LOL...my bird is exhibiting nesting behavior.

[Ladyhawk]

I brought him in to sit on his "porta-polly":



Now he got off and is shredding the paper towel underneath. It's all over the floor. What am I supposed to do now, lay eggs?

[AlienGirl]

1. Get in there and start layin'!

Gideon has made a bunch of nest sites for me this year. He stands in them and tries to coax me in, and just doesn't understand why I can't squeeze under the cage to lay eggs!

Tucker

[Ladyhawk]

2. Hehe...but my eggs are too small to see, let alone sit on.

:shrug:

Now he's shredding a cardboard paper towel center. I don't know how I'm going to get between the cabinet and stove to clean up his efforts. :shrug:

[LynneSin]

3. Boil a regular chicken egg and place it in his nest

then see if he's happy now!

[Solon]

4. Actually, if its a female, it may lay an unfertilized egg...

Similar to Chickens, we eat their unfertilized eggs after all, but many other birds, and even reptiles, will display nesting behaviors and lay eggs. We had a female box turtle who did that, we found a couple of eggs in a corner of the house, and the turtle never mated with another, we know that, but I never saw a reptile egg before, it was kinda soft and leathery.

ON EDIT: We found it broken near the water heater, it was, um... hard boiled? I guess that's the best way to term it. She chose a spot that was a little too warm. But it didn't have a fetus in it, obviously.

[Ladyhawk]

5. Gabby's a confirmed male. :)

I sent a blood sample to Zoogen when he was six years old and he DNA-tested as a male. He's almost 19 now. Before I could stop him, he once ejaculated on my hand. :) I was reading and didn't want to be disturbed. I'm like, "YUCK, GABBY! Thanks for the parrot sperm!"

Interestingly, female parrots have the larger and smaller paired chromosomes--called Z and x, I do believe--and determine the sex of the offspring. Males are ZZ. (I'll have to double-check the chromosome names.)

[Ladyhawk]

6. Here's the information from Zoogen's site:

"DNA sexing uses the process PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) to visualize pieces of DNA from the sex chromosomes of each bird. As in mammals, avian gender is determined chromosomally. However, unlike mammals in which the male is heterogametic (XY) and the female homogametic (XX), for birds the situation is reversed: females are heterogametic (WZ) and males homogametic (ZZ). The gene CHD (chromo - helicase - DNA binding protein) is found on both the W and Z chromosomes as a pair of duplicated gene loci, CHD-W and CHD-Z. Although the coding DNA of these two loci is conserved, the lengths of the non-coding DNA differ. Using a single pair of CHD primers, the PCR enzyme essentially duplicates these segments of DNA thousands of times until they can be photographed on a special instrument. Since the sizes of the two PCR products from the W and Z CHD loci are different, males and females are easily identified. Thus a female, which has both a W and a Z chromosome, will have two different size bands; while a male, having two Z chromosomes, will have only a single band."

http://www.zoogen.biz

So it's WZ and ZZ. My bad.

[purr]

7. You know.. in the 4 years I've owned Bingo

my Yellow Naped Amazon, she has never laid an egg. She was confirmed female by DNA so I know shes a girl. My moms Conure lays eggs all the time.

[khashka]

8. Our parrot Lola

would do that whenever she met a lesbian.

It was totally fucking weird!

Eventually, they get over it. Until then..... they bite.


However, if you are the object of affection, it's a whole different story :)

Khash.