wish it was as straightforward to desex a bird as it is a dog or cat but sadly at this stage it isn't. Individual results may vary as far as each persons birds and home environment is concerned, but what influences my response to this question is the experience of seeing my normally mild-mannered male cockatiel, Fang, become completely off-the-charts aggressive in his pursuit of my then female, Twinkle. She would only have to give him the merest come-hither glance and he'd be off, and would chase her relentlessly around and around the house until she fell to the floor exhausted. Then when I went to pick her up, Fang would attack me and get pretty vicious about it too! I can't blame Fang for falling madly in love with Twinkie because she was drop-dead gorgeous, as illustrated.



But it was most distressing to see her being pursued to the point of exhaustion and then for Fang to be so aggressive towards her. Eventually my vet suggested that we give Twinkle a hormone implant to lessen her propensity to make any of those displays of availability - classic victim-blaming if you ask me - but it worked an absolute treat. Unfortunately Twinkle was prone to epileptic seizures and she had a massive one on ANZAC Day (wouldn't you know, when the vet clinics are closed!) and we lost her.

Now this sort of thing may or may not happen in your case Hannah, but I think the dynamic of having three of the same species may further complicate things. You are asking all the pertinent questions and will be better prepared for whatever may happen and will be better able to take appropriate steps to maintain harmony in your flock.

You see eggs, just throw them away
Don't worry, it takes a few days before a chick starts to form in the egg, and cockatiels tend to return themselves to normal
Just remember to keep an eye of them during the breeding season, and separate them during this time
Thanks
Noah Till

Wow I did not expect so many replies, thank you all! I know a lot of you are suggesting I boil the eggs if it comes to it but I really could not do that. If they do succeed in breeding I will have to do my research and do my best to raise them. I started out with one female budgie and she started laying eggs in the curtains, they would fall from some height and some would break which is why I asked about getting a nesting box so they have somewhere safe to lay them. It would break my heart to see a broken egg and know it could have been a chick. So far Poppy (the male cockatiel, named when believed to be female lol) has not become aggressive towards me or the other birds and hasn't been pursuing Petra (the female) excessively. They do follow each other about but all my cockatiels do and same with my three female budgies like to hang out together. Pippy, my other male cockatiel doesn't seem to be interested in Petra in a sexual way which I suppose is one bonus in that the two boys wont fight over her. Up until this point I was thinking I had a gay couple because Pippy and Poppy seemed so in love lol The sad thing is that Pippy is still in love with Poppy =( Poor Pippy.

Do you have any other tips on discouraging breeding behaviour at all? With my budgie who started laying eggs I ended up having to remove the curtains to get her to stop. I also make sure they have a sleeping routine of 10 hours minimum, going to bed at 9pm every night and getting up between 7-9am depending on the day.

hannah7733 said:

Wow I did not expect so many replies, thank you all! I know a lot of you are suggesting I boil the eggs if it comes to it but I really could not do that. If they do succeed in breeding I will have to do my research and do my best to raise them. I started out with one female budgie and she started laying eggs in the curtains, they would fall from some height and some would break which is why I asked about getting a nesting box so they have somewhere safe to lay them. It would break my heart to see a broken egg and know it could have been a chick. So far Poppy (the male cockatiel, named when believed to be female lol) has not become aggressive towards me or the other birds and hasn't been pursuing Petra (the female) excessively. They do follow each other about but all my cockatiels do and same with my three female budgies like to hang out together. Pippy, my other male cockatiel doesn't seem to be interested in Petra in a sexual way which I suppose is one bonus in that the two boys wont fight over her. Up until this point I was thinking I had a gay couple because Pippy and Poppy seemed so in love lol The sad thing is that Pippy is still in love with Poppy =( Poor Pippy.

Do you have any other tips on discouraging breeding behaviour at all? With my budgie who started laying eggs I ended up having to remove the curtains to get her to stop. I also make sure they have a sleeping routine of 10 hours minimum, going to bed at 9pm every night and getting up between 7-9am depending on the day.

Click to expand...

We only say boil them or toss them because we've seen the horrors of people wanting to see the miracles of life and want to watch their birds raise their babies perfectly, without flaw or issue. But, oops! Something goes wrong adn they come back on here begging for help in saving their dying chicks because the parents won't feed them, or won't sit in the box, or mutilates them. (seen it, I'm a breeder!) It just doesn't happen the way people think it does. LOTS of things go wrong, especially if you are inexperienced and have never raised chicks before.

You might think you can't throw the eggs away or boil them, but it's much harder to watch newborn chicks die under your care from inexperience on your end rather than toss possibly fertilized eggs away which won't feel pain or know suffering of any kind. It's just not fair to the birds to allow babies into the world without knowing what to do to help when they need it. Not to mention you'll need lots of equipment on hand when it's up to you to save babies -- as in being prepared to hand feed and knowing the exact right temperatures, consistency, amount, as well as a food thermometer, syringes, formula itself and a brooder to keep babies warm should the parents abandon them.

I have a 1.5 year old cockatiel male and a 7 month old hen that mate daily -- and I'm fully prepared to throw/boil eggs. She's not fully mature or ready for babies as she's too young to even think of raising babies. There's no stopping the mating -- it's natural, just like humans -- but they are not allowed babies....yet! In a year, they might be!

The main thing is NOT to remove them until the female loses interest....Boiling prevents further development in the meantime. Raising chicks is super complicated and can get expensive and stressful fast.

Housing them apart would at least allow further supervision---esp if you only let them out at separate times....

I had a female lay over 30 eggs before. It didn’t matter what I did once she got into that hormonal craziness from my male cockatiel she just wouldn’t stop even after separating them. I lost her shortly after because she was too weak from all the laying to fight off a mild infection.

Before those eggs though I let her nest with my male cockatiel and we got two babies from them. Eventually the male attacked them and was ripping their first pin feathers right out. I had to pull them so he didn’t end up killing them since they were weak from the blood loss. Blood splatters all over the nest box and they had little polka dot scabs all over from the feathers being pulled out. The female was losing interest too I guess because the male was trying to keep her from them so she was just getting tired of the fight. I ended up having to hand raise them during my first semester of college which was a bit tiring. Breeding animals isn’t always smooth sailing. Both of those babies ended up being females that lay even without a male in the cage with them. They do eventually lose interest in the eggs and stop laying but they lay at least 20 or so every year between them.

So I always keep my males separated from my females now. Flock breeding for Cockatiels seems to go better from what I’ve seen people post for some reason. But that’s usually a decent amount of animals together. The shelter I worked with had something like 30+ Cockatiels together and there was only an egg here and there never anything major. Always found that interesting!

These were them at the ren faire since I had to take them with us & they have also been to Hershey and Tennessee during the hand raising and weaning stages. I had to buy a crap ton of stuff to set up a brooder and bring their food with me which had to be carefully monitored for the right temps & other fun stuff. So babies are cute but often more of a pain than people realize.

Nature is a lot nastier than we give her credit for and I agree that it's a lot more humane to toss or boil the eggs (which might not even be fertile, even after mating) than to watch newborns die slowly and painfully.

Oh Lord, I remember when Dark Mouse (a wild one) got into my cage and impregnated two of my virgin girls. They both gave birth to *huge* (seventeen each) litters of half-wild kittens. No one knows why, but wild mice rarely survive in captivity, no matter how attentive the keeper may be. Same applies to half-wild ones. One by one, the little babies sickened and died. The poor little mothers outdid themselves in trying to feed everyone and lick them (for stimulus) appropriately. The sisters and aunties even pitched in, lactating and feeding babies to help out. But they all died. And the mothers ate them. (Which is not as awful as it sounds - they were simply trying to get back all the energy and nutrition they had put into producing the babies in the first place).

I remember some years ago my vet went on a rant about 'awful people who force their dogs and cats to live at the mercy of their hormones rather than doing the kind thing and relieving them of their gonads'. I thought that sounded a bit comical at the time, but I've seen it borne out so many times: perpetually roaming tomcats with torn ears and battle scars and litters of kittens growing up wild; female dogs giving birth to litter after litter of puppies and stallions being kept entire and perpetually aroused because their owners want the admiration for themselves. As animal owners, it's our responsibility to face up to the nastinesses of dealing with Nature and to take measures to protect our animals from harm.

Which is all any of us wants to do, right? I think it's really interesting to read everyone's perspectives on all this and I can see there are so many different circumstances and different reasons why owners do one thing or another. In the end, each of us will do what we're going to do and must live with the consequences. Thank you all for this excellent discussion!

If you are willing and ready to raise chicks, then allow your cockatiels to nest. But please know that it is a HUGE and EXPENSIVE commitment. Even if your cockatiels are model parents and do absolutely everything right, there is still the possibility of loosing chicks.
With first time parents, the chances of them abandoning half developed eggs, or newly hatched chicks is very high.You need to be prepared in that situation. Make sure that you do all your research before handfeeding, as it's so easy to mess up. Proper food temperature, equipment sterilisation, formula quality and proper brooder hygiene are only a few things that you'll need to look out for.

Even if you manage to raise the chicks, or if the parents raise them, you will still have to keep the males and females separated, as inbreeding can occur. Or you can find suitable homes and adopt them out. Having large cages for each cockatiel is expensive. They all need plenty of space.

If you want to let your birds breed, do your research. There are so many easy mistakes that you could make.