Lonely Lovebird

[Rijoram]

My lovebird mango gets lonely sometimes when I'm busy, so I was wondering if it's okay to get him a friend. I have plenty of room in the cage to accommodate it and have 2 extra cages for sleeping. I want to get the thoughts of other lovebird owners to see what they think about getting a new bird. Would they get along? Does gender matter in terms of aggression? My lovebird is almost a year old by the way.

[linda040899]

I took the liberty of moving your post to behavior. While lovebirds are very social, it can be hard to find a companion for a single one. Let me go through some of the options.

Do you know if your lovebird is a male or female? If you have a male, your best option would be another known male about the same age if you can find one. Males will usually live together with few problems. You can opt to get a female but pairs tend to want to reproduce and females can be pretty adamant about nesting? They will build nests in some pretty unusual places such as food dishes! :rofl:

If you have a female, your choice is male. Females are the more aggressive of the 2 genders and females that don't get along usually doesn't end well. One female is perfectly capable of killing a cage mate that she doesn't like!

So what do you do? If you don't know if you have male or female, try DNA sexing and then you will know for sure. After that, you will know which option will work best for your lovebird. If you get another one, make sure you quarantine the new one for at least 30 days so you know it's healthy. Then you can introduce them in side by side cages so they can get to know each other.

Hope this is helpful.