15/02/2025
WHAT TRIGGERS HORMONES
I am hoping this takes all the confusion out of what causes hormonal behaviours in our birds. (Screaming, biting, plucking, self-mutilation, and aggression)
Yes, there are a lot of birds that are pets, and people don’t want their birds laying eggs for many reasons. If the breeders had any ethics about them, they would make sure they sold them males and not hens and not just say they’re males just to make the sale. At the end of the day, the female body is just that, a female body already equipped with all its lifetime of eggs from the day it hatched. Just the same as female mammals have and yes humans as well.
The big difference about the bird’s endocrine system is that they do not produce sexual hormones all the time or every predetermined number of days, weeks, or months (like mammals do), they only produce them if conditions for breeding are good.
'The triggers for breeding' there are three: light, food, and weather, these trigger the hormones that tell the go**ds to enlarge, ready for breeding. We know they start producing sexual hormones when dark hours have decreased to 12 hours and the daylight increasing from 12 hours, they achieve their peak at 13 to 14 and stop at around 15 hours when they go into moult. So from 12 hours of light on their go**ds become activated and start to grow along with the reproductive tract to prepare for breeding, and the male reach their peak about 2 to 3 weeks after the hens.
Also, a lot of commercial formulated diets (pellets) are based on SOY that has been scientifically proven to be a hormone disruptor. I am seriously concerned that so much soy in a parrot's diet may be at least one of the reasons that some companion parrots remain at a hormonal level far beyond normal. Especially in pelleted parrot diets.
Photoperiods Circadian Rhythm in Parrots
Photoperiodic means that their life 'periods' (as in seasons like the breeding season, moulting season, migrating season, resting season, etc) are governed by light (photos in Greek means light). It's the principle on which the avian circadian (about one day) and circannual (about one year) cycles and all biorhythms (life cycles) are based.
The entire bird body and its functions are 'managed' by different hormones secreted by different glands at different times. The 'master' gland (the one that sends the 'signal' to other glands which, in turn, might send a 'signal' to still other glands) is called the pituitary gland which is deep inside the brain (there is a close relationship with the hypothalamus,). The pituitary glands hormones (the 'signal') are 'turned on and off by light. The presence or absence of light sets their 'internal clock' (circadian and circannual cycles), so their body knows what it is supposed to do and when.
Birds have photoreceptors deep in their brains and their cranial bones are so very thin that light actually goes through them and reaches the photoreceptors in the brain, activating them (this is why just because a bird is asleep, it doesn't mean that his endocrine system is not 'activated' if there is light in the room, Is why a sleeping box is important as it blocks out all the light from the receptors and offers complete darkness and security for the bird, even red light which works for mammals but not for birds - lots of people say their parrots are fine because although they stay up at night, they take naps during the day but this doesn't do anything for the endocrine system - and also because some people have taken to using red lights with their birds thinking it prevents them from registering it but, although this works for mammals, it doesn't work with birds because red light traverses tissue faster than any other light so their brain photoreceptors are still registering it).
Now, the other big difference about bird’s endocrine system is that they do not produce sexual hormones all the time or every predetermined number of days, weeks or months (like mammals do), they only produce them if conditions for breeding are good. If conditions are propitious, the go**ds (sexual organs) (Male Go**ds (Te**es) and Female Go**ds (Ovaries)) become active and grow; if conditions are not good, the go**ds go dormant and shrink. These 'conditions' are what we call 'breeding triggers' and there are three: light, food, and weather.
Problem is that, in captivity, it's always good weather inside a house and food is always rich and plentiful BUT the good news is that ALL birds, even the ones that live smack on the equator where there is only a 20-minute difference of light hours between the seasons, are photoperiodic and would revert to using light as their primary trigger for their breeding cycle (there are studies on this).
Why is it so important to use photoperiodism with pet birds? Because:
a) if we make all the conditions propitious for breeding all year round (long days, rich and plentiful food and good weather), they would continue to produce sexual hormones, their go**ds (Male Go**ds (Te**es) and Female Go**ds (Ovaries)) would become hugely enlarged and the bird ends up not only severely sexually frustrated (imagine been aroused all day long, day after day, week after week, month after month with no relief in sight) which is the main cause of behavioural problems in pet birds (screaming, biting, plucking, self-mutilation, and aggression) but also in constant physical discomfort if not pain (there are cases of birds that have peed blood because their go**ds (Male Go**ds (Te**es) and Female Go**ds (Ovaries)) are so large that they have displaced other internal organs).
b) The endocrine system is not only for breeding. It controls everything else as well: appetite, mood, growth, moulting, immune system, sleep, energy level, etc)
