Ask Lafeber

Sister Wives?

I have a male cockatiel who had been without his companion for about a year when we decided to adopt 2 female sister cockatiels from someone needing to find them a home. At first I kept them separate from my male but he was so curious and after a few weeks I allowed them to mingle. Eventually I placed them all together. Over time he seemed to favour one of the females but none were fighting. Once we saw him starting to mate with the one female we thought we would add a nestbox to see if they would produce fertile eggs (as I had promissed my kids we would allow it once to witness the process and it had never happened). What did end up happening was quite surprising. The other female jumped in the nestbox and laid a few eggs over a few days and her and the male even alternated sitting on them. The female he bonded with would be chased away from the nestbox by her sister but then one day my daughter witnessed her going in the nestbox with the male seeming to guard the entrance from the sister. Low and behold the bonded female added 2 eggs to the current nest of not fertile eggs. She has since peeked in now and then but the other 2 continued to sit on them and eventually the 2 fertile eggs hatched. The male and non-bonded female are dutifully sitting with them and feeding them. When the male is not doing his fatherly duties he is snuggled up outside the nestbox with his bonded female and must have mated with her again because another egg has appeared in the nestbox… I have created this conundrum I realize but wondering what I should do? Should I put the bonded sister in another cage and let the male and her sister finish raising the chicks? Will that upset the male too much? I do plan to remove the nest box after the chicks have fledged.

Hi,

You should remove the extra female. While they are basically getting along, this could change at any minute. Breeding birds typically would not allow another adult bird anywhere near the nest. At some point, hormones and instinct may kick in and the extra female could end up dead. In some cases with captive cockatiel pairs, one parent will suddenly turn on the other and they have to be separated. So having the extra female could end up in fighting or worse. It’s generally not a good idea to have an odd number of birds in the same cage, and birds should never be given a nest box if there are more birds in the cage than just the breeding pair. I agree to remove the nest box as soon as the chicks leave it for the first time.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda