# Male pet pigeon trying to mate own chick



## TheMcGoos (Oct 21, 2010)

Hi there,

Well, since I posted my first post about 2 & 1/2 months ago, which a number of you very helpfully responded to, my two young pet rescue feral pidges (Piglet (male) now 7.5 months old, Betsy Bigoo (female) now 8.5 months old) have laid 2 clutches of eggs successfully. 

Being softies when it comes to animals we didn't have the heart to remove the first clutch of eggs and we have since had one successful hatchling who is now almost 6 weeks old (Pico Noel). 

Our adult male chased the hen off the nest as expected when our hatchling was about 2 weeks old and a week later she laid the second second clutch of eggs (which we swapped for plastic eggs!). They will probably get sick of the plastic eggs by mid next week as they will have sat them for 3 weeks by then. 

Anyway, over the past week the adult male has now started to confuse feeding our chick with feeding/kissing as part of the pigeon mating ritual, despite having a mate and eggs in the nest, and has started to regularly attempt to mount/mate our baby pidgey after feeding/grooming it much to our absolute horror!!! 

*****Please can anybody advise how to stamp this behaviour out if possible? I really don't want our chick to be subjected to this behaviour at such a young age and particularly from its father(!!!).***** 

Where we can, we have kept our adult male separate from the chick, although often this is not possible to do. I really don't want our chick growing up thinking that its father is its mate or vice versa. I would also be very sad if our male abandons our chicks mother as a result as they are a lovely pair. I was also under the impression that male pigeons were good parents to their chicks and fairly loyal to their mates, therefore I'm very surprised by this behaviour. I'd also expect that nature would have "knocked out" the desire to inbreeding from pigeons ... any advice would be well received please!

Many thanks,
Cat


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## Charis (Feb 11, 2007)

Cat...this is not uncommon behavior and at this point, the dad doesn't recognize the baby as his kid. Personally...*I would leave them alone and let them sort it out,* which they will do.


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## Libis (Oct 8, 2010)

Wait, which baby is this? From the first clutch right? 
Or is this a new one from the latest clutch?


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## PigeonX (Oct 17, 2010)

I've had already two cock birds that do that to there offspring..so it may be natural..? I saw that after one of my young cock birds was done being fed by his father they would do the ritual and the father would mate the young, but eventually the young cock bird became independent and drifted away from his parents and became more aggressive to other birds and his father. The father was still with his hen and they just had more offspring. I think it may be that only if the young baby bird does not have nest mate the father acts like its mate for a while because he will always feeds his child and in part of courtship, somehow feeding each other turns the birds on. In both my instances the young birds hatched out single with out a nest mate and so I think those birds are the ones to likely get mounted. They are also probably playing "house" at an age like that also and do it for practice...I say just leave the young bird with it's parents and they should all work out. Once the young bird matures it will drift away from it's parents.


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## TheMcGoos (Oct 21, 2010)

Morning all (well here in London, UK, anyway!). As ever, thanks to you all for responding. 

To answer your question Libis, the chick in question is from their first ever clutch of which only this chick hatched. The second clutch I removed immediately after laying and replaced with plastic eggs, which they have now sat for 2.5 weeks. 

So, gathering the collective wisdoms from all your posts, this seems a normal behaviour, particularly with single hatchlings. My biggest concern was the chick/parent getting confused regarding who was its mate and my hen losing her mate, but it seems this can all be worked out between them, particularly as the chick grows. Thanks for confirming all this! 

Cat


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