Tuesday 7 October 2008

Rocky and Bluey - now living together in one cage!

I'd had Rocky and Bluey in seperate cages for nearly two years, and always dreamed of having them in one larger cage but was worried about compatibilty issues. Rocky (a male) is a little bit timid, and used to a very quiet life at his previous home. Bluey (a female) is a bit on the wild side and apt to give you a nasty peck.

Whenever the two were out of the cage together, Bluey was very bossy over Rocky and he often got scared of her. That's why I assumed that it would stress Rocky too much if I put them both in one cage.

Then Rocky's cage started to go rusty and the plastic feeders broke, so I went out and bought him a new one - a much bigger one. But when I got it home, I looked at it and thought 'wait a minute, this is big enough for the both of them'. So I took a bold step and put them in together. After all, both birds would be in a strange environment so there would be no terratorial issues for either of them.

Both birds were very quite for a day or two, apart from the occasional peck that Bluey would try to give Rocky, but she is too slow, and Rocky easily gets out of her way if she is getting bitchy.

Then they started to do things together, eat together, look in the mirrors together, and now they even perch fairly close together at night. They seem to be good company for each other, and rely less and less on me for attention. In fact, neither bird seems that bothered about coming out of the cage these days, and it is quite difficult to try and tempt them out, where Rocky at one time would come out for some fuss on a daily basis.

Now I've noticed that previous animosity between them is slowly disappearing, and I've even caught them perched closly together and doing like 'kissing motions' on a time or two.

It is so much simpler having them in together, one cage to keep clean, and only one part of the house prone to bird mess. I wish I had of done this sooner. Things are so much better now that Rocky and Bluey are cage mates!