We've had talks about the futility of this. There are no male greys in our house, so any eggs she would lay would be infertile anyway -- why put yourself through that trauma? She disregards my advice. However, despite her best attempts, she has not quite figured out how to fit under the stove:
While it may be sexist on our part, our philosophy has been to allow our male birds (Rocky and the caiques) to do any nesting they want, providing it does not negatively impact their behavior, while preventing nesting behaviors in our female birds (Daphne and the greys). This is because we don't want to encourage egg-laying in our females. I know some people who have lost birds (usually cockatiels) to egg-binding, so we're careful with our ladies. That's not to say it won't happen; we're just trying to reduce the probability of that happening.
Since Max and Daphne have, thus far, shown very little interest in nesting, it's mostly just a concern with Stella. Happily, although she does seem determined to fit under the stove, she always steps up nicely when we remove her from the area. That doesn't mean she'll stay on her stand once she flies there, preferring another try with the oven. As yet, she has not attempted any nesting in the living room, so this is just a concern in the kitchen.
Since you couldn't see her face in the above pictures, here's one I took this morning:
2 comments:
Hopefully you won't have any trouble with eggs! I suppose it is rather sexist to try so much harder to avoid hormonal activity with the females, hadn't thought of that. I don't think I will change my ways quite yet, though!
I've been getting a lot of questions about dealing with hormonal behavior lately. Great post, especially the pics! Need to throw up a post on my blog.
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