Getting a "wife" for my Male Lovebird tomorrow

[misslz]

Hey all,

I'm getting a 'wife' for my Male lovebird. He's really aggressive towards most humans. He likes me but basically hates everyone else. He loves my cockateil (male) but dislikes my Indian Ringneck (female).

Do you have any advice on how to introduce him to his new female? My plan is to keep them in separate cages that are near each other but not near the other birds, and see how they interact through the cages. And over time give them supervised playground time.

Thoughts? The female he's getting is young by the way...he's 1.5 years old and she is 6-8 months. I have heard that an older female would be likely to kill him.

Thanks in advance!

 

[mh434]

Lovies pair up pretty quickly, if there's another available, in my experience. We've always done the adjacent-cage thing, and we've had 100% bonding with it. The down side is that, once a lovie is paired up with another one, whatever human-friendliness they had vanishes, as people are no longer in their pair-bond.

All of our lovies (we have 6 right now) were hand-tame, hand-raised, and very friendly...until they were introduced to other lovies (this was necessary due to room for cages - we've had up to 10 lovies at a time, and that was too many cages, so pairing up became necessary). When they're out of their cages, flying around, they will land on us & be reasonably calm, but hand-touching is no longer an option. Getting them back into their cages can be trying.

 

[Kyoto]

Ive actually had great luck with keeping lovebirds tame when in pairs. But it's been hit and miss! I had one male and two females that remained tame when paired. The rest did become bitey and kind of not nice, but we were able to still handle most of them enough to move them.

I would suggest finding another male if you want him to stay tame. Chances are better that they won't try to breed with one another that way.

Best of luck!! It is possible to keep them tame, but it takes a lot of work and patience.