Broody bird

[JessiMuse]

First off, I apologize if this is in the wrong section I wasn't quite sure if this is a health thing, or a behavioral thing.

Anyways, Lucy, my cockatiel, has started to display broody behavior. She gets in the corner of her cage and starts chewing up the newspaper. She also gets crabby while down there, and has a hissy fit when anyone walks up to the cage. Then this morning, she just decided to get under the paper and crawl around under it. She still likes to come out of the cage, and is still a cuddle-bug, so I guess I can handle it for now, but I'd really rather not have her lay eggs right now, in the middle of her juvenile molt.

Some fellow cockatiel owners I consulted said that j have to take the newspaper out from the bottom of the cage. Truth is, I didn't know that shredding paper triggered this, and thought that she just liked playing with it. Well, I put all of the paper-related items she likes to chew on while out of the cage away. I've already been giving her 12 hours worth of "nighttime", by covering her cage with the sheet at 7pm and uncovering at 7 am.

Is there anything else I can do to stop her broodiness, or should I just wait it out? Also, do I really need to take the newspaper out? The cage becomes a bit more challenging to clean, without it in there.

[Wolf]

Shredding paper or other things does not trigger the nesting response, the nesting response is triggered by sex hormones and is a symptom of increasing levels of these hormones. Also the 12 hour light/ dark will not stop a bird from going into breeding condition, if this worked then birds living at or near the equator would not breed and raise offspring, which we know that they do quite successfully.
As far as I am aware of there are two things that we can do to help control the breeding response in birds and we need to do both of them, the first is to feed a low protein diet and to keep the bird on a strict solar light schedule with full exposure to the two twilight periods of dawn and dusk as these two times are used by the bird to set and reset the internal biological clock .
Cockatiels and some other species of parrots are opportunistic breeders and as such are very difficult to control the breeding response in as they tend to breed at any time of the year and once the cycle starts it must run its course. There appears to me to be a growing amount of information that points to the amount of rainfall over certain periods of time as being another possible trigger to cockatiels to produce sex hormones and begin a breeding cycle, but this could be just my extrapolation of some reports of this occurring wherein all of the information is not presented.

[Pajarita]

No, you are 100% correct, Wolf. In the wild, tiels would raise their young during the dry season so rains bring them into condition.

And he is correct on the light schedule, my dear. Your covering the cage without exposing the bird to twilight and doing the 12L/12D is what is doing it. This light schedule was quite 'modern' years ago and a huge improvement over the human light schedule that people used with their birds prior somebody coming up with it, but it has fallen into disuse because it doesn't prevent the birds from producing sexual hormones. The only way to do that is to keep them to a strict solar schedule and to reduce protein intake during the 'resting' period (aka winter).

[JessiMuse]

Ah, I see. Oi... Sometimes I don't even know who to trust on the internet anymore. I was under the impression that the sex hormones were produced through longer days and shorter nights, and I thought "longer nights" would help the situation. Now it apparently doesn't?

I really am an idiot when it comes to this.

Well, low protein won't be much of a problem. How do I do that "solar schedule" thing though? I usually stay up late, finishing homework, so I cover her up with the sheet so she can get more sleep than me, as she tends to get crabby in the mornings otherwise (can't say I blame her, though. I'm not much of a morning person either).

[Wolf]

Well, The first thing is for them to go through the twilight period at dusk without the interference of artificial lights and they will go to roost just before dark, then you cover them. If no light gets in the cover cage then you can turn on the light that you need, just keep the noise down. Then when you go to bed you lower the lights and uncover the cage, turn of lights and go to bed. If they are near a window they will get the light from the twilight period that occurs at dawn and will wake up shortly afterwards.

[Pajarita]

Yep, what Wolf said. And it's not that they longer nights, shorter days is incorrect, it's not. The thing is that in order for their bodies to actually 'register' the shorter days/longer nights, there needs to be a trigger -kind of like a stop watch. The trigger is the different light that happens during dawn and dusk so, in the morning, the sunrise light turns the stopwatch on and it ticks and ticks and ticks until the sunset light turns it off and the number of hours in between the on and off is what tells their body how long the day and the night are. So, if you do what Wolf said and use a blackout material (can't use a sheet because the light shines right through it and there are studies that show that even very little light is enough to 'confuse' their endocrine system -the one that regulates the production of sexual hormones) after she fell asleep as night falls naturally and uncover it (with the lights off, of course) right before you go to sleep so she can be exposed to the sunrise (again, without artificial lights) in the morning, her body will become in tune with the seasons and she will 'register' the longer nights and stop producing sexual hormones.

Now, a word of caution. This is not going to happen overnight. Once the endocrine system is screwed up, it takes a while for it to go back on track and, even when they stop producing sexual hormones completely, they still need to dissipate from the bloodstream - which also takes time.

[JessiMuse]

In that case, I may have to put her cage in a different room, since her cage is in the busiest room in the house, where the lights are on the longest. Let's see how well convincing my mom to let me do that, will go! Despite being 18, it's still her house. At least she's been letting me be in control of Lucy's care, for the most part.

But hey. At least I know now, that despite not finishing her juvenile molt, that she really IS a female. Unless if males act broody too.

But broodiness WHILE a juvenile molt is almost asking for a completely crabby bird. At least the molt hasn't affected her mood too much.

Thanks, guys. At least now I know what I should do.

[Pajarita]

Well, males do get under the paper, too. As to changing her cage, what most people do is have two cages, the day one which is the 'regular' cage and the 'sleeping' cage which is a little one they put in an empty room or a room where the lights are not on at night -like a guest bedroom, for example. Maybe you can do something like that...