parrotlet breeding problems

Question
hi. i am more of a lovebird person but decided to branch out and
purchase a parrotlet. she is sweet but the breeder i bought her from
"didn't have time" for her and after about a year of trying to settle
her down, she started laying eggs. i thought, what the hell? i have
several breeding pair of lovebirds, why not get claire a man? i found
one at my local bird store. he's younger than claire but they got
along very well from the beginning. then they laid their first clutch.
now, i know the first clutch often does not go well but harry and
claire just had problems. they refused to go inside the nest box and
laid six eggs, all fertile. i was excited until i realized harry had
started plucking claire and himself like a little maniac. all my
breeders are in a special room without any traffic so i figured that
it was just stress. the first baby hatched and i stupidly assumed they
would feed it. they did not and actually killed it. i'm assuming it
was mostly harry's doing. the second hatched and i pulled it
immediately but, to my dismay, i failed. claire was trying to abandon
the other eggs but harry was vicious and very mean to her so i decided
for both of their own well beings, i would remove harry. claire
abandoned the eggs immediately and became as social as she ever was.

harry, however, became worse and worse about plucking. he is nearly
bald but some time had gone by and i thought maybe he was lonely and
he could go back to living with claire. of course they decided to do
it as soon as i put him back in. she has laid five eggs thus far but i
don't know what to do. should i remove harry before anything even
hatches? he's hyper aggressive, attacking me and claire both. he's
plucked himself silly but claire seems to have gotten a backbone and
isn't letting him boss her around as much. any advice on what to do
will be greatly appreciated. i've never had this problem before.
thanks.  

Answer
Hi, Beth.  Thanks for posting!

How old are your parrotlets?  Do you have any nesting material in the nesting box?  For some reason, they aren't liking the nesting box!  You shouldn't remove the male...he's part of the process and the female will need him.  However, you need to figure out what the plucking is all about.  Something just isn't right with something in the setup.  Are there any other birds in the same cage with the 2 parrotlets?  Some parrotlets don't do well when other birds are in the same room either...where is the parrotlet cage located in relation to the other birds?  What type of diet are they on?  Plucking can be diet-related, stress-related, and be caused by so many other different things.  Sometimes when parents don't incubate their eggs properly and/or kill babies or break open eggs, they fear for the safety of their potential babies.  Are there any other animals (cat/dog/other) around the birds?  Are the parrotlets housed near a window?

Tame birds that mate and lay eggs usually become very aggressive during this nesting period, so your bird's behaviors are normal.  

The more detailed information you can provide, the better I'm able to help.

Chrys