5 Stages to Successfully Mating Parrots - Family - Pets

Adopting a parrot and caring for a parrot as a pet is much different and requires a different level of commitment than breeding parrots. Mating parrots in captivity takes a tremendous amount of quality attention to ensure your potential parrot parents are in prime health and to also ensure they have ideal surroundings and environmental conditions.

Parrot Health

In order to properly mate parrots, it is of equal importance to have healthy parent parrots to ensure healthy parrot chicks. The breeding pair should not be related in any way, and they should also be free from any outer birth defects, abnormalities, or illnesses.

Having your local animal health expert, breeder, or vet check out the potential breeding pair would be a good idea and would provide confidence to engage in breeding. Lastly, the potential parents should be at least one year old.

Cage Requirements

When mating parrots, their external conditions is very important to ensure they feel comfortable enough to mate in captivity. When breeding parakeets for example, the cage shouldn't be any smaller than 2' x 2' x 2' and should always have a wood nesting box that is at least 12" x 12". It is also ideal to have pine chips or some similar material at the base of the nesting box to have it as comfortable as possible for the potential parrot parents.

Diet for Mating Parrots

Mating parrots need special care and attention, and require a varied diet of seed, high quality pellets, and lots of fresh and preferably organic vegetables and fruits. Mating parrots should also be provided with cuttlebone to eat as well as some form of calcium supplement to assist in the development of the female's eggs, and to also help her gain back some of the lost minerals after laying eggs.

Incubation Period

Female parrots will lay their eggs soon after the mating process. Most parrot breeds have similar egg laying timeframes, with an egg laid each and every day until all eggs have been laid. Typically there are between four and seven eggs in each clutch, but this varies for every parrot.

Incubation timeframe is between 17 and 21 days, but keep in mind this is just an average and can occur a few days before or after, which is also normal.

Raising Baby Parrots

Depending on what your plans are for the little chicks will determine how you raise them upon hatching. If your intention is to train them as pets, then many parrot breeders will allow the parents to raise their babies until they are weaned. At this point, the breeders typically remove the babies to begin the process of interaction with humans. Generally speaking, most chicks are weaned by six weeks, at which point it is safe to remove them from their parental care.

It's definitely beneficial to speak with other people who have successfully mated parrots or join certain clubs with other breeders to discuss their approach. Most are passionate about mating parrots, and are excited to help. There is also much information on this topic on the Internet, but ensure whoever is offering their information is an expert in mating parrots.

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