3's NO longer company!!!!

[MommaPat]

OK, back about a month or so ago, I posted this:


Hi, I am Patty, a new birdie Momma to 3 beautiful little lovebirds; Houdini, a yellow-green peachface, Gladys, a darker green peachface, and Pete, a black-masked. I have no idea of their sexes, but Pete and Gladys are cuddlers and, Houdini got his name because he exscaped his cardboard travel box on the hour's ride home and spent the last 15 mins of the trip flitting around in the back of my car.

There are 3 cause the petshop owner had had them together for the past 3 months and tried to seperate them at one point and Houdini didn't do too well without the other 2, so he insisted on giving me Houdini when I purchased Pete and Gladys, he was afraid Houdini would die without his cage mates.

I am the Momma of 4 human sons, 5 outside dogs, 14 outside cats, 3 inside cats, and an uncountable number of freshwater fish. My husband can not resist bringing animals home for us to adopt and sometimes a stray will show up and adopt us!! We have 13 acreas of land so we have plenty of room for them, it is just that the grocery bill did NOT go down after the boys left home!! The pets cost us more to feed than 4 teenagers did!!

I do not work outside of the home, except to substitute teach some during the school year, so I have time for all our pets!!

Well, Y'all told me that 3 might be a real problem, and apparently Gladys is really Pete and Pete is really Gladys!! :rofl:

Houdini just has to be a girl!! She is so bossy, always telling the other 2 what to do!! And the Masked has almond shaped eyes and Houdini fights with her all the time, so I renamed "her" Gladys.

Well, I am tired of breaking up the fights and the flying feathers!! I am sepearating them!! I don't want them to seriously hurt one another or even have one of them killed!!:eek: I do have a question, or rather a few questions!!

If I put Houdini in a seperate cage, should I take Pete, the peachfaced one and put with "her", or leave "him" with Gladys!! I keep hearing that putting different species of LoveBirds together is a No-No!! They are so cute together, and feed each other, and when I had them all 3 in seperate small cages, close to each other, Pete and Gladys, kept trying to get to each other, but Houdini seemed content on "her" own!!

I have every intention of geting them feather DNAed as soon as I can afford it, but school just started back and the sub jobs are sparce right now!! THEY know what they are, and I believe I have them figured out, NOW, but I would really like to know for sure!!

Thanks for any feed back on this. Somewhere down the line I would like to try my hand at breeding, but I think I will just enjoy them for themselves right now. I am still trying to tame them and they are funny little clowns, I just wish they would come to me and not fly away if I get my hand closer than 6 inces to them!! I am too afraid to let them out of the cages just now, but maybe in time!!

Patty

[Lindades264]

Hi Patty, I remember your first post and I really liked how you named Houdini. To keep things simple, and until you get them DNA tested, I suggest leaving them in 3 cages. You can let them out to play together, but they go back to their own cages. The reason I say this is that juggling the birds around can be very stressful and it can cause you alot of anxiety. I am speaking from experience. I have four lovebirds, 2 in each cage. At one time I had 8 (3 adults and 5 babies). It was so hard for me to figure our who to pair who with, because 6 had not been DNA tested. I since have had 2 DNA tested and they are male and female. Tomorrow the other two get tested, and I am hoping they are both males. I wished I had more cages and a place other than my dining room so that I could have kept them separate until the testing was done. So in summary, I would say keep them separate if you can, it will definately give you peace of mind and cause less stress on the birds. Best of luck. Linda

[Elle]

Hi Patty,

I have a fisher and apeachface, both suspected female. I house them in seperate cages and it seems to work for me.

They are out of the cage most of the day. They squabble a little but no serious fights. They always settle their differences on their own and I never had to intervein.

When it's bed time, they each go in their own cage, on their own. They put themselves to bed. They don't try to sleep together except in the coconut which is outside the cage.

I believe the reason they get along well is because they have their own cage, their own food, water and treats. There is no attempt in dominance when they are in their own cage and each bird knows what is their own. I think it give them some sort of confidence. If they don't get along or squabble, they can go back to THEIR cage and be left alone.

They enjoy the interaction while they are locked up because the cages are side by side. They can see each other and you will see them mimick each other.

This works really well for me. Better then I would ever have hoped when we first adopted Pheobe. I think the bottom line is how does your birds react to it? They each have their own personality and really they may or may not like the seperate housing concept

Hope this helps a little,