Our bovebirds are fighting after being together for almost 2 years

[wilberandbabe]

Hi. We have two lovebirds which we bought for our grand daughters for Easter 2006. We have not had them DNA tested because it really didn't matter to us. They are named Wilber and Babe because they are soooo messy with their food.

On Christmas Eve I noticed that Babe has lots of feathers missing on her head. No way she could have pulled them out herself. I told my husband to check them out and he noticed that Wilber has a wound on the left side of his beak. I cleaned the cage yesterday and realized that there are eggs in their house. Today we saw them fighting at the door of the house. Wilber on the outside and Babe on the inside.

They have had eggs before - no hatchings. I would dispose of the eggs after a couple of weeks - don't know if I had left them longer if they would have hatched.

They have never been aggressive to each other before. What could be making them fight now???

Thanks

[linda040899]

Hi and welcome to our community!

Sounds like you may have 2 hens and both may be laying eggs. How many eggs are currently in the nest? Are they all together in one area or are there a couple in one place and a couple in another?

The fighting between these 2 is a bad thing and can turn deadly at any minute. If you have a second cage, I would separate them. You can trust me when I say that the dominant bird is quite capable of killing the less dominant one. While some hens will get along great even when both have eggs, that's the exception rather than the rule.

You mentioned that you have Fischer's Lovebirds and those are an eye-ring species. If you look carefully enough, it's possible to sex eye-ring species by the shape of the eye. When I'm buying breeder stock, this is the method I use and I'm usually right. Just looking at the eye (not the ring around it), females tend to have almond shaped eyes, while males tend to have round ones. I would never sell an eye-ring species as a guaranteed male or female without DNA sexing but for my own personal use, it's been accurate.

You can also look under the tail of each bird. If either or both are getting ready to lay an egg, you will see a definite lump in the vent area.

[lemonypickett]

Someone else on here will surely give some advice soon, but I will suggest you leave the eggs until the hen abandons them or you can trigger her to lay another clutch. This depletes the hen's calcium levels and can cause the eggs to not pass (search egg binding), causing death.

I am suspecting that you may have 2 hens, and one is laying and protecting her "nest".

You may need to seperate them.

********oops... Linda and I were posting at the same time.