[singal.mukul]

Hi,

I am in this weird situation and have many questions. I'll be grateful if any of them can be solved.

We've had Jenny, Joe, Pepsi and Pogo for 7-8 months now and they are the most loving tiels ever. I was apprehensive on having a single female tiel with 3 males, but the forum assured me it would be okay. Incredibly, Jenny had her molt and is a MALE and not a female. This made me glad, as now the female male problem wouldn't occur (though the name sounds silly now).

However Jenny, who is the oldest and has been with us the longest, started getting into the heat, and started mounting Pepsi (again a male) while Pogo started mounting Joe, which wasnt alarming, though a little weird.

 

[singal.mukul]

What followed has us all worried. whenever Jenny tries to mount Pepsi, he starts screaming and she starts hitting him till he submits to her or escapes. Recently Pogo would come and start fighting Jenny whenever he would try to get on Pepsi. We try to separate them whenever possible, but it isn't possible always as Jenny tries to mount Pepsi 5-6 times a day. We tried to put them to bed early, so their hormones would go down but to no avail. I fear, that Joe and Pepsi, who are relatively young right now, might get aggressive as they grow older. What can I do to put an end to this situation?

Today, things turned really nasty. When my mother woke up again (my tiels wake her up in the morning, she takes them out from the cage and goes off to sleep again while they play in their play area) , she saw lots of blood all over the play area and on the top of the cage. On inspection it turned out that Pogo had lost one of his nails and was still bleeding. We tried putting corn starch and pressing the wound but to no avail. While trying to keep him still for compressing the wound, he bit me hard enough to draw blood. We took him to the vet who put KMnO4 on the wound to cauterize the wound. The bleeding stopped and we brought Pogo home.

We wondered as to what caused the injury. By the way, Pepsi had blood all over his back. We saw Jenny hitting Pogo, who's been a bit silent and inert today. Later on, when we put them into the cage for sleeping, we heard a ruckus, and saw Jenny and Pogo fighting (weak old Pogo was getting hit). I fear that Jenny broke that nail. I bought a new cage to separate Jenny, but she started screaming and flapping her wings into the new cage so we had to put her with the others.

My questions are, what should I do to stop this fighting. Pogo's lost so much blood, that any fresh injury in the coming few days will kill him. He's already weak. should I go ahead and separate Jenny? He's very gentle and loving to us, but very aggressive towards Pogo.

Also, do I need to take some antibiotic for being bitten by Pogo?

I am at my wits end on what to do. I don't want to lose any of my birds. Please help.

 

[singal.mukul]

Jenny, Joe, Pogo and Pepsi.

 

[enigma731]

Is Joe female? If he/she has molted once already and still has those pearled feathers, then she is definitely a female. Also, if Pogo is weak, you may want to separate him into a smaller hospital cage with lowered perches until he recovers.

You don't need to do anything about getting bitten yourself, except keep it clean if there's still a cut there. Birds don't have bacteria in their mouths like cats or dogs do.

ETA - Pepsi also looks female, judging from the tail-up posture in that first pic. I think you need to start by figuring out what sexes your birds really are. Then you can work on hormone reduction techniques.

 

[xoxsarahxox]

Okay, Im pretty sure Pepsi is a female, see in the first picture how she is low with her butt raised, thats the female mating position. Does pepsi whistle, do heart wings or beak bang? If not shes definately a girl.

Joe is also a female if around a year or older since he still has all his pearls.

If injuries are happening I would definately separate jenny, though hes not going to be happy. You can keep the cages side by side and work on getting the hormones down, this thread will help, http://talkcockatiels.com/showthread.php?t=2678, and try just giving them out of cage time together.

 

[singal.mukul]

Thank you for your replies xoxsarahxox and enigma731.

The possibility of Pepsi being female also came to my mind, but never Joe.I am not sure about Pepsi, but Joe definitely makes heart wings and wolf whistles (he's actually the loudest of the lot). None of them except Jenny head bangs. Except Jenny, they're all 10-12 months old and except Pepsi all have molted once. Could Joe still be a female?

The pet store I bought them from said they were all males.
Earlier Joe was getting mounted on by Pogo which forced me to think that male could mount male. Is that possible?
In the rare possibility that they're both females, does that change the management of the current problem?
Also, will the lost nail grow back?

 

[singal.mukul]

My mistake.

Sometimes Pepsi also screeches really loud and sometimes does make heart wings.

Some more pics of the gang.

 

[singal.mukul]

Some close ups of Pepsi.

 

[roxy culver]

I'm going to say both Joe and Pepsi are hens, regardless of them doing heart wings etc. The 2nd pic in post #7 is not heart wings either, that's bat bird, Joe is claiming the spot as her's. Pepsi appears to have pearling on her back (the lutino looks like a lutino pearl to me) which if she has also molted makes her a girl as well. So it does appear that you have two and two, just that you had the wrong two pegged as girls. Males can and do mate with each other (I have two that have been doing so as of late) with no eggs being produced, but since it does appear you have hens hormone reduction is needed to prevent egg-laying. Changing the cage around weekly, long nights, less soft foods, should help towards preventing the egg-laying. And remember, tiels like to mate for fun as well.