African Love Birds Breeding And Sexing

They usually lay between four and eight eggs. Usually they are very fertile breeders. You don't get many infertile eggs. There may be a problem if you have a hen who hatches eight chicks. In this case they are a bird who will allow you to move the chicks under other pairs. If you have a pair with four young and another with eight, you can even the numbers out quite easily. They hatch in roughly 18 days and take another 5-6 weeks to fledge them. They make very good parents. I have had them rear Plumhead parrots, Fischers, Masks and just about anything you put under them with a hooked beak. They are becoming like the Budgerigar now that there are so many colours.  There is one problem with them; the inability to correctly sex them. Some people use the width of the pelvis but I find it is unreliable. I have had young cocks that were as wide as a hen but as they matured the bones closed up. The way I pair my birds is to put a large number into an aviary and let them pair themselves up. This means that I end up with compatible pairs and they will breed much better. I know there are certain times that you need to control the matings because you are breeding to a line or a colour, but you can have a little bit of a problem that way. If I am going to set up a new colony of say blue Peach-face, I will get them all into one aviary and when the pairs roost in their box at night, I catch them and look at them and feel their pelvis to be sure all is well. I find the best way to catch them is to sneak out before dawn and put a hankie or similar in the entrance hole and leave immediately before I disturb any of them. Then in the morning I take the box and put it into another aviary. This is repeated until I have four compatible pairs. The one problem I see from time to time in a colony is if you lose a cock or a hen. The remaining single bird becomes a rogue and harasses the remaining pairs. They will try to split up one of the pairs by competing for a new mate. I try to colour code my pairs with rings so that I can identify any odd ones. I then remove this bird and introduce another pair in the near future. You won't have much trouble introducing new birds into a colony as long as they are pairs. If you have a problem where you have 10-12 eggs in a nest you know that they are really two hens. Likewise if you get no eggs at all it is likely that they are two cocks. Another tip off for pairs is that once you have a pair sorted out and look closely, you will notice that the hen is a little larger. This is much easier in mature birds. If you look at a map of the distribution of the Peach-faced lovebird in Africa, you will notice that the Tropic of Capricorn that runs through their area also runs through Australia. I am certain that this is why they breed so well in this country. The people in Queensland do a lot better than those down here in New South Wales because they have good weather all the time. We are just a little lower than their normal range. In Africa they are found over quite a large area. They are in Zambia, Botswana and Angola. They breed prolifically over there and are found in big flocks.