The easiest and surest way
The easiest way is to buy proven pair lovebirds from breeders. When we say “proven”, this pair had successfully raised their own chicks already. This is what I did initially, after making 10 breeding cages. I bought seven (7) proven eye ring pairs while the remaining three I used for my initial three proven non eye ring African lovebirds.
Obviously, I never had a problem in terms of pairing correctly because of this. But there are disadvantages, too like:
• Proven pairs are quite expensive
• They need several months, sometimes year before they could breed again when transferred to a new place or to a new breeding cage. They first need to adopt their new environment, to the style of their new handler, etc…
• You’re not exactly sure of its real condition or history. In the first place, a businessman won’t sell a good breeder, right?
Natural pairing
Natural pairing is when you put all your birds in one big cage, allowing them to select partners on their own. In my opinion, this is a good way to produce good breeders because of the certainty that your breeders like each very much.
Naturally paired lovebirds are very noticeable. They are always together and staying away from the rests of the birds inside the big cage. My suggestion is that when you see them naturally pairing, and are matured enough to become breeders, then you isolate them to their own breeding cage.
This type of procedure is being suggested if you want to produce lovebirds in quantity rather than in quality. In quality in terms of producing the right mutation that you want. It’s like you are pairing this color (of cock) to this color (of hen) to produce this color (of chicks), and that is called mutation.
My pairing box is made of wood that I put inside the big cage. Notice that this is divided and naturally pairing lovebirds tends to be together inside one of the boxes most of the time.
I got deceived by natural pairing one time
Though natural pairing seems to be a good idea of producing breeders, still this is not a 100% guarantee that they are really male and female.
It happened to me one time, after 1 or 2 months of transferring them to a breeding cage they started laying eggs but were never successful hatching it. This normally happens to young breeders (less than 10 months) and if it is their first clutch.
I just waited for the next mating season. After around 2 months they started laying eggs again. When I saw their first 2 eggs in their nesting box, I just let them do their thing and did not bother checking its status again because I don’t want them to feel disturbed.
It was only after 21 days, when I started checking on the eggs’ status. Unfortunately, 28 days had passed already, after seeing the first 2 eggs, and still not even a single egg is hatched. I gave them another 2 days, but still nothing. There must be something wrong.
I took their nesting box outside their breeding cage only to find out that there are a total of eleven (11) eggs! This isn’t normal, and the reason behind is that both of them are female and of course their eggs are naturally infertile.
This is one problem with natural pairing; lovebirds don’t always pair up with male and female, but sometimes pair up with same sex.
Bonded Pairing
Bonded pairing is used by expert breeders so that they can produce the type of mutation that they want. If you want to try this, you have to make sure that you are trying to pair a real male and a real female. Then observe. Make sure that they really like each other before they produce eggs otherwise expect a low percentage of fertile eggs.
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