Introducing youg lovebird to older ones

[Ramvingar]

Hi all! So my Berry has turned 6 weeks old and has started flying though he mostly sticks to me like velcro. I have been trying to get my 3 older lovebirds (around 3 to 4 mos age) to get to know him. I started placing Berry in a cage beside the others last week in the hopes that they would get to know each other. I would also let Berry have some one on one time with each of the older ones every day. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any progress. The others are still mean towards him and would try to attack him whenever they can. Coco actually flew from my shoulder to the hand Berry was on and tried to bite him. Even Lemon who used to be the only one nice to him has started bullying him. No biting but Lemon would try to "ride" his back all the time.

Is there hope? Is there anything I can do? I would really like for all of them to get along and be together in the big flight cage. I feel bad for Berry being all alone in his cage.

Any advise would be appreciated.

[linda040899]

Berry is still very much a baby and needs time to mature before you introduce him/her to the rest of the flock. He is vulnerable and they take advantage of that. Best thing to do is let him fly and have the others locked up when he's out. They can seriously injure him so you need to be careful.

[droppy]

Berry is still very much a baby and needs time to mature before you introduce him/her to the rest of the flock. He is vulnerable and they take advantage of that. Best thing to do is let him fly and have the others locked up when he's out. They can seriously injure him so you need to be careful.

What would be the proper age of a baby to be introduced to an older lovie? As we wrote in another topic, we bought an 8 weeks baby as a friend for our lovie Bella which is 7 years old.

[linda040899]

Many female lovebirds can be aggressive with younger lovebirds because younger ones need to mature. If the youngster is a male, he may not realize how to satisfy Bella's female needs so she can turn around on possibly even injure him seriously. A lot depends on the individual birds. In a flock situation, the youngster needs to learn how to fit in and that's just time and experience. You are going to have to watch to see how Bella reacts to the new one. She may really crave the company and warm right up to him. Don't leave them together unsupervised, at least initially.

[droppy]

Hi Linda,

I know that the name is miss-confusing, Bella is actually a male. We were told that the new baby is a girl, but we are not sure.

[linda040899]

If Bella is a male, many males are very accepting of younger lovebirds, male or female. Just make sure the younger one is healthy and I would try introducing them. Males, unlike their female counterparts, are much more laid back. I, personally, find females endearing because of those fiesty personalities! :whistle::whistle::whistle:

[droppy]

The younger one which is almost 10 weeks seems very healthy: the feathers are looking good, he or she is eating, playing, chirping. We just bought him/her from a local breeder.

They are sitting in different cages in the same room, but when trying to get them in the same cage, Bella became quite violent I would say.

[linda040899]

If you put the youngster into Bella's cage, you are looking at cage aggression. Try putting Bella in the youngster's cage and see what kind of reaction you get. If not, put cages side by side so they can meet each other through the safety of cage bars.

[droppy]

The youngster is in an old cage of Bella, sometimes when she's flying, Bella goes on top of the youngster's cage (we named her Wilma, hopefully it's a girl as we were told) and acts again aggressively.

We are trying to let them both fly in the room, as I write, Bella is flying in our bedroom while Wilma stays in the cage and chirping to Bella. Wilma can also get outside of her cage now, but either doesn't know how, or doesn't want.

[Dorothy]

i have 3 babies i handfed. only one is nice and tame. i usually spends a great deal of time with the babies as they grow but I've got a sick husband and sick dog I'm caring for. so that took away some of my time unfortunately. how do i get the 2 babies to be tamer. i have tried stepping up my time with them but they aren't improving. can some lovebirds be just naturally not interested in bonding with humans?

[droppy]

The youngster is in an old cage of Bella, sometimes when she's flying, Bella goes on top of the youngster's cage (we named her Wilma, hopefully it's a girl as we were told) and acts again aggressively.

We are trying to let them both fly in the room, as I write, Bella is flying in our bedroom while Wilma stays in the cage and chirping to Bella. Wilma can also get outside of her cage now, but either doesn't know how, or doesn't want.

Hi, quick update on this one and a kind request for some advice.

Bella (who is actually a male) and Wilma (female) have been sharing the same cage now for 1.5yrs. Bella is our 8yr old lovie,, while Wilma is only 1.5 yrs old. There have been ups and downs, as we were expecting with a dominant female, but overall they were doing fine together.

Bella’s mate for 7 yrs passed away and she was really sad by himself (he’s a very sociable bird), so we decided to get a new mate - I know not ideal scenarios as Wilma is so much younger, but being a baby when she joined we thought she can be ‘trained’ in Bella’s ways and they will get along just fine. Which they did for most of the time, except recently we are a bit worried because Wilma is getting a bit aggressive towards Bella.

What worries us most is that she will excessively preen Bella around the area at the back of his neck (Wilma seems well intentioned but we think she’s not gentle enough and Bella starts chirping and trying to escape after a while of letting her preen the area, as it seems to hurt him). If Wilma doesn’t get her way and Bella tries to escape, she will bite/catch him by the wing or leg so he won’t go (like saying ‘stay here, can’t you see i want to love you?’. We checked the area at the back of Bella’s neck and a feather is missing and he seems irritated/reddish. Also, because she’s in her teens, Wilma wants to mate. She will open her wings wide to invite Bella, but he’s not interested. So instead Wilma will hump Bella, which is a bit annoying as Bella is quite submissive, has arthritis and last thing she needs is for Wilma to climb on top of her.

We tried separating them and ironically both are extremely sad when we do so, they chirp and call at each other and Wilma will practically stay still and refuse to do anything for ages (not even eat) when they’re apart.

I know Wilma is a girl so she’s dominant and territorial - she has to eat first after they go back in their cage after flying outside, she will often chase Bella from the food dishes etc. but they both crave company and want to spend time with each other, they have their good moments of kissing, preening, feeding each other and sitting still one next to the other sleeping etc. We’re just afraid one day we’ll find Bella dead or injured because Wilma went to far.

Wilma seems well intentioned and is extremely desperate for attention and affection. She will do anything to get our attention and we suspect that we are not doing well when taking Bella out of the cage after one of the fighting episodes or telling her off in a loud voice when she attacks Bella. She has a sad/hurt look in her eyes when we do this, so she might be competing with Bella for our attention. Wilma is quite tame now, flight recall trained, will sit on iur hands, head, shoulder etc, eat out of our hand - she is a bit of biter though. We think she’s just a bit misunderstood and wants individual attention, especially as having Bella for 8yrs, he’s attached to us, we are clearly part of his flock. I even suspect for a while when his mate for 7yrs died and my husband stayed with him at home for about two weeks, he bonded with him as his new mate. But then Bella gets jealous too. Bella’s a bit of an imitator and wants everything Wilma wants. If Wilma plays with a toy, Bella wants it too etc. Not sure if Bella is happy though as he will proactively fly to another perch if he even sees Wilma coming that direction. With his leg problems he does a lot of running around the cage, so another stress on top of everything. But when we separate them it’s worse than everything.

So not sure what we can do to:
a) correct/improve Wilma’s behaviour
b) better to separate them definitively or keep them together

Any advice/ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Maxie]

When I introduced my Gabe to my Max, Gabe was a year old and Max was five years old. I was worried at first but took Linda’s advice and took the introduction really slow.

I quarantined Gabe for a month before they had any close contact. I would bring Max into Gabes room and show him from a distance. They chirped at each other and Max was really intrigued.

After the quarantine was over, I would let Max sit on my finger and look at Gabe inside his cage. At first Max tried to take jabs at Gabe but over time they’ve become best buddie and are inseparable.

The only time they’re apart is when they sleep. Max still wants to sleep in his own original cage by himself. So, Gabe sleeps in his own cage by himself. They’re happy so I don’t push them to sleep in the same cage together. The only issue is that I have three cages in the kitchen...lol. They’re never in any of them during the day.