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thinking about rehoming of my caique. I’m heartbroken.

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thinking about rehoming of my caique. I’m heartbroken.

Postby Souzas17 » Tue May 03, 2022 11:58 am

I have an 11 year old male black headed caique that I adore. However, he nearly killed my conure a few years ago. I got my conure first back in 2011 and she is my baby. The next year, I met the caique at the pet store and fell in love with him. I was only 12 at the time, but both birds became my babies.

My conure and my caique used to be friends until my caique reached sexual maturity. Then began his mood swings and attacks. Around 5 years ago, my caique completely turned on my conure. He pinned her on the ground and bit her wing so hard it was severely broken. It was the most terrifying experience in the world. She ended up losing the wing because it was so damaged that it lost circulation. She is doing well these days and is still her feisty happy self.

Since then, my parrots been kept separate at all times, but my caique still tries to go after her whenever he’s out of the cage.

Today, another terrifying incident occurred. My conure was safely in her cage, and my caique was out. He all of a sudden flew over to her cage where she was hanging on the bars, and in a nanosecond, latched onto and bit her foot really hard. It was extremely terrifying, unexpected, and distressing. I got him off of her, and She is thankfully okay and has a checkup with the vet tomorrow. I love my birds so much, but my caique is just very difficult.

I never want to rehome an animal, as I see them as my babies, and when you purchase or adopt an animal, you are making a commitment to them. But, I have other animals (two cats and an elderly dog) and my poor conure who is obviously not a fan of my caique.

Part of me wonders if rehoming him would be the best option for him. Somewhere that he can have all the attention and enrichment, somewhere that he can be the only bird. I don’t want to give up on him. I don’t want him to grieve and experience that depression because we’ve had him since he was a baby. I love him dearly, but he’s deliberately injured my other bird several times. I’m thinking about the safety of multiple animals in my home. I know it’s not his fault, it’s just his nature.

He’s got the typical jekyll Hyde personality of a caique. Fine one second, then pinning attacking me the next. He bites me quite often. I’m a college student so I’m very busy, but even with attention and snuggles, he all of a sudden snaps on me and bites.

He turns on a dime with no warning. As I’m typing this, he’s snuggled on my arm acting innocent and lovey. He goes from a little Romeo to possessed velociraptor in seconds. I’m aware he’s most likely hormonal at this time of year, but his moodiness is a perennial issue.

Background: He receives 12 hours of sleep at night in a small, blanket covered sleep cage. He is on a pellet diet of Harrison’s bird food and receives fruits and veggies daily with supplements of seeds as treats. Any advice would be wonderful and much appreciated.
Souzas17
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 1
Number of Birds Owned: 2
Types of Birds Owned: Crimson bellied conure, black headed caique
Flight: Yes

Re: thinking about rehoming of my caique. I’m heartbroken.

Postby Pajarita » Wed May 04, 2022 10:20 am

Hi, Souza, caique and conure (you did not tell us their names), welcome to the forum. First of all, you do NOT need to rehome your caique, there is nothing wrong with him that cannot be fixed. I have two adult caiques, both older than yours, both males and both rehomed because of aggression. One is a black cap (Javi) and the other is a yellow thigh white belly (Epuish). Neither of them are aggressive to the other birds - as a matter of fact, they ignore all of them, and neither have what you call a 'Jekyll and Hyde personality', not even during breeding season.

Personally, I think the problem you have is that the poor bird is overly-hormonal and, most likely, also needs proper socialization. Caiques cannot eat a lot of protein or dry food, they are mostly fresh plant material eaters, they live in the canopy and feed from it so they need A LOT of fresh food and little protein and little fat. You are not only free-feeding pellets (which have a min protein of 15% if they are the 'lifetime' and a whooping 18% if they are the 'high protein', and, please note that minimum means anything over that so, in reality, nobody ever knows how much protein the pellets have) which is considered 'protein food' (a no-no with parrots) but also keeping it at a light breeding schedule (caiques are from the northern part of South America, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, etc) all year round, year after year and that is not only not healthy for them, it also means the bird lives in discomfort and even chronic pain because of overgrown gonads.

Let me explain and do not think for a second that I am criticizing you. The sad truth is that most information on parrots on the net is wrong which I am sure is where you read about the diet and light schedule you are using. You see, birds are not like mammals which produce sexual hormones all the time, only at different seasonal levels, they produce sexual hormones ONLY during breeding season and none during the resting one. The production is dependent on three environmental triggers: number of daylight hours (avian photoperiodism), food availability and weather. The ones from tropical areas near the Equator (like caiques) evolved to breed at 12 hours of daylight so, unless you keep them at a strict solar schedule with short days in the winter and long days in the summer, they would produce sexual hormones all the time at 12 hours of light every single day. In the wild, tropical birds do not produce sexual hormones year round because the other two triggers are present but not in captivity - inside a human home is always spring and there is always good and more than enough food for them.

When we first 'discovered' parrots as pets, we used to free-feed seeds and kept them a human light schedule but, after some years of this, we realized that the birds were all screwed up and very unhealthy from this. Then we went into the 12L/12D schedule (12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark) because we figured that tropical birds live this way in the wild so it must work in captivity. But not all parrots are tropical and even the tropicals will produce hormones under this schedule because the other two triggers don't work in captivity. Funny thing was that, if the parrot people had bothered to do any research, they would have found lots and lots of material from canariculturists who had been aware of the importance of the number of daylight hours in the avian reproductive system for many. many years. Canaries have been bred in captivity since the 1400's and we had learned A LOT about avian photoperiodism - we did not know why or how but we did know that long days meant breeding and short days did not, we also learned that a bird that produced sexual hormones all the time will not breed well, will have a shorter lifespan and will be super aggressive, especially the males (high testosterone = aggression). Now we know that the different light spectrum of dawn 'turns on' the 'internal clock' and the light of dusk 'turns it off' - and we know that the bird's brain 'registers' the number of hours between dawn and dusk and that the pineal gland will send 'orders' to the sexual glands to start or stop producing hormones based on a pre-determined number of hours (this is called the point of photo-refractoriness and it's a different number for different species which is set by evolution, canaries breed best at 13 to 14 hours of daylight but, they start producing them at 12 and, when they get to 15, they stop until the next year).

Then you have the diet. I have done many years of research on their natural diets and reached the conclusion that pellets are not and never will be the best dietary option for parrots... they are too dry (parrots' diets are between 85 to 95% moisture, pellets have a max of 10), too processed and have bad ingredients (Harrison's is made with soy, something that is poisonous to birds unless cooked and has bad side-effects on their glands). And then there is the unknown level of protein in them... I feed my caiques gloop and raw produce for breakfast and, for dinner, they get a bit of budgie seed with nuts, could be a cashew and a small pistachio or 1/4 walnut and 1/2 pecan (they don't like almonds) with two to three doses of a multivitamin/mineral supplement a week (mine also get liver and kidney tonics and cleanser because they were fed wrong for many years and their livers suffered with it). One of them, Javi, had soft molt (this is when they constantly lose feathers and produce new ones all the time instead of only during molt season) for 10 years from being kept at the wrong diet and light schedule (the previous owner says that he never had a normal full molt) and it took me, literally, years to correct this... it is only in the last couple of years that he is molting correctly.

Then, there is proper socialization. Personally, I do not think that keeping bird separate forever is the way to go... Parrots are all highly social species so it stands to reason that they not only enjoy but also need the company of other parrots. Separation needs to be done as a temporary solution to a problem that does not have a quick solution but a permanent one needs to be found. So, this is my advice to you: keep your birds at a strict solar schedule with 2 hour exposure to dawn and dusk (this means no artificial lights until the sun is already up in the sky and streaming into the room or after the sun is halfway down to the horizon), feed it a fresh food diet and budgie seed for dinner with supplements for its liver/kidneys (let me know if you need help with this) and, once it's fall and the birds stop producing sexual hormones, start letting them come out at the same time at noon (this is when they are the calmest because they always rest in the middle of the day) starting with a short period of time and while under close supervision but do not put either one on your shoulder. If the caique goes for the conure, scold him and put him in his cage for 5 minutes (by the clock) and then release him again and keep on doing this until he no longer shows aggression toward the conure. If you do everything right and in time, he will stop attacking. I promise you!
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes


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