kristen

i have a wonderful peach faced lovebird.Is it impossible to tell female
from male?I dont really have my bird on a diet plan but i feed it mixed
seed.****etial food because thats wat the guy who i purchased it from
recommended.He said it was a fischer lovebird but i said it looked like a
peach faced love bird.I looked up fischer love bird on the net and it was
this huge bird with circles around its eyes and im like no wayy.Then i
looked up love bird and there was my beautiful bird on the front page.Now
i want to know if i can tell female from male.I call my lovebird jewl so i
hope my bird is not offended if it's a male.

alanwilliams

Peach faced lovebirds are generally bigger than Fischer lovebirds so the
"hugeness" of the picture doesn't mean Jewl's not a Fischer's. There are
many colours of Fischers, some of which look a lot like a peach faced. For
some examples look at http://www.mresource.com/Birds/homepage.html

If Jewl's mature then you can supposedly tell the species by how they tuck
nest material into their feathers. I say supposedly as mine make such a
mess dropping material that it's amazing anything ever gets into the nest
box.

If Jewl's still a youngster then his colours will often change as he gets
older..

It's also possible that Jewl's a hybrid anyway.

The best thing to do is to scan a picture of him and ask on one of the
specialist yahoo groups. They're very friendly so don't be scared :-)
Don't post the picture though, you'll need to upload it into the group's photo section.


How old is Jewl? If he's a he and mature then he'll probably do the silly
mating dance. It involves bobbing his head up and down, strutting around,
turning round etc. It should _not_ be laughed at as he'll think it's very
serious :-)

The sure way to find out is to get a DNA test. They can be done by mail
when you send the company a feather.

Alan

If it turns out to be a male, perhaps you could change its name
to "gem"?

Tara J. Ballance
Montreal, Canada

peter hucker

That's what I thought - it seems you have to send off a "blod feather" (one that's just started to grow and presumably has bloo in it). When I took my parrots to the vet he took a sample of blood from their jugular vain as he said it's less sore than yanking out a blood feather, and you can never be sure if you have a good sample with a feather anyway.

Funny thing is I thought the police could get oyur DNA from ANYTHING (like a hair) left at the crime scene.

Also - JUGULAR?!? Strange how i9f you do that to a human you'd have a ginormous spurt of unstoppable blood?!?


--
I went to buy some camoflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.

alanwilliams

(one that's just started to grow and presumably has bloo in it). When I
took my parrots to the vet he took a sample of blood from their jugular vain
as he said it's less sore than yanking out a blood feather, and you can
never be sure if you have a good sample with a feather anyway.


a hair) left at the crime scene.


ginormous spurt of unstoppable blood?!?

Very odd especially given how one of mine bled what seemed like pints from a
toe injury. Perhaps their feet are more important to them than their brains :-)


any.

Alan

peter hucker

One of my blue fronted amazons has cut his foot before, hardly any blood, but then I suppose the same happens if we cut our fingers, it depends where you catch it.

I think birds would have a lot of blood vessles in their feet - don't they use them for temperature regulation?


--
Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.

steve

And you think 'gem' is a male name?


--
Steve

jmcquown

Short for Gemini, yep

peter hucker

Ah, a new age name.

--
If a cow laughs, does milk come out of its nose?

It is when it's spelled "jem". I was making a pun.

Sheesh, how far up your butt do you store your sense of humour,
anyway?

Tara J. Ballance
Montreal, Canada