Expert: Chrys Meatyard - 5/13/2008

Question
i have to love birds,female and male, the male is 12 months old and weve had the female for 6 months. i wanted to see if the could breed so i put a wood bird house i made. it is approx 24 by 14cm. it has a door which is arched 6cm. it has a roof bigger than the structure like a verandah, the floor of it is a lso this big. i wanted to see if they could breed i know that the female is probably to young but they still won't go in it. is there a particular reason they won';t go in it??

p.s the things that answer these questions are you real people or computers?

Answer
Hi, Patricia,

For some reason, the person you sent your original request to could not answer.  I picked your question up in the question pool.

LOL!  We are real people, not computers.  If the female is only 6 months old, she isn't ready to breed yet (she and maybe he may not know what to do yet).  Lovies need to be about 2 years old before breeding them.  Also, a pair of birds has to be pair-bonded first before they will even think of mating.  Pair-bonding is when the male feeds his female mate beak-to-beak.  Have you had these birds DNA sexed in order to determine if you have a male/female pair?  Lovies cannot be sexed visually.  You may have 2 birds of the same sex.  If you have any substrate in the nesting box, remove it.  Put nesting material in the cage bottom and allow your lovies to make their own nest out of this material.  Lovies are 1 of only a few types of parrots who make deep nests inside a nesting box.  Perhaps they don't like the box you made.  You may want to try a cockatiel nesting box available at most pet shops that sell birds.  However, again, I don't think they are old enough yet, particularly the female (I know she isn't ready).

Chrys