First of all, welcome to our community! I'm glad you've found us...
Please take the time to click on the link I've copied-in below, and read only a tiny fraction of the bird owners who have lost their birds, mostly different Conure species,
to the Happy/Snuggle Huts. It's definitely eye-opening, and keep in-mind that this is only one webpage of hundreds where people post their mourning over the sudden loss of their birds due to Happy/Snuggle Huts:
Happy Hut Warning
Now onto the Happy/Snuggle Hut controversy...well, it's really not a controversy, as it has been well-proven that no one should EVER have them inside their bird's cage, and I will beg of you to remove it from your bird's cage immediately, as I do not want to see you posting in the "Bereavement" or the "Health" forums...Please, please, please, remove the "hut"...I actually call them "Death Huts", and it's not meant to be at all funny, but rather it's very true, unfortunately for thousands and thousands of bird owners...
****Realize that the question that you're asking about whether or not the "Huts" influence your birds to become hormonal is not even close to the largest problem that these things cause...The answer to your question btw is a resounding "yes"...ANY small, dark, warm places that your birds can get into/under are going to cause hormonal rushes, in both males and females. In female birds this is going to encourage chronic egg-laying, which can be detrimental to their health and obviously fatal if they become egg-bound...In male birds, these hormonal behaviors create very aggressive and violent behaviors in them, and the number one "hormonal behavior" that male birds display towards their human owners is biting, and biting hard, and often, along with chronic masturbation, and just the frustration that it brings them from not being able to mate with you, which is typically what leads to the violent behavior...
However, once again, the hormonal issue should be second in your mind and your heart when it comes to these "Huts", as your bird or birds, if they both have one, are in direct danger and risk for everything from
Crop Obstructions, Stomach/Gizzard Blockages,
Bowel Obstructions, Bowel Perforations, GI Infections, Choking, Airway Obstruction, and even Poisoning and Toxicity. The most common reason that these "Huts" end-up killing birds is because they usually don't just tear them apart or sit and chew on them for long periods of time, but rather just chew on them a bit hear, a bit there, and this happens usually when they are
inside the "Huts" and becoming hormonal, so they start to chew on the inside lining of the "Hut". Over-time, the tiny, sometimes microscopic pieces of material that they swallow while lightly chewing on the inside of these things usually goes through their Crop, passes through their stomach, and lands in their Upper/Superior Intestinal Tract. This continues to happen, and over-time the collection of tiny pieces of material builds-up enough that it finally causes a Bowel Obstruction/Blockage, which either blocks all food from passing into the intestinal tract and pushes it back up through their stomach and eventually back up into their crops, causing acute/very sudden and extreme pain and vomiting, followed by death, OR the Bowel Obstruction causes pressure to build-up inside the superior Intestinal-Tract, which causes a horribly painful and fatal Bowel Perforation. The second issue that most commonly result in the sudden and untimely death of birds from these "Huts" is when they suddenly chew/pick-open a long thread from the inside of the "Hut", that isn't visible until it falls out, and then the bird gets either his neck wrapped-up and caught in it and they hang themselves, or more often they get one of their legs wrapped-up in it and cannot free themselves, so they either just hang there, dangling, until someone finds them that way, OR they actually chew-off their own leg/foot to free themselves, which usually results in them bleeding to death in a matter of minutes. People find their birds hanging from these things all the time, dead.
*****Something that you really need to keep in-mind is that even though you stated that your bird/birds "Never chew on the Hut", or that "you don't see them chewing on the Hut", those are very often a bird owner's famous last words before finding their bird dead. If you clicked on the link I posted above and read any of the numerous posts made by owners who had their birds killed one way or another by one of these Huts, the one thing that most-all of them have in common is that
they thought that their birds were fine and unlike all the other birds who had died due to these Huts because they had never once seen their birds chewing on the Huts, nor did they see any hanging threads or frayed-edges to the material. Why? Because the birds typically chew these Huts while they are inside of them, and they often simply chew the material itself instead of chewing any of the outside of the Huts, any of the edges, or anything visible to their owners...
As I stated already, usually birds ingest tiny, tiny little pieces of the material and they die from a build-up of these tiny little pieces in their intestinal tracts over-time (All Confirmed Upon Necropsy).
If I seem passionate about getting you to remove the "Happy Hut" from your bird's cage, it's because I am...Why?
Because it's a completely and totally preventable death of pet birds! With so many illnesses, diseases, common accidents that can't be stopped ahead of time, etc. that kill our birds, there is absolutely no reason for a single death of a bird to occur due to these "Huts" anymore, as we are all well aware of how dangerous they are to our birds, and preventing their death from them is as easy as removing the Hut from their cage. Period. Done.
So there is no reason for anyone to have one of these Huts inside their bird's cage at all anymore, not with all of the information about the literally thousands of pet bird deaths that they've directly caused out there online for every other bird owner to see!
The manufacturer of these "Happy Huts" has taken all contact information for them off of their website, no phone number, no email address, nothing but a mailing address is listed; Their Facebook page is rarely updated, and is simply an active posting of thousands of devastated and furious bird owners who have either lost their birds as a direct result of their Huts, or who have been lucky and only had a badly injured bird due to them. There are currently several hundred class-action suits and private suits in small-claims court against the company that manufactures the Happy Huts, and this is exactly why they list no contact information for themselves anywhere.
They actually had the nerve to start printing "Not safe for use with Conures" on the front of the Happy Hut packaging (don't know if you saw that when you purchased yours), thinking that this was all they needed to do to free themselves from any responsibility. The problem is #1) It's not just "Conures" who have died or who continue to die from Happy Huts, it's ALL Species of birds, and #2) How in the world can this company justify putting any product for birds like this, a general-purpose product, and then say it's "Not Safe For Conures" but it's safe for any other species of bird? It makes no sense, it was just a "CYA" tactic that obviously didn't work for them...
***Hopefully all of these Happy Huts/Snuggle Huts and any clones/copies will all be taken off the market in the United States in the next couple of months, it's been a work in-progress for the last 3-4 years, and it's finally almost there. The problem is that there is no governing body who sees over bird toys Federally. But we're getting there.
The bottom-line is that there is absolutely no reason at all to leave that Happy Hut inside of your bird's cage knowing the tremendous risk to his health and his life that it poses,
especially since he's a Conure...And yes, it's going to make him hormonal and go into "hormonal episodes", which can not only become violent towards you and other people in the house, but that are causing tremendous frustration for him. So please, just remove the Happy Hut from his cage, and all of your bird's cages if they have one, as they are no only unsafe, they literally have a very high percentage chance of killing them...
