Ask Lafeber

Male cockatiel 3 years old

I have a male cockatiel for 3 years now and he have absolutely changed his behavior in the past week in way that I am in panic mode at this point.
He had a mate when he was 2 and half and they produced 6 beautiful, healthy babies.
Because I didn’t want them breeding anymore I gave the female to my daughter in law.
At first I observe him for a week afraid he would not be ok without her, but everything was fine.
After all he was very attached to me, I thought.
Recently my daughter in law brought me another female (3 years of age) and for a few weeks my male didn’t want anything to do with her, until one day they got along.
She end up laying 8 eggs but she was absolutely careless when babies starting hatching.
She didn’t care for them neither did my male.
Long story short I was able to save one baby out of the 8 eggs. After the first hatched, one died, another one died in the egg, she broke a few other and I took all the others out.
She went back to my daughter law and now my male went insane. Only thing he does is yelling all day, only stops if I cover the cage.
He was super, super friendly bird from the beginning. There is no other bird but him and me and I am going insane with his behavior.
He keep flying here and there and yelling like insane. Not the calling type yelling, just yelling non stop.
Please I need help .

Hi,

Unfortunately there isn’t any different or better advice than what I explained in my response yesterday. I will explain all of this from his viewpoint. He had a mate he loved, raised a family, and that mate was taken away from him suddenly. While he seemed OK to you, he clearly wasn’t. But they do lose mates and eventually they accept it and move on. Which he did finally when you gave him another mate. At first he didn’t bond because he had a mate before that suddenly left. Finally he accepts this new mate, and starts another family. Even though she wasn’t attentive, this doesn’t mean he wasn’t attached to her. She behaved how most first time parents do – first clutches almost always fail because the parents are still learning. She wasn’t being careless – you can’t apply human concepts to a bird. They act on instinct, but some behaviors must be learned and incubating eggs and caring for chicks is not something that most birds are automatically good at the first time. You couldn’t handle letting nature take its course and you intervened. The pair should have been left alone to make their mistakes, and then if you didn’t want to let them breed again, that’s fine. Splitting the pair up was not the solution. Many people have cockatiel pairs without letting them breed. The minute you give your bird a mate, you must be willing to give the bird up as a pet. It is unfortunate that you didn’t do any research on this or you wouldn’t have made these mistakes that have had such a profound effect on the poor male. All he knows is he has had 2 mates taken from him. Of course he is frantic. He doesn’t understand what has happened, but he sees you are the cause. He has lost his trust in you. You give him mates and then take them away. You can’t expect for there not to be fallout from doing this. I’m not reprimanding you, I’m simply pointing out why he is behaving the way he is, and why you can’t expect him to stop this behavior overnight. As I said before, this can go on for months. You can be patient and give him time to work this out, you can give him to your daughter in law if she is willing to reunite the pair, or you can ask for the female back so you can reunite them. They may instantly bond, or he may show aggression because she left him, and she may show aggression because he left her. But if you reunite them, you must be committed to letting them be together even if they don’t instantly get along again. You don’t have to give them a nest or let her sit on eggs if she lays again – they can be happy as a non-breeding pair. But you cannot keep bringing birds in and out of his life.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda