Ask Lafeber

Question:

February 12, 2021

Hello


I have 4 Brazilian birds. 1 female and 3 males. One of the male is older than the other two. They are always fighting with each other over the female one. What can I do?


Answer:

Hi Mailyn,

The best thing to do is either remove the female, or remove two of the males. You have set up a situation where the males are going to compete for the female. Nothing is going to change this. If you don’t plan to breed them, and you have them in a large walk-in type aviary, you could try adding 2 more females. But you should not give them any nests or nest boxes. When you try to house multiple birds together, they need to either all be the same sex, or the same number of males and females, and you can’t try to breed them like that. Breeding birds should be kept as one pair in each cage. Even if this is a species that might breed in colonies in the wild, in captivity we can’t provide a large enough enclosure for birds to peacefully breed in a colony. Breeding birds will establish a territory and if another bird wanders into the territory it will be attacked by the breeding pair. Male birds compete to win a female as his mate, so you can’t expect three males to get along with one female in the cage.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda

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