Berry and egg-laying

Hi everyone,

On Thursday last week, Berry laid an egg. It was unexpected - she is a single female cockatiel, and I have tried to keep her environment free of anything that might trigger hormonal behaviour. She has no places to nest, before anyone asks - no nesting box, no happy hut, no dark corners, nothing. I think the longer summer days here or improved humidity may have contributed. The egg broke as she laid it from the highest perch in the cage. However, it had a nice, healthy shell. I immediately shortened the birds' daytime hours.

I expected that Berry would lay another egg in around 48 hours. However, it has been nearly 72 hours since the first egg. I have been weighing her periodically. She lost weight after the first egg (obviously), but she has not gained any weight since. Her poop is still a bit squishy (as it is when they are laying), but it seems to be getting more solid as the days have gone by. I'm not really sure what is going on - is it possible for female 'tiels to just lay one egg and then stop?

I am not too keen to feel her body for the egg as I know it might encourage more hormonal behaviour from her as she is very bonded to me. I also cannot see any visible signs of an egg - I have bred budgies before and usually you can see a swelling around their vent before the egg is laid.

She is also behaving totally normally, preening, playing, flying, etc.

Any thoughts? Should I be worried? Am I overthinking this?

Often (but not always) where there’s one egg another one or two may follow, despite your best efforts to keep Berry’s environment as free from laying stimulants as possible!

If she appears to be straining try to get her to the vet if the time of day/week allows. If she does appear to be unduly labouring with laying it you can warm some olive oil in your fingers and massage it into her cloaca... that’s what I had to do with Kang one weekend when the vet was closed and happily she passed the egg without further problem.

Hey Reeb, I just logged-on, I wasn't on yesterday as I was working at the Rescue...

Yes, it's possible for her to only have laid one egg...If she is acting normally, eating normally, and as LaManuka already mentioned, if she's not "straining" at all like she has to poop (that's what it looks like), then she may only lay just the one and done...which would make you very lucky! Also, as you know, you can usually visually see it when they have an egg in their abdomen, if you look at them from the side their abdomen does typically look quite "rounded", not always, but most of the time...

Just keep a close eye on her, and keep weighing her at the same time of day each day...As long as she's not losing weight on a daily basis then it's okay if her weight stays the same, as once the egg was laid she went back to her normal, everyday weight that she was before she made the egg...So I wouldn't expect her to actually gain any weight, but rather just maintain her weight...

Make sure that she's eating normally every day, that she's acting normally and isn't at all lethargic, sleeping more than usual, staying on the bottom of her cage, straining at all, etc. Having an egg that is "stuck", for lack of a better description, is usually quite painful for them, so they do typically become very lethargic and they look like they are very uncomfortable when they are egg-bound, plus they usually do constantly strain to pass it...But it sounds like she may have only made a single egg, which is a good thing...

It's also possible that she'll lay more eggs in the near-future, so don't be surprised if that happens in the next few weeks, but it sounds like you're doing all the right things to discourage it, and it also sounds like she's physically fine...Just keep a close eye on her for the next few weeks, hopefully it was a "one and done" egg-laying episode...

Not sure about budgies, but Sunny pulled the same stunt last august: out of the blue she squeezed out one egg (which she dropped from the sleeping perch) and that was it!

Update... so it’s been nearly a week, no more eggs or signs of laying, and her poops have returned to normal. Birds are weird. I wish I could understand them. Haha.