Agapornis rosiecollis is the most famous Species of Agapornis family which contain nine species, it gains its popularity from its strength and its ease of breeding in normal conditions. It is always recommended for beginners to start with roseicollis-though that doesn’t mean that they don't need proper care. They still require a lot of attention in addition to other things, which we will try to cover in this article, and I’ll try to give my personal experience with this topic, so let’s start!

* This article is not supposed to be a statistic or read only article, I like to update it based on information from breeders’ experiences all around the world so feel free to send me your suggestions.

Choosing the right pair:

Agapornis rosiecollis are not visually sexed birds, which means you don't have a sign in the bird to tell you whether it’s a male or female. In order to decide the sex, you can use DNA testing or surgery, otherwise experienced breeders have some other methods to determine the sex of the bird-the most famous one being the pelvic bone test, which could help a lot in detecting the bird sex, but it could be hard in the young birds. Using this method, you try to detect the sex by examining the pelvic bones. If they are close, so it means it’s a male. If they are wide and flexible, it’s a female However, a young female may have a closed bones, while some old males may have wider pelvic bones so the test cannot guarantee sex determination but we still can rely on this way when we don't have access to DNS or surgery. There are other ways to determine the sex which breeders talk, one is by looking at the tail feathers: if they are all in the same length, then the bird is a female, if they contain a longer feather in the center, then it’s a male. Another way is by measuring the head size: if it’s big, it’s a male-if it’s smaller, then it’s a female. If the bird stands on the branch with a high stance, it’s a male and if it looks like it’s laying on the branch or closer to it then it’s a female. All of these ways are not always suitable or at least not for me! And personally, I rely on a lot of factors such as monitoring birds over a long period of time and watching their behavior-it can tell you a lot. Using sex-linked mutations to get the sex of the birds is also a nice idea and it can give you a 100% information regarding the sex of the bird. So choosing the right way we’lll start by trying to get a male and female based on earlier information I assume you got a couple. Choosing the right couple doesn’t mean you just have to choose a male and a female…there are a lot of factors which you have to keep in mind when you do. First of all, I recommend a couple that hasn’t produced before. A young couple is best; I don’t like the idea of getting an old couple from a breeder because in most cases, you will end up with many problems. For example, in many cases, the breeders don’t give out their good couples. Also, when you start with a pair of young birds, you have a better chance of letting them get used to your diet system and your place in general. In addition to that, a known blood line will be a good idea because some blood lines tend to have problems. For instance, I have some females in my birds that pluck their fledglings’ feathers when they reach approximately three weeks. These females are related to each other and all of them come from the same blood line. Even if they look very attractive and have some nice mutations, they are still bad to deal with, which bothers me and any other reputable breeder so much. Inheritance doesn’t end at colors and mutations-it can also be applied to bird behavior and habit, along with the shape and body structure. When you get a couple for breeding, I recommend that you focus on the bird’s health and body structure more than its color mutation. I think we have to discuss the bird’s body structure a little bit. A lovebird’s length in nature is about 15 cm so we have to keep that in mind. The head must be rounded well and should not be so small. The beak is also an important factor-it should be clear and curved right. The beak in roseicollis seems to have fewer problems than in the eye ringed species (where there may be noticeable scars in or up normal grows). Still, an even more important factor to examine in roseicollis besides the beak length is the deference between the up and down beak. The feet also should be clear and not have any unusual skin. The feathers must be complete and bright. The eyes are also one of the most important factors to examine when you are getting a breeding couple. The eyes can tell a lot, and it’s the same in roseicollis. For example, when you notice a bird with small dimmed eyes, that means this bird didn’t eat for awhile and it’s always a clear sign in just weaned birds, which usually indicates they cannot eat on their own yet. So, it’s important to always examine the breeding couple if you plan to get a good bird, then it must have big bright round eyes. It will be a little different a little in ino or fallow mutations. I recommend to always get birds that have just gotten their mask complete, (their age will be somewhere between four and five months), that allows you to make sure of the bird’s age, because roseicollis is one of the birds which is so hard to tell its’ age. For example, an eight month old bird will look exactly like a four or five year old bird, so when you get a bird with a mask that is not complete yet you are sure it’s still a young bird, then it might fall into the exception. The exception is for pied mutations that may have an incomplete mask even if it’s an adult bird. Many breeders recommend letting young birds choose their mates…in this case they pretend it will be a more successful breeding. Actually, it could be, but with that you cannot control mutations, and also when you force birds to mate manually by just putting a male and female together in a cage, mostly it will work. It could just take some time but after they mate, personally I didn't notice any difference between the number of the chicks from the manually mated couples and the couples which choose each other, and that’s why I prefer manually mating birds. It also helps to avoid brother and sister mating. After choosing the right pair or pairs I think our second target is

choosing between breeding couples in separate cages or breeding all couples in one aviary:

Breeding in aviary:

I have to say breeding in aviary has its strong points, like watching how birds act in groups and how they hold the nesting material for the long distances to their nests, and how they start to choose their partners and so on. Also, it save sometime for you because you offer the food and the water just once for the batch of the birds. But that’s the good points, how about the bad ones?! Well, first of all uncontrolled mating will occur, you will not be able to choose who mate with whom (you can still can mate some pairs in separate cages and then put them in the same time in the aviary together but it’s no guarantee that they will stay together-they could rep airing) and also you cannot easily identify the fledglings in case you didn’t ring them early. Infection could attack the aviary, and finally and the worst one for me is injury. You could find a lot of attacked birds, which occurs commonly with fledglings. If a fledgling drops from the nest and he cannot get back to his nest fast enough, it can become a victim to all of other couples who will start to attack him instantly. I saw this thing by myself several times, and thanks to ALLAH I was always there to save them but that means you have to worry about that constantly. Anyway, some people think it’s the natural selection so the weak birds should die and the strong ones only should live, but I don’t think it will make any breeder happy when he loses some young birds just because they are a little weak. Now let’s discuss breeding in separate cages, and I am going to focus on it a little more. Breeding in separate cages: The size of the cage will vary from book to book and from breeder to breeder but bigger will always be better for the birds. Roseicollis is a hyper active bird; it likes to play most of the day, unlike bigger parrots that can spend most of the day in their place just playing with their beak. Roseicollis likes toys and if it doesnn’t find it you will find him playing with the food dishes or nesting materials. The minimum size of the cage that I think could be used is 40 x30 x 30 cm, smaller will make birds uncomfortable and any larger are so welcome for sure. Personally, I prefer the square cages because they save space when you put them together, unlike the artistic cages that take a lot of space. Well choosing it will depend on how many cages you plan to buy. I don’t recommend choosing one unit containing several cages because the bottom cages don’t always receive enough light and you cannot see the birds well. Therefore, I prefer getting separate cages and use some neon tubes between them (that’s in case of inside breeding). Even if wooden cages look nice and secure, I don’t recommend them because they could help in holding infections more than metal ones and they can be harder to clean since insects and microbes can hide between wooden pieces and inside wood pores. So metal cages are always a better choice. Roseicollis is a smart and strong bird, so you have to always take care abou their cage doors. I have a nice idea from Dirk which is attaching a heavy metal piece in the door of the cage so while I can still open it, the birds can't. I also recommend closing unused doors totally. Even if toys are welcome at Roseicollis cages you have to be careful about the bird safety-some toys can end up as a weapon killing the bird. Something like cloth toys which could lead to hang the bird, or a weak and unstable branches should be avoided in adults cages because it could prevent birds from copulation.

The nest:

Roseicollis like to choose a nest to rest in and escape to, even they’re not in their breeding state or even if they are a group of young birds, unlike other birds such as budgies or cockatiel that just go to nest for breeding. Anyway when we choose a nest for roseicollis we have to be worry about breeding as well because sooner or later the bird will reach this state with ALLAH well, and also as we care about the cage safety we have to care about nest safety so that they do not contain any metal pieces that could hurt the. It should be clean, personally I recommend you all building your nests for yourself or getting it built for you. Here in Egypt, I always need to build mine because I cannot find ones at the market that follows the right rules which is: the size nest should be 20x 22 x 17 with a hole sized.

You need to have a door to check the birds and the eggs from. This door should be on top of the cage-on the side. The nests which are available here at the market always have the door on the side which can cause dangerous problems like dropping eggs when you open to examine them, getting bird so close to the door that it escapes when you just open the nest door, and also getting young fledgling dropped when you open which could cause a bad injury for young birds. All of that makes me insist on getting the nest door at the top. While you still can use a bigger nest than this dimension, DON'T try to use any smaller for any reason. Roseicollis need enough room at the nest to be able to incubate their eggs and feed their fledglings especially because the father always help in feeding fledglings and a lot of times it rests inside the nest with the female. There is the nesting material, which take some of the nest room so all of this prompts me to warn you against using any smaller nests than what I recommended earlier. Also you have to make sure of the wood type, roseicollis can easily start eating the wood and you end up with a broken nest or an escaped bird.

Nesting material:

Personally I’m using palm leaves for awhile and I think it’s the best, but you have to make sure it’s clean and a green one. if you are going to keep them for awhile before you give to the birds, so you have to keep it in a dry place. It easily rots if you keep it in a closed place which could harm your birds or their eggs later or turn their nest to a dirty place filled with fungus and insects, so make sure they are clean. I noticed that the well dried palm leaves are so good for them-they like it and they can sew their nest with it well, the female is the main active member of the roseicollis family in building the nest. I’m going to talk about their behavior in behavior section (With ALLAH well) but for now I have to say unlike eye ringed, roseicollis put the nesting material between their wings and rump and hold them like this to the nest, while the eye ringed hold them in their beaks till they reach the nest.

Breeding inside VS breeding outside:

Actually I tried both iinside and outside breeding. I find that you get healthier and happier birds when you breed outside, but outside carry some risks for any breeder like wild animals which could attack your birds or rats, eagles, and diseases which could infect the birds because of interaction between it and wild birds. Finally, the risk of escaping if you didn’t protect your cages or aviary is increased. Breeding inside saves you from all of the last but I noticed a lot of problems with breeding inside: birds spend more time in their nests inside, birds look a lot more active and happy when you breed them outside, number of hatched eggs are outside, outside birds look stronger in general and even for your eyes you can see the birds’ color better outside. In addition, the birds need vitamin D which they produce with sunlight. You can get a work around for that when you breed inside which is by using an ultra violet neon tubes that are available at pet shops. Finally for me I find a good protected place outside is better for breeding WARNING: My breeding experience in Egypt which have good weather even in winter but breeding outside in winter in Europe or other cold countries isn’t a good idea.

Moving nests Vs keeping nests:

Even if a lot of breeders recommend moving nests in non breeding season, I don’t find it a good idea and I got a lot of birds which keeps breeding within summer and winter without getting a period without the nest, simply when they start molting they could delay in their next nest till they finish molting, so I don’t personally find a point for moving the nests from the birds, especially because roseicollis like to use use their nests as places for protection and sleep. I noticed that moving the nest could make the birds wait a doubled time before they start laying again more than keeping it. There is a simple question end this topic, who move the nests for the birds in their nature ?!

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