Pacific Parrotlet

Pacific parrotlet is one of a myriad of small parrots that comes from Central and South Americas. It is about 5 to 5 ½ inches in length but its small physical statue belies its abundance of energy. It is a bird of constant activities, exploring every inch of its cage. Hand-raised birds that are constantly handled by their owners become very affectionate and will not take sharp nips at the hands that feed them. With patience, hand-raised birds can be taught to say more than a few words.

The small size makes parrotlet an ideal pet for apartment dwellers. A 10"x 12"x12" cage will provide a comfortable abode for a single bird. There are two view camps as to whether parrotlets should be kept in pairs. One group advocates keeping a male and female bird together so that they have companionship. The other camp feels that if the owner can spend time with the bird then keeping just one will create a stronger bond between the bird and its human master. I favor the latter view unless one intends to breed the bird.

Parrotlets are hardy birds and reputed to live 18 to 20 years or even longer. They are generally quiet birds, except for the occasional squabbles, if a male and female are housed together. Never place the cages of two breeding pairs side-by-side without a solid partition between them. Parrotlets are pugnacious by nature and a pair will defend their territory vehemently, spending an inordinate amount of time engaging in skirmishes between the cages with its neighbors, if the latter is fully in view. They will produce a constant din and could become an annoying source of noise for their owner.

Parrotlets can subsist on a diet of parakeet mix with a 25% canary seed content. However, variety is the spice of life, so providing a varied diet will keep your birds happy and in prime health. Aside from parakeet seed mix, I also provide a commercial small hookbill seed mix. Hemp and sunflower seeds are relished by parrotlets but should be rationed due to the high oil content in these seeds. I feed these two seed types sparingly in the summer but provide larger and more frequent helpings in the winter months to provide the extra energy for the birds to withstand the cold. I also supplement the dry seeds with sprouted seeds, which should become the stable diet when the birds are raising chicks. Sprouted seeds are an additional source of natural vitamins for your birds. Broccoli, green peas, carrot, apple, orange, pear and a host of other fruits and vegetables are eaten with glee.

A source of calcium and mineral supplements should be provided at all times. Since parrotlets are energetic gnawers and will pulverize an 8-inch cuttlebone in a week, I prefer providing my birds with the harder mineral/calcium blocks sold in bird stores. The parrotlets will gnaw at such mineral blocks but being harder, it takes them a longer time to chew up the block. Also, the hardness of these mineral blocks helps trim the birds’ beaks.

Providing bird grits to the parrotlets is a controversial issue. Some claim grits are unnecessary and could harm your birds’ health. They maintain that parrotlets have a tendency to eat too much grits instead of food and thus could starve themselves to death. Some avian experts dismiss such assertions as nonsense saying if such is the case then all the wild parrotlets would die of over-ingestion of grits, which are plentiful in nature. In any case, I have always made available a cup containing a mixture of grits and oyster shells for all my birds and have never found any of my birds to consume it to the detriment of their health. While the debate rages on, my view is that a grit and oyster shell mix provides a stable source of calcium, minerals, electrolytes and other essential elements, all of which are beneficial to the birds’ health. Giving the birds their other favorite foods such as fruits, vegetables, egg food, etc. will counter their propensity, if indeed they have one, to over-consume on grits.

Parrotlets are easy to breed. Sexes of the parrotlets and their color mutations, except for the albino, can easily be differentiated. Males of the green (also called the wild type in genetic jargons) and the blue and yellow mutations have purplish-blue rump feathers. The lutino males’ rumps are white.

Parrotlets are precocious birds. At age of three to four months, a male will start going through the motion of regurgitating food and feeding the female. Copulation follows. Often in a group of young birds, a male will try to copulate with another male but this does not suggest the birds are homosexual. I have found such males, when placed singularly in a breeding cage with a female, will bond with the female and raise babies and behave as a model parent. Female birds are capable of laying eggs at 6 months of age. It is, however, prudent to hold them back to at least 10 to 12 months old before breeding them to avoid complications such as egg binding and other health hazards due to the bird’s undeveloped biological systems.

A cage of dimensions 12" high x 12"deep x20" long serves as a good size breeding cage. Hang a parakeet nest box (6"wide x 8"high x 8"deep) in the front of the cage. Place a 2-inch layer of pine wood shavings inside the nest box. Once a ready-to-breed pair is accustomed to the nest box (usually one to two days), the male will enter it first and soon join by the female. They will throw out a portion of the wood shavings while they build a depression usually towards the back of the nest box. The birds will mate more frequently, usually half dozen times a day. After about two weeks, the female will be seen spending more time inside the nest box. A few days before laying, the abdominal region of the female will start to swell until it becomes a grotesque small balloon. Because the female spends a lot of time in the nest box, when she emerges to stretch her wings, she deposits a big glob of her waste normally at a corner of the cage or sometime even outside the cage. Placing newspapers around the cage at this time will prevent soiling your furniture or carpet if you are breeding your birds in the house. Incubation takes about 21 days. Six to seven eggs form a normal clutch. The chicks grow fast and the older ones will climb out of the nest box even before they are fully feathered, usually about three weeks after hatching. The entire brood will wean in about six weeks, by which time the hen will be ready to go back to nest again. Because parrotlets breed so prolifically, many breeders tend to continuously breed their birds the entire year. Such frequent breeding should be discouraged. I have observed pairs, after producing three broods, start forming such bad habits as plucking the chick’s feathers or killing the newly hatched chicks in subsequent broods. I suggest allowing a breeding pair to raise three broods as the maximum in a year.

Keep an eye on the father bird when the babies start emerging from the nest box. I have seen male parents attacked the babies immediate on seeing them outside the nest box, often with fatal results. On such occasions, an intervening hand is needed. Remove the male parent to a separate cage and let the mother bird finish the parental duties.

There are several color mutations that are readily available currently. The blue, yellow and fallow have been obtainable for quite a few years. The lutino and albino are more recent developments. Without dwelling extensively into genetics, there are a few interesting aspects in pairing different combinations of color mutations. Lutino x blue produce normal visual-green progenies, which, genetically, are split for blue and lutino, i.e. they carry the lutino and blue genes but in a single form so each is not expressed to endow the visual color in the bird’s feathers. These F1 birds are called double-split. Pairing such double-split birds produces babies of the three color mutations, lutino, blue and albino, in addition to the normal green (green only visually but genetically one bird could be different from its other siblings).

The albino is an interesting mutation. It contains the lutino and blue genes in a homozygous form i.e. both genes are present in pairs and therefore express their visual colors. However, somehow the blue and lutino colors "wash" each other out and a pure white bird with red eyes is produced. The white mutation (similar to albino except it has black eyes instead of red) is similarly produced but a yellow mutation bird is used instead of the lutino. The albino and white mutations are spectacular looking birds but their most desired value is their potential in developing new color mutations. This topic will be explored in an upcoming article to be published on this website.

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