#hormone ask

How does one tell for sure if it’s comfy or hormonal with a conure?

I am also playing this game except it’s modified to “sassy fluff or going to launch across the room to attack me?” Where me and Newt have a standoff in the bird room as I desperately try to fill foragers without getting murdered

The biggest tell for Sus conure activities is usually their booty, if they’re lifting their tail up to wedge in to tight spaces and pressing that booty against anything it’s Horndog Moments. This can include sitting lower on perches and outright rubbing that cloaca on things.

Anything to do with dark cavities, sticking their head in them, being aggressive about them, being obsessive about finding a dark spot

In terms of if it’s comfy body language vs sus body language it is a bit of a learning curve for each individual bird. With Newt you can notice it’s a more disgruntled fluff where he may be gently vibrating his feathers and making raspier “grouchy” vocalizations. But all birds will have minute differences on how they present that. He’ll also do a screech and pluck a nearby object like cage bars or the ground if he’s more irritable bc of hormones

Its just exhausting because hes constantly hormonal and i cant do anything with him

Definitely look in to the nesting habits for your species! While some parrots have short breeding seasons others do a multi month extravaganza which would definitely cause your hormonal behaviours to last way longer than you may expect from other birds!

Running under the assumption that you've tried all the typical advice for daylight hours, reducing stimulants and yada yada yada I'd double check your consistency with those things. Sometimes we try something for a week, it doesn't work, so we ease up on it and don't give it enough time to reach it's full effectiveness.

You may also look in to moonlight bulbs for birds, I have not tried them myself but they are a lesser known potential option for enforcing daylight hours and really getting that hypothalamus in to thinking it's Not Horny Time. You'd have your UVB bulb for the day to simulate sunlight then there is a moonlight bulb that's just a soft blue light that can simulate night time and further enforce "it's really night time right now I Swear"

Diet and health is of course something to consider (which I'm sure you already have!) as some diets or health conditions can just cause their hormone balances to be out of whack and trigger these responses. A vet would be the only real way to diagnose that one and they may then suggest supplements, diet changes, or hormone shots/ treatments.

Last thing I'd consider is if this is hormones through and through or if there's other behavioural things at play here. Some birds get caught up repeating similar behaviours due to the consequences of exhibiting the behaviour in the first place. For example a bird may be hormonal and present aggressive behaviour towards a person near its cage. This starts out as a hormone-based territorial behaviour. But what can happen is the reaction from the person can either scare the bird or excite the bird causing them to want to repeat the behaviour more so now the behaviour is no longer occurring due to hormones but is occurring out of trying to keep themselves safe or just out of habit. Even masturbating on things can have this result, if you yell at them every time they do it they could find your reaction exciting and be inclined to do it again. The behaviour is no longer occurring because of hormones but because of their desire to elicit that reaction. I hope that makes sense!

If that is the case then I'd end up doing a full reset for this bird, new room, temporary travel cage for sleeping/ short term housing and evaluate the behaviour. Reset the whole environment so that any habitual behaviours are not likely to crop up, a new environment is easier to form new habits with and safer than just staring down your bird and trying to call a bluff that may or may not be a bluff. It'll break any undesirable routines they may currently have and allow you to reestablish healthy ones easier. If you do a full reset and see zero change in behaviour then there is likely a hormone imbalance happening, if we see a decrease in some behaviours then that may indicate a more habitual behaviour set.

Biggest concern with two male birds is that nesting behaviours trigger a lot of territorial behaviours and aggression. This can come in the form of attacking and threatening me to the point where I would be getting harmed for just walking near the entire room let alone entering it and having to touch/ move resources. This can also result in them suddenly flipping and going at one another, as their hormones become unstable it can result in uncontrollable aggressive bursts that may end up lashing out at whatever is nearest them in that moment- be that a toy or eachother. Often when a hormonal fight breaks out neither party is stable enough to self regulate and deescalate the situation and most will not stop until serious injury or death has happened.

Toto’s species /can/ nest build without it becoming a hormonal thing, they’re the one parrot species who does actually build structured nests with twigs and does so for communal housing for the whole flock. Newt’s species on the other hand only seeks out dark tree hollows to house a mate and eggs, it’s pretty much always a hormonally led behaviour.

As for why they can’t be left alone with eachother, no parrots really can in captivity without extensive behavioural training and regulation, the right birds, and the right setup. Parrots are capable of doing major damage to eachother very quickly- there’s numerous cases of them ripping eachothers beaks off, breaking legs, snapping wings, or outright killing eachother, they’re strong and all it takes is one bad moment for everything to go wrong.

In the wild you have a lot of varying factors- the birds are well socialized and taught proper communication skills at a young age, they can choose who they do and don’t interact with, there’s miles upon miles of free space, etc. Captivity results in birds who weren’t given proper opportunities to learn social skills, often taken from their nests extremely young before they get to learn how to interact and communicate, often kept as only birds or with very few birds resulting in poor socialization and more bird selective behaviours, they don’t get to pick who comes in to their home, and there’s very limited space/ resources which reduces their capacity to fly away and avoid having to interact/ fight.

in this case they were actively crammed in a corner of a cage super poofed up making out of the normal vocalizations which made it a bit more obvious

Ive tried all the methods of foraging toys, more sleep, moving cage around, teaching him tricks but nothing works at all. He always find something new to flirt with and the newest being his toys which is a bit counterproductive

I dont know wether to take him to the vets for medication (if thats a thing) or if i should splash out on some proper foraging toys

Just starting to get frustrated and everyone keeps telling me to get rid of him but i really dont want to do that because i know its solvable

So any help would be appreciated thanks :,)

I have the hormone ask tag which compiles a variety of things to consider and change to help reduce hormonal stimulants!

Another thing worth noting is that it is starting to be spring now so regardless of what we do to reduce the effects there will still be some degree of hormonal fluctuations right now. When it comes to reducing hormones with parrots it’s not so much a matter of trying to stop them altogether (if that’s even possible) but rather balancing between reducing the behaviours that are harmful for them (egg laying, regurgitating, masturbating), harmful to us (territorial aggression) and picking your battles/ finding management strategies that allow you to work around the less desirable behaviours.

When birds get particularly hormonal we switch the hours of daylight they receive to make them believe it’s not breeding season. Birds’ circadian rhythms are exceptionally receptive to daylight in comparison to many other mammals which is why a simple change like altering the hours the birds are awake can completely bypass (or at the very least minimize) seasonal breeding hormones. The circadian rhythm is an internal clock that takes daylight and temperature (among other factors) to tell the bird what time of year it is. It’s responsible for you sleeping at night and waking up when the sun rises, it also tracks the seasons to tell birds when to migrate and mate. If you were to look up the time of year a particular species mates you can determine the general amount of daylight hours that set them in to breeding mode. Cockatiels for example live in Australia and breed from August to December, in Australia they tend to get daylight from 6am-8pm (14 hours of light) during breeding season. In the off seasons (January - July) the light shifts to it’s lowest of 7am-5pm (10 hours). So for cockatiels this tells us that the best amount of awake time to give them to avoid encouraging hormones is 10 hours (give or take) ranging somewhere close to 7am-5pm. Each species will have different breeding seasons with different daylight hours so it is important to look that up for each specific species to best reduce hormones.

In general though, reducing a birds’ daylight hours to 10 hours a day sometime between 7a-5p tends to be pretty effective for most parrots. If you have a chronic egg layer however I do strongly suggest looking up the natural breeding seasons, daylight hours and even temperatures to help reduce the hormonal influences!

https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/physiology-of-seasonal-breeding-a-review-2157-7579-1000331.php?aid=72350

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3946898/

The simplest answer is just because they’re horny.

Female birds are fully capable of laying eggs without the presence of a mate just due to increased hormonal influences in their environment.  The time of year, temperature, hours of daylight, age of the bird, where/how you touch them, dark spaces, diets, shreddable materials, mirrors, other birds, how much they love certain toys and how much they love you are all very small factors that can cause a bird to go from completely normal to “BABIES, NOW”.

The hormone tag and egg laying tag go over the most detail on why these things happen and what we can do to stop them

Tl;DR of how to prevent it:

Don’t touch their backs, rumps, essentially you want to limit touch to their head and neck area. During breeding seasons you may need to limit touching all together because some birds just get that dang horny

Do not provide bells, mirrors, “happy huts”, cage corner covers, don’t encourage hiding in bed sheets, crawling in shirts (for some species this is a natural play behaviour so it’s important to know your bird), hiding under the bed

Remove ‘love toys’, toys that your bird have begun regurgitating too, masturbating on

Change their daylight hours to winter hours, take note of your specific species usual breeding habits (weather, time of year, etc.) and alter their living conditions so they do not line up with their usual breeding triggers.

Don’t feed them high-fat diets, watch the type of pellets you feed as some are designed with breeding birds in mind. High fat diets are intended egg laying birds as their body will be using up a lot more energy in egg production than they would be for the majority of the year, low-fat diets are a more appropriate alternative.

Do not provide nests or  nesting materials - ‘nuff said, adding a nest is going to make them want to nest

Ensure they understand independent play, overly attached birds are more prone to egg laying problems than ones who are more independent.  Encourage foraging, set designated alone time, be sure the bird is well socialized so they do not solely want to be around one person

If the bird does start egg production to reduce the risks of egg binding

feed them a diet higher in calcium and plenty of protein (of course with a regular well rounded diet of sprouts, veggies, and pellets) these will help ensure they form a strong healthy egg.  Be certain they have access to a UV full spectrum light (not a window) so they can properly synthesize the calcium.  You may also be given a vitamin supplement by your veterinarian.

Reduce stressors as much as you can, don’t go adding too many new things to the environment or deliberately doing things you know they don’t like - put off nail trims until after the egg passes for example

be certain your bird is at a good body weight to start with, being over or underweight can make passing an egg quite difficult and strenuous

Be certain you are feeding them a healthy diet, a body lacking in nutrients to begin with will not be able to form a healthy egg (i.e all seed diets)

Recognize the signs of egg binding early on so they can get the proper medical help they need

lethargy

lack of appetite (and sometimes over eating)

inability to perch/ sitting on the bottom of the cage

heavy breathing/ tail bobbing

visible portion of the egg from the cloaca or a prolapse

leg paralysis (eggs may put pressure on the nerves)

difficulty pooping, poop stuck to the vent

keep track of their weights and behaviours during the process, if you notice any irregularities contact your vet

Egg binding can be treated in most cases, usually they’ll try non-invasive methods such as providing a heating pad, vitamin supplements, fluids, or lubing the cloaca to help the egg pass initially if they don’t work they’ll move on to physically extracting the egg (if it is visible) or using a needle to drain the egg causing the shell to collapse and be removed by the vet or passed by the bird. Surgery is typically the last option they’ll consider as it is a higher risk procedure.