Mating behaviour at 1 year and 4 months - is it normal?

[milosc89]

Hello everyone! I have a Yellow crowned Amazon parrot who is 1 year and almost 4 months old. I have him since he was 3 months old. He is hand fed and is well socialized. He vocalizes very good and speaks a couple of words, learns very fast. In a last few days he is showing signs of matinig behaviour when he is next to me. He is making sounds he didn’t make before, moving his wings strangly and sometimes regurgitating food for me. I have compared it with some videos of mating behaviour in amazon parrots on youtube and it definitely looks like it. So can someone tell me is this normal for his age? Isn’t it too early? He is a male yellow fronted amazon, 1y 4 m old. He is not showing signs of agression.

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum! Yes, he is too young to be showing breeding behaviors, especially regurgitating which is only done by pet birds out of extreme sexual frustration BUT it all depends on the light schedule the bird has been kept AND the diet - especially for amazons that require very little protein and can never be free-fed any protein food so, if I were you, I would do a thorough and very objective re-evaluation of his care: are you free-feeding protein food? does he get any product made with soy? is he being kept at a human light schedule? is he getting inappropriate touching? And once you have all the answers, correct whatever needs correcting. This problem is correctable but I would urge you to change things around for him asap because it's not only unhealthy for him, if he is already overly hormonal when he shouldn't even be normally hormonal and it's a male YCA (one of the hot three species), he will become aggressive - there is no two ways about it!

[milosc89]

He eats seeds, fruits and vegetables. I was trying with pelleted food but he simply doesn’t want it. He really likeas apples and carrots but he eats other stuff too. I do not remember that he has eaten anything with proteins or soy. He is very active, he plays a lot, vocalizes a lot and looks like a healthy parrot. This is the third time that I notice this behavior and a few minutes before that we were cuddling. Are tou saying that could trigger such behaviour? He is not agressive to me at all, but he doesn’t like strangers (and never did). He wakes up when I wake up and that is around 6AM and he goes to sleep around 10PM but If it happens that I am not at home the room gets darker when the sun sets and that is around 8PM during summer so that is when he goes to sleep. He is very calm and quiet during night so I think that he sleeps uninterrupted. One or two months ago his feathers were changing so I have found some in the cage, but I see that he has gotten new ones, he lloks healthy and intact.

[Pajarita]

Well, there is your answer! You are free-feeding protein food (seeds -and I bet he eats A LOT of sunflower seeds, right?) and he is not being kept at a bird light schedule but at a human one (and a screwy one at that) - if, on top of this, you add inappropriate caresses (can't touch a bird anywhere on their body, just its head, cheeks and neck), you have yourself a hormonal situation. An overly-hormonal bird will look 'healthy' (birds don't look sick until they are VERY VERY sick) and birds that eat too much protein often have wonderful plumage (feathers are made of protein) until they get advanced liver disease and their feathers start looking oily - or until they start plucking out of pain and frustration. This is not going to happen anytime soon with your bird because he is too young for it but it will if you don't give him the care he needs. AND he will get aggressive before that happens. ALL birds need to be kept at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk (research avian photoperiodism, avian endocrine and reproductive systems) and no parrot can be free-fed protein food, it destroys their livers and kidneys. Parrots are not seed eaters, you know...

[milosc89]

Thank you for your answer! I have read about avian photoperiod and I get it that he should get at least 10-12 hours of sleep and he usually gets a little less so I will change that. But the big problem is food. I have already tried to make him eat pelleted food, fruits and vegetables but he prefers seed and I think that he’d rather starve himself than eat pelleted food. When it comes to fruits he prefers apples, that is what he eats the most, the other fruits he also eats but clearly with less satisfaction. Do you have some advice how to switch him to healthier food?

[Pajarita]

OK, let me be clearer on the solar schedule - it's not the number of hours they sleep (this changes as the seasons change with loooong nights during the winter and very short ones during the summer). It's the following of the sun schedule and exposing them (without any aritificial light on) to the different light that happens only at dawn and dusk so, for example, this time of the year, I am opening the blinds in the windows at 5 am but I don't turn on the ceiing fixture until the sun is already all out in the sky and sunrays are streaking into the room (which happens around 7 am) BUT, in the winter, I don't open the blinds until much later. To make it easier: you need to open the blinds or uncover the cage when there is the merest light beginning to show in the sky (which is way before the sun actually comes out), turn on the artificial lights when the sunrays are already coming into the room, then, in the pm, turn off all the lights when the sun is halfway down to the horizon in the afternoon (and, in winter, this means around 2:45 - 3 pm) and cover the cage or close the blinds when the bird is already roosting and almost asleep and night has fallen.

Now, as to the diet. I've done research on parrots natural diets since 1994 when my first rescue, a redlored amazon, was diagnosed with high uric acid and reached the conclusion many years ago that pellets are not and never will be the best dietary option for parrots (waaaay too dry -bad for their kidneys, wrong fiber, inferior ingredients, soy, man-made vitamins/minerals and, for amazons, waaaay too much protein) so my birds also eat seeds BUT they don't get a bowl full of them all day long. I feed my parrots gloop and raw produce at dawn and leave it there all day long until the evening when I take it out and give them their dinner, a measured and small (just enough to fill their crop and a tiny bit more) portion of a nut/seed mix (I always give them more nuts than seeds because they are healthier).

Amazons are GREAT eaters and super easy to transition to a good, healthy diet and the only reason why you haven't been able to do it is that you, most likely, are putting out all the food together and any parrot, given the choice between a leafy green, a veggie, a fruit or seeds will go for the seeds EVERY TIME. What you need to do is take away the leftover seeds when you open the blinds before dawn and, once there is a tiny amount of light, put out the raw produce (one leafy green -choose something with a crunchy stalk like the heart of the romaine or bok choy, a veggie -everybirdy's favorite is fresh corn on the cob, a fruit -they LOVE blackberries), wait about one hour and then serve the gloop lukewarm. If you start him out with a simple grain gloop, he will eat it on the second day and, once he is eating it for a few days without a problem, start adding veggies to it starting with sweet corn, then peas and carrots, then broccoli, etc. All my birds are rehomes, most of them came to me because of issues and 99% of them were fed seeds and little else but they all eat raw produce and gloop now -and they love it!