Senegal pair (very much in love)

[ShimmerSenegal]

Hiii, just a quick question. I have two young senegals (both under two years old, the male a few months older), they behave as a bonded pair, feeding each other, preening each other, loud contact-calling if they are not in the same room and flying together everywhere, but they are still young, so could be just a friendship. The thing is, the male is very protective of his girlfriend and territory (cage and a portion of room close to the cage). If you are close to the cage, you will have an angry senegal fly to your head and start biting your hair or ears. He does let me clean their cage and change the dishes, with warning bites sometimes, but we are usually cool with each other. I don't mind him being a bird doing bird things, he doesn't have to be a pet and enjoy petting or cuddling. The female senegal is extremely friendly with our whole family and I recently started getting her used to clicker. The male senegal had basic training (step up and recall with and without clicker) before we got her and he reacted great to it. But since we got her, he stopped reacting completely, he doesn't accept treats and does his own thing. It's not a problem now, but could it become a problem in the future, especially with his territorial aggression?

 

[ShimmerSenegal]

 

[zERo]

Welcome to the forums!

Sorry to hear you’re going through this with your bird.
A few questions to see if maybe it’s hormones rather than just purely him being territorial.

How much sleep does he get?
Whats their diet like?

He could simply be bonded to the female and just wants to defend her, I observed this behavior in my bonded cockatiel pair before.
Lovely pictures too!

 

[ShimmerSenegal]

Thank you! And definitely could be, there are a few problematic aspects of his diet and maybe sleep too. They always have at least 12 hours of sleep, but not really uninterrupted, since they are with me in my room (for the next few years while I'm in university, after that I'll find an apartment in which they can have their own room). Sometimes I have a dim light on. However, they will have an outside aviary for warmer months soon and they will be covered at night to protect them from breeze/insects, so maybe it will help.

And as for the diet, they have pretty much a mix of everything, seeds/nuts/fruits/veggies/pellets/egg food (at least once a week). They both eat all the fruits and veggies I serve them, but sometimes I struggle to give them some everyday. They usually have at least apples, carrots, and cucumbers. Some days, their food is a big mix of fruits and veggies only, other days, they have a little bit of everything and sometimes they only have a mix of seeds and pellets. The female loves pellets, her breeder taught her to eat everything. The male wasn't given pellets when he was baby and I couldn't get him to eat them. I will definitely try to give them more fresh food, just recently I started freezing big portions of whatever we have in fridge (mostly cucumber, carrot, apple, cabbage, spinach, sometimes berries and orange, in the summer a wider variety of fruits).

 

[zERo]

Their diet sounds good. And it’s great that you’ve started freezing portions.

So are the treats you offer him for training also included in his regular diet?
For instance I use safflower seeds to train my birds, but they don’t get them in their normal diet.

I think it’s fine he doesn’t eat pellets, as long as he eats his veggies well.

Something you could maybe start feeding, sprouts? There’s tons of videos on YouTube, they just add a lot of live nutrition to your birds diet, and can be frozen and thawed out too.

 

[ShimmerSenegal]

Yes, the treats are sometimes even in his daily diet. I will try to eliminate them/find another treats for training, but I don't really think that's the issue, since he used to react to all sorts of treats, even the ones he had in his diet until we brought in the female. Since then, he doesn't react to anything and anyone - which isn't really an issue right now, since he is used to his daily schedule, I don't mind him roaming the room all day long and in the evening, he will let me transport him to his cage without a problem (as long as I have a towel on my hand, because he does bite sometimes).

The reason why I thing his aggression is territorial is because once, when the rest of my family was on a holiday and I was taking care of the whole house, I moved my parrots from my bedroom to the living room, since I was spending most of the time there and didn't want them to be lonely and isolated in my room. At that time, Shimmer, the male senegal, was already quite unpleasant at times, but when we moved to the living room, he suddenly turned into a complete sweetheart, let me touch him and stepped up without and issue, we even started hus recall training again. And it wasn't because the living room was unknown territory, he used to fly around all the time and was absolutely confident in every room of the house. It's also possible the issues are worse because he is depressed, since he lost some of his freedom and can only fly around my room - but he started to be aggressive and stopped reacting to training way before that, right after we got the female and that's why we stopped letting him fly freely around the house. It was nearly impossible to get him back to my room.