# Hormone reduction - alternative techniques



## RedQueen (Feb 21, 2012)

In the past few weeks we have caught Galilea "enjoying" toys and ladders in her cage, so she is clearly getting hormonal. I have rearanged her cage to reduce this behaviour and tried to eliminate places where she can conveniently rub her back or vent and removed her favorite toy for this "activity" lol. I've read the sticky on hormone reduction (http://talkcockatiels.com/showthread.php?t=32330) and we will be trying to do as many of these techniques as we can. She hasn't layed any eggs (she's only 10 months old), and she's not too hormonal, but we want to do as much as possible to reduce the chances of her laying, espcially since we just got a male and when they get introduced to each other in a couple weeks I'm worried it may triger hormonal behaviour in Galilea even more. 

My question is about the following hormone reduction technique from the sticky:
"There are some cases where a bird doesn’t respond to the long nights treatment but will respond to *24 hours a day of nonstop bright light*..."

Has any one tried the 24 hours of light and has it worked? How often should this be done? And wouldn't it be really stressful for the hen?

I know this is kind of a last resort technique, but we can't do the 12-14 hours of dark/nights treatment because of our work schedule. We get home at 7:30-8pm, and leave at 8am in the morning. So we have to uncover at 8am and the earliest we can cover is 8pm but that would give us no time with her (and she would just scream for us if we covered her so early) and it would still only provide 12 hours of dark. The best we can do is cover her at 9 to have one hour of out of cage time with her and uncover at 8, and that's only 11 hours. So I'm trying to do as many of the other hormone reduction techniques as we can, like rearanging her cage (I'll do this daily if necessary), we'll provide less food, just enough for her for the day and not in abundance like we usually do. We do not let her mess around with balnkets or other nesting like materials or hide in dark places and there are no mirrors within sight of her cage. We can also have her and the new male seperated even after introducing them since our new cage has a removable divider. But I want to know about the 24 hours of light as a last resort technique if she keeps getting more hormonal.


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## bjknight93 (Nov 13, 2011)

Susanne I think has used and recommended that 24 hour light technique.

I think this would be good to use during the night hours (or you can use a normal lightbulb and have it in a lamp facing the wall:
http://www.featherbrite.com/featherbrite-moonlight-bulb.html


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

> Has any one tried the 24 hours of light and has it worked? How often should this be done? And wouldn't it be really stressful for the hen?


Unfortunately I don't know how long you're supposed to do it; until the hormonal behavior stops I suppose, which takes at least a week with the conventional "long nights" technique and might take a similar amount of time with this technique. 

I suspect that causing stress is part of the technique's effectiveness; you're trying to send the message that it isn't a good idea to breed, and all the "rearrangement" techniques are aimed at causing a certain amount of disruption/stress.


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