Housing Quaker & Senegal Parrot Together

Last Updated on October 1, 2023 by Mitch Rezman

It’s hard enough to house a parrot in a cage let alone two especially when they come from different continents (Senegal’s are from Africa and Quakers are from South America). We just received a call from a woman who bought a bird cage from us less than two years ago. At the time she was about to acquire a Quaker and Senegal parrot – both just recently weened.

The birds have been getting along famously for the past year and a half but just recently the Quaker started to get a bit aggressive. From the conversation we think the Quaker is a male because he’s spending a lot of time building and nesting which is what male Quakers do although we can’t be sure.

Like many of us times are tight and although she very much would like to get a second birdcage it’s not in the budget. We recommended a few fixes that we think might help the situation.

1) Create privacy areas in the rear corners of the cage. This can be done with branches, toys or sleep huts

2) The birds are kept in the kitchen and getting 12 hours of daylight but she said that they were not getting a complete 12 hours of darkness for sleep and this can make a bird a bit cranky. So we suggested making sure the cage gets covered or moved to another room to provide 12 hours of darkness.

3) Lastly, the Quaker may be getting a bit hormonal and it is always difficult to have this discussion of the indelicate subject but sometimes boys must be boys and by offering your male bird something that he could love can be very useful in calming down the hormones. This can be a small stuffed animal or a wiffleball either of which may help the situation. The video below illustrates this point.