What would be the best times to "wake them up" and to put them to sleep?

The cuckoo noises were begging calls. They're rapid begging calls stimulate the birds to feed the baby more.

I don't have an air purifier in my house. My mom said that she had them and they didn't work. I doubt she got the true-HEPA air purifier.

True HEPA makes a difference, it can catch much smaller particles than other types. There are some filters that are best to avoid (ionizers and ozone generators). They're not good for birds and not great for humans either.

With my birds, I put them to bed at sundown because they resist if I try to do it earlier lol. But "sunrise" occurs when I want it to, not when the actual sun comes up. You might have to do things differently depending on what time you have to leave for school.

This May seem like a stupid question but here it goes...

How does air purifiers work? Do you need to change something once in a while? Do you have to clean the filter? How does it suck in all the dust?

That was the four stupidest questions I have ever asked in my life

For a regular humidifier, it sucks in the the air, removes the water from the air, and then all you have to do is dump out the water after a few hours. I dont know how a air purifier works though.......I can imagaine it must be similar.

Thank you!

A quote from TC, My response is at the end

From what I have read it seems you should remove Marshmallow and let Bio finish raising them, supplementing feedings if necessary. It is probably Marshmallow who is making the chicks bleed because she wants them to leave the nest.


After reading this I got to thinking and this is a great idea! If there is no Marshmallow then there are no more eggs, and also no plucking, and no rush to start a new clutch.

But there is one problem, They already barely feed the chicks together, if I remove Marsh, then Bio might just try to spend his day trying to get her back and completely ignore them.

Those weren't stupid questions. What's stupid is NOT asking a question when you need information about something.

With a true HEPA air purifier, there are two filters - a prefilter and the 'real' filter'. A fan sucks air through these filters and blows it back into the room, and the particles in the air get stuck in the filters. You do need to change the filters from time to time even under 'normal' circumstances, meaning no pets, no smoking, not an exceptional amount of dust in the air. If you have special circumstances (meaning all those things I just mentioned), you should vacuum the prefilter periodically to remove the gunk. This is what four cockatiels do to an 11" x 16" prefilter in two weeks. The coal-black part is the prefilter and the rest is tiel dust:

It's a tricky situation. Anything you do to change the situation might make them stop feeding the babies, and even if you don't change anything they might stop feeding because they haven't really gotten the hang of parenthood yet. Sometimes parent birds "run out of steam" before the babies have weaned.

So just do what seems best to you overall, with the understanding that you might have to finish raising these babies without help from the parents.

If you decide to take Marshmallow out, keep her away from Georgie. The last thing you need is for her to pair up with him because she doesn't have access to her preferred mate.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned from this. Don't let the birds breed during the school year, save it for summer vacation. That way you'll be able to pull and handfeed if you need to. Don't let them breed at a very young age, they're more likely to get it right when they're more mature. Put a partition in the aviary to keep the girls and boys apart if you have to.

Thank you.

I removed Marshmallow and Bio ignored all of his chicks. I let him get used to it for 30 mins but I realized that he needs Marshmallow so I put her back and all of a sudden they ran into their nest and started feeding their chicks!

I guess he realized how Marshmallow would leave and that he has to appreciate her more instead of abandoning their babies for more.

If I feel that they are going back in their old ways I will have to do that again.

They tried mating again! I stopped them again, I'm worried that they are going to mate behind my back.

When I took the babies out to hand feed, the parents seemed VERY interested in the empty nest box! Bio even went it! When I saw this, I immediately blocked it off. They were trying look in the nest box through the cage bars.

I put them to bed at 7:00pm and I'm waking them up at 7:00am is that good enough?

Yes, that will be a good night time schedule. Put a nice thick cover on the cage so it will seem dark enough to seem like night inside, even if it's actually light outside. You can test the effectiveness of the cover by draping it over your own head and looking toward a bright light.

I have to warn you that it might already be too late to stop them. I discovered just last year that I could prevent Miss "I wanna make babies" Shodu from double clutching if I started using longer nights when the oldest baby was two weeks old. I had been starting at three weeks and it NEVER worked (although it was good enough to stop her from going for a third clutch). But every pair is different so hopefully it will work for you. The only one you really need to stop is Bio. Marshmallow can't lay fertile eggs unless he does his part first lol.