Aggressive linnie

caza66

Regular Member
Hi there, I have a flock of 13 linnies in an outside aviary plus 2 inside for health reasons. One of my outside birds, Ozzy (6 yrs) was found wet, not sure what happened so we brought him(?) in the house to dry out/warm up and check up. After a night inside we put him back outside in the aviary, but one of my others, pumpkin, aged 5 suddenly started chasing ozzy. So much so he ended up losing feathers of the nape of his neck so I brought him in again. I tried again on a couple of other occasions but the same happened. I decided to bring the culprit in the house instead. These 2 birds were bred by me and have been in the same aviary all the time.

ozzy was only out of the aviary less than 12 hours, could this have been the cause? I am not sure if ozzy getting wet was the result of a bullying but I hadn’t heard any bother/chasing.

any ideas how I can resolve this? Thanks for reading
 
Hi, sorry to hear this poor Ozzy. Is Pumpkin also a male?
Let's see what our members can advise.
@Roz @DizzyBlue any one please advice needed.
 
Its unusual for linnies to fight but they can try to chase off another bird when trying to impress a female or one bird is week . it may pay to have Ozzy checked by an avian vet,
 
Flock dynamics alter every time a new member is added to a flock.
Best of friends due to nobody else they have to be with can change when somebody more preferable arrives. You altered the dynamic so one of the newbies has perhaps been chosen as the new best friend and unfortunately that could mean the "ousted" bird hasn't or doesn't want the dynamics to change which can mean a fight to the death or targeted bullying :(
Your choices are find out who is the new chosen bird and if it's happy to live with the aggressive bird and the aggressive bird isn't aggressive towards it then separate those two off together and then add the bullied one to the mix of newbies providing it's not getting bullied or do it the other way around find a friend for the bullied one who he/she can live separated off with happily. But now that the dynamics have changed they are not likely to alter back you risk the bullied bird always being attacked which isn't fair.
I trust all the newbies were health checked before introduction as stress can bring out hidden / dormant disease.
 
Thanks for your replies. I did think that if he had something wrong with him that might be the reason for the attack. But he looks ok. Although I know that doesn’t confirm a healthy bird.
I don’t know the sex of either bird.
I haven’t introduced newbies, last time there were introductions was October 2020 and were quarantined.
this is not good news, I really wanted them to be all together, I just can’t understand why it’s suddenly happened.
 
Are they pairing up to breed? Were Ozzy and Pumpkin perhaps vying for a female? I know all of mine are in breeding mode... maybe because of the unusually warm weather?
 
I really couldn’t say whether they were after the same female (I do think of them as both male though). Ozzy seems to have paired up with my old female kiri, so it is always possible. I am keeping pumpkin in the house at the minute with Elle and Geegee. And plan to put them back in the aviary when the weather warms up in spring. Just hope the problem has resolved itself. Unless you think this is a bad idea?
 
Just thinking about this, kiri, my old female lost her partner a couple of months ago. So she could be seen as available. I’ll have to see what happens in spring.
 
Thought I would update. I got 4 new linnies and after quarantine I put them together in a large cage with with pumpkin, Elle and geegee. Pumpkin seemed to take a liking to one of the new birds, champs. So decided to put them all in the aviary.

Next day he was chasing poor ozzy again. He really has it in for him. So I’ve pulled ozzy and kiri into a cage. I might have to look at rehoming one of them. (Only to someone who has linnies already).

unless anybody can offer any other advice. 🤞
 
Wonder if @Catalina would know of any things that you could try but does sound rather territorial and it is breeding season at the moment so not something that is going to settle any time too soon I would think
 
What a shame. Linnies are such lovely characters and look so good in a group. Could the aggressor, Pumpkin, be temporarily housed in a small flight within the larger aviary for a few weeks, perhaps? Time in "the cooler", so to speak...
 
I did think about adding another outside aviary on the other side for a small number of them but the inside part would have to be split and too complicated. I’ll keep thinking.
 
I’ve come up with a plan. I’m going split the inside aviary and have it leading to a smaller outside aviary. It’ll only be for pumpkin and his girl, kiri. This way I can still put nest boxes up for the others and stop kiri breeding as she is 9 years old. The partition will be mesh so they will still have eye contact with everyone. Project starts tomorrow.
 
It’s started again. Once kiri passed pumpkin and ozzy seemed to be ok. I had even seen them sharing grapes from each other. Think they are both males. Pumpkin seemed to be taken with another older lady rosemary. Last night he started chasing ozzy again and this morning. I’ve taken him out again until I figure out what to do. I can’t believe his is so aggressive.

They are all still in the house. Also to throw a spanner in the works I am picking up a couple of new linnies next week.
 
I think my options are 1) hope the newbies change the dynamics as Roz said, 2) put ozzy plus one in with Steve’s new birds and leave pumpkin in the linnie flock as I know he is ok there, 3) get a new cage for keeping ozzy plus one in the house. Ozzy was semi hand reared but put back in the aviary and therefore doesn’t mind being close to hands and could have the potential to be handleable.

Decisions, decisions
 
Back
Top Bottom