# Cockatiel Pair Seperation Questions



## TropicalTiel (Mar 22, 2016)

So it turned out that my cockatiel pair needs to be seperated. Honey, my male, has been chasing Raichu if she goes near the nest box or is in her sight. So I put Honey in a other cage away from her, but still near his original cage so they can at least see each other (which is a problem since they insist on staying inside the nest and rarely get out to eat, the only time they'd get breaks would be if they were both inside the cage to take turns.) though we tried taking them both out today, and Honey still tried chasing Raichu..they have known each other ever since they were only 1-3 months old and came from the same breeder we got them from, and they had stayed with me for quite a long time now, Raichu even groomed Honey's feathers! I'm guessing his hormones were getting too high or something, or it was possibly a bondage pair.

I have some questions so I could get prepared on the separation...


For how long does a cockatiel pair need to be separated? Until the eggs hatch? Until the babies are around a month old or so? When?

How can I calm down the male? 

Could I consider taking care of the babies myself and attempt hand feeding them so they wouldn't be a single parent? I don't know if it'd be easy to switch the parents in the cages very often.

Will the cockatiel pair no longer like to be with each other? 



I honestly hated to see that my cockatiel pair had to be separated, but it had to be done so that injuries or death wouldn't happen, so it's for the good I guess.

Please let me know!


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

> For how long does a cockatiel pair need to be separated? Until the eggs hatch? Until the babies are around a month old or so? When?


Possibly indefinitely depending on how he acts after the babies have grown up. It will be a test to see how he does with her after there are no more babies or nest.



> How can I calm down the male?


Hormone control would be recommended but you need the male to help with babies so at this point this isn't ideal.



> Could I consider taking care of the babies myself and attempt hand feeding them so they wouldn't be a single parent? I don't know if it'd be easy to switch the parents in the cages very often.


This is very difficult. You'd have to feed them every two hours, have a brooder set up to keep them warm, learn to hand feed. It's not easy at all. You could co-parent with whichever bird you pick to raise the babies, which means supplement feeding so that the parent doesn't have to do all the work. Switching out the parents is a lot more difficult and can cause problems in the nest. If the dad is being aggressive towards mom, I wouldn't trust him with the babies either.



> Will the cockatiel pair no longer like to be with each other?


Some pairs have been known to have birdy divorces, although it happening in the middle of breeding is very weird.

A couple questions. When did he start acting like this? After you put the nest up? Has she already laid eggs and were they sitting on the eggs together OK before this? How bad is his chasing her? Is he chasing her to the nest to make her go back in, or away from the nest to keep her out? Is he truly hurting her or just chasing? Some males can be a little overzealous when it comes to breeding season. They really don't mean their mates any harm.


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## TropicalTiel (Mar 22, 2016)

Thank you for taking the time for answering my questions 


As to answer your questions:

This started happening yesterday, which was the 14th day after the first egg was laid.

The birds have been doing perfectly fine before this happened, they'd even be in the nest together at times so the male sits on two, while the female sits on the other two (they have four eggs atm) 

The male chases the female to keep her out of the nest, no injuries have happened as far as I know though the first time he started chasing her it looked as if he tried to bite her, though I'm not completely sure.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Another alternative is to make them take turns by leaving one bird in the cage with the nest box for a few hours (or any time span that you choose), then taking that bird out and letting the other one have a turn. They'll both get to participate in the egg and baby care even if they won't cooperate with each other, and it's possible that your male might settle down and decide to share after doing this for a while.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

It would be informative to find out what happens if the hen is already in the nest when the male enters the cage. Will he try to chase her out or will he let her stay in there peacefully? Obviously you should be nearby and ready to intervene if you decide to test this. 

I ask this question because Vlad is kind of nuts about nest defense sometimes. If he's in the breeding cage and one of his mates (he has two of them) enters the cage after being out for a while, he's likely to attack them. I'm not sure whether he's trying to chase them into the nest or away from it, but in any case the chase is so ferocious that they have a hard time entering the nest. But if they're already in the cage and he comes in, he doesn't bother them even if they're not inside the nest. The sight of the hen coming through the cage door seems to set him off.


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