by Pajarita » Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:45 am
Simply reducing the number of light hours doesn't quite do the trick, my dear. Birds need to be exposed to twilight [both dawn and dusk] to set their 'internal clock' because it's this different light that happens at these two daily events that turn on or off their 'internal clock' which, in turn, determine if the body will produce or not sexual hormones. But, in any case, the endocrine system does not adjust in a matter of 2 days or even 2 weeks, it needs months of being exposed to the solar schedule for this to happen and African grays are short day breeders so reducing the number of hours by one is not going to do it.
Also, for an overly hormonal bird, the term would be hyper and not hypogonadism because hyper is too much and hypo is too little. But neither term is used with overly hormonal birds because although hypergonadism does mean that the gonads become enlarged [as it's also the case with overly hormonal birds], it also means that they produce more hormones [which is not the case with overly hormonal birds because, with them, the problem is not that they produce too much, it's that they don't stop producing them] and last but not least, hypergonadism implies precocial sexual development [as in a child too young to be sexually developed but already showing sings of it].