[Help] cockatiel laying and male linnies annoying her

[ZigiaInfin]

Hi,

I've had two male linnies and a female cockatiel for over two years in the same cage. Everything has been alright so far but recently I've been having issues.

For some reason my cockatiel recently started showing signs that she is horny and wants to breed. I suspect this was triggered by the fact I changed the bedding and started using wood chips instead of paper. She laid two or three eggs a month ago that broke in the cage so I removed them. I gave her calcium and egg afterwards because she seemed a bit tired and she soon recovered. I'm now only using newspaper as bedding.

On the other hand, my two male linnies have been showing more and more signs of excitement recently: they feed each other fairly often and even started mating together.

It was all mildly fun and stupid until my cockatiel started being horny again a week ago, and this time the linnies are trying to copulate with her. For the first time I saw them interacting with my cockatiel by preening each other which they had never done before. After that I noticed that they were both rubbing their tail on her and now both of them will chase her or even bite her.

Today my cockatiel laid another egg and the linnies are still chasing her, I don't know what to do to calm them down. At the moment the only thing I could do was to seperate my linnies and put them temporarily in a transport cage I use to bring them to the vet...

Any help would be appreciated

 

[Emma&pico]

I would personally separate them and order a new cage for linnies and the female separately in her own cage especially if they are biting her
@Zara gives brilliant advise with egg laying

 

[Zara]

Remove the cockatiel. Have two cages, one for the linnie boys and one for your 'tiel. This will keep the peace.

You will find it hard to get a handle on the egg laying with the current situation. Once she is in her new cage, you can try many things to curb laying, but laying a clutch or two per year is ok, as long as you monitor closely so it doesn't turn into something more serious.
Simple tricks like rearranging the cage, moving toys and perches, water bowls etc, moving the cage or rotating it, using a blanket to cover the cage at night and control daylight hours to 10-12 daylight hours and 12-14 night hours can help. If those don't work, you can try using dummy eggs to stop laying, and more severe things to try are hormone injections at the vet. But it is important to try the simple stuff first.
Having the linnie boys close to her will impede all of this, so get her in her own cage, and then make a start on this.

@Leih has two linnie boys if you need any tips with them, though allowing them to mate each other and be happy is not a bad thing

 

[ZigiaInfin]

Remove the cockatiel. Have two cages, one for the linnie boys and one for your 'tiel. This will keep the peace.

You will find it hard to get a handle on the egg laying with the current situation. Once she is in her new cage, you can try many things to curb laying, but laying a clutch or two per year is ok, as long as you monitor closely so it doesn't turn into something more serious.
Simple tricks like rearranging the cage, moving toys and perches, water bowls etc, moving the cage or rotating it, using a blanket to cover the cage at night and control daylight hours to 10-12 daylight hours and 12-14 night hours can help. If those don't work, you can try using dummy eggs to stop laying, and more severe things to try are hormone injections at the vet. But it is important to try the simple stuff first.
Having the linnie boys close to her will impede all of this, so get her in her own cage, and then make a start on this.

@Leih has two linnie boys if you need any tips with them, though allowing them to mate each other and be happy is not a bad thing

Okay so luckily enough we have a spare cage + my husband has been building an outdoor aviary inside a greenhouse so we could also put the linnies there I suppose... We'll just make sure the weather is warm enough (UK weather..).
We'll move the cockatiel to the spare cage for now.