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Hi all

got a quick question

I am not 100% sure on the sex of one of my (Yellow Red breasted) Turquoisines.......
I thought he was a male but he is now 11 months old and still only a has little bit of blue around his head and only red dots on his wings, no obvious bright red wing stripe/patch......
He does, however, feed his female he lives with.
Is it normal for a female to feed "beak-to-beak" another female or is it only something males do to their partners????

I had another female in with him, she was a year older and they recently (breeding season here now) started fighting to such an extend I had to sell one of them.
As the one I still have had been feather picked (he has got a bald head at the moment ) I had no choice but to sell the girl , I would have felt sad either way but girls are harder to find over here unfortunately.
I ended up getting a normal red fronted Turk hen (she is a beauty ) as I could not find any yellow Turks anywhere.......
They are getting along fine, no fights to speak off and he is feeding her again too.....She is the same age as him.

Could it still be that he is a she though, even with the feeding going on????

Would appreciate any advice, thanks guys
Oh yeah, if behaviour is anything to go by.....the other day he was whistling/twittering at her with his head up and his body low and she was preening his head Is that male behaviour???? I would've thought more like female behaviour

I have very limited experience with turquoisines, so I can't help you as far as behavior goes between sexes. However, I do know that two females can and do act like a true pair. I've seen female budgies acting like males (although not to the full extent), and have heard from others of two females who take on separate roles and act like a true pair. As far as I know though, female turks don't have any red on them, so if you have one that shows red then I would assume it's a male, but then I hardly know a thing about turk mutations so I know I could be wrong! Sorry if I'm not of much help!

It may help if you could speak with some turquoisine breeders as far as behavior goes. You can easily use google to search for some turk breeders to speak with, even! Best of luck!

One of the differences between Scarlet-chesteds and Turqs is that Turqs pairs fight a lot more, one or the other can become dominant, and males can kill the hens.
The best way to get a pair going is to set them up together while they are young. I give an aggressive male a good wing clip, and that can help, but it seems harder to make a compatible pair with Turqs than other Neophemas, especially when setiing up or repairing older birds.
Yes, yellow Turq. hens can absolutely have some red spots on their wings, but only males get the big bright red wingbar.

HTH.

thanks for that
Males can kill the hens, YIKES hope that'll never happen!

I have now bought a young male yellow red fronted, so he is in with the other yellow one who I am sure is a female as she has some white dots under her wings which I was told is part of the "line" (very hard to see in yellow turks.......)
So the boy is in with the yellow hen and also the normal red fronted hen but the yellow hen hates his guts so is the one who will have to go unfortunately
She appears to be quite a feisty dominant agressive young girl so I hope she will behave at her new home (am advertising her, paper comes out Thursday)

I hope the boy will bond to the other girl, she likes him but he is not too keen on her yet

this is our new handsome Chilli

Ckaudia,

Hold it! before you sell the other hen.

1. By introducing the male into the hens territory, it will not be love at first sight. Their reaction was normal.

2. Set him up in a cage NEXT to the cage of the hens and let them get to know each other slowly.

3. After 3-4 weeks, release them all three together in an aviary, so it will be neutral grounds for all them.

4. Try to have 3 nest boxes.

5. If you do it right, you could have them be a breeding trio.

Unfortunately I do not have the space for another aviary (though I would love one, yay more birdies ) so had to make a decision......
The other hen and Chill are starting to bond, he fed her today so that's great since it's only been 3 days......
And yeah I did think it was a territorial issue but strange how Rylee (the original hen) accepts other hens so readily ???
Anyway, we'll see what happens tomorrow, when the paper comes out......
I don't like selling birds but I guess once you start breeding that is what has to happen anyway
I will make sure if I do get phone calls I get a good "vibe" about the purchaser

Rylee has since gone to a great new home, a huge aviary with 4 males to choose from
The lady had an overload of males but found it very hard (it is over here for some strange reason ) to find hens so luckily she now has Rylee.
The lady has 30 aviaries and breeds all sorts of parrots, she breeds different kinds of chickens, ducks and also thoroughbred horses!!!

My female Turquoisines are all yellow...no blue at all.The males have blue faces.