FINCHforum

i wanted to ask you what you would do for a bird i have. i bought a red throated parrot finch a few months ago. (he is unbanded, from petsmart). i think he is male although he has not been DNA sexed....he sings like a male and tries to mate "male style" with my hens (well...and everyone else really!). i am at a bit of a loss with what to do with him. i have honestly tried every combination with him for housing with the finches i have of similar size. he has been with my zebras. he has been with my gouldians. he has been with my javas and in a very large flight cage with plum heads, shaft tails, a star, diamond doves and one society.

he is totally a plucker and he is really aggressive to all other birds. he literally pulls the feathers out of the hens he is with and dominates the heck out of all the males. since he is such an able (and fast!) flyer no one stands a chance against him. needless to say he is alone now in his own cage and he has been for a few months.

what else can i do? i want to give him a good life with cage mates, but i really don't want my other birds to get hurt because of him. does anyone have any advice related to aggressive birds? what do you do in these situations?

I have had a couple males that would pluck the hens pretty bad. Take him and cut half of his flight feathers from one wing only. It will slow him down a little and he wont be as aggressive.
Good luck Rich

thanks for the advice!

i never thought of clipping his feathers...i'll give it a try. my family just got a indian ringneck parrot who had her full feathers when she came to our house. she was trying to be dominant all the time by perching high on the fridge in the kitchen or on bookshelves and flying all around the house. once we took her and had her wings clipped, she became a different bird. now she is a lot more calm and submissive. hopefully it will work with the parrot finch!!!

I would not cut your bird's flight feathers, unless you know what you're doing. When you trim flight feather it has to be done is a certain way, so that the bird can still use its feathers for short flights and to balance itself when landing. If you cut to much the bird will not be able to soften its landing and can really hurt (maybe even kill itself) when it tries to land. A year ago, my husband and I adopted two societies who's owner had been improperly trimming their flight feathers. It was really awful, when placed in a flight cage they would literally crash to the bottom of the cage.

I have a male parrot finch and I have had the same problems with him, although he does seem to just love my non-pied societies. He has been been fine when housed with my green singers, zebras and owl finches.

I would not consider parrot finches, easy birds. They are very smart and very demanding. They have very high energy levels and when they are sexually frustrated they will force mate with other birds. I have read from breeders on this site that their male PF will sometimes 'rape' their female PF, instead of going through the normal courting rituals.

Hi can,
The main reason why I posted about my parrot finch is because I care about him and I want the best for him. I have also consulted a parrot finch breeder here in Ontario who did not mention clipping his wings but had other ideas for me.

I haven't done anything yet with regards to clipping his feathers because I want to get some more advice from forum members. To be honest I have heard mixed things about it myself.

I would go with what Rich says. He has tons of experience with parrot finches and I trust his judgement. Just my two cents.

It sounds to me like you have a very, very dominant male RTPF. Rich and Albert probably have more of these than any of us (I have six males and although I have occasional plucking while mating it is nothing like you are describing.)

I'll give you another piece of information for you to think about: All of my most excitable males RTPF's calmed down miraculously when I put them alone in a cage with a female RTPF -- and there was no plucking either.

If time alone with a hen is not an option then Rich is the guy with the answers on RTPF's!

I feel like I've offended someone/or a few people. First, Amy - I did not mean to imply that you do not care for your finch, I merely meant to point out that I have gone through a similar experience with my parrot finch.

And second, I believe my suggestion was not the trim the flight feathers, unless you know what you are doing, maybe I should have said unless you are experienced with trimming flight feather or have been shown how to do it. I do not believe trimming a bird's feather is easy, but that is maybe because I've seen how awful and dangerous it can be. (Honestly, I think my societies' flight feather were trimmed so the man's young daughters could hold and play with them.)

Anyways, my main concern was, I didn't want people reading the post to think of feather trimming as an easy solution. In my opinion, anyone thinking about trim their bird's feathers needs to educate themselves' on how to properly trim feathers. I'm sorry, I volunteer at my local humane society and I deal with people almost every second day, who have animals, don't understand their animals and do really stupid things, - so I am sorry if I carried a little bit of that on to the forum. I do wish you the best, and success.