Single Amazon laid an egg today! Advice please!?

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for some advice. I have an Orange-winged Amazon, she's only been with us for about 2 months and we rescued her when her first owner died and the family didn't want her.

They could hardly give us any information about her, they weren't sure how old she was, but she had laid an egg in the past - this is how they knew she was a female - and her personality had changed from taking food from their hands and mouths to not wanting them anywhere near her. We guess then that she was between 3 and 6 and was going through parrot puberty. What do other people think?

My husband has had birds in the past, but this is our first parrot. She generally wants nothing to do with us, but she will take food from our fingers. Initially she would squawk if we got too close to her particularly if we put our hands too close. She will now tolerate me more than my husband and she will put her foot on my finger, I think this is her stopped me from getting any closer rather than a first step of "stepping up", but she will still shout at my husband.

Over the past few days she has become very very destructive, she stopped taking food from our hands and she started to spend time at the bottom of her cage ripping up the newspaper. Today we have found an egg in the cage! We read that it's bad to encourage a female parrot who is bonded to a human to consider the human as their mate as they may become stimulated to lay an egg (for their mate) so don't touch their backs or tails etc... we don't touch her at all and she still has! I've read that it's bad as it can lead to malnutrition as the egg takes up so much energy. I think she's fallen for one of her toys in her cage, should we take the toy out of the cage?

Any advice would be very helpful.

Thank you

Laying eggs is completely normal and there is nothing wrong with it(unless it gets out of control), one egg will not do any harm to her unless she was already malnurished( a healthy parrot should be fine with having a couple of eggs).
Just leave the egg in there until she gets bored of it or it breaks, do not remove it unless that happens though otherwise she could lay more eggs to replace it.

Keep a close eye on her to see if she is still eating, if not you could move her food/water dishes to the bottom of the cage so she can reach them without leaving the egg.

Hi,

Thanks very much.

She wasn't malnourished, so I won't worry about that. We've taken the egg away as she was nowhere near it when we spotted it, so she must already have had enough of it. She's out of the cage chewing her way through an old psychology book at the moment!

Thank you for your help.

Parrots don't usually start incubating the eggs until the second egg so she might lay more.
If she does lay more please don't remove it as it will cause her to lay more until she has a full clutch.
Good luck.

I would think she's older than 3-6yrs old.If she's laid eggs in the past she's closer to 10 or older,IMO. Laying an egg is not all bad, at least she's happy enough to do it. She might calm down some when she's not so hormonal. Shredding the book is kind of nesty behavior, maybe give her something courser (wood) to chew. I don't think removing the toy she's "in love" with will help, she'll just find something else, but you could try.

Leave the egg for at least a week or so. When she is done she will not sit on it or pay any attention to it. When you take them out you may encourage her to lay more until her clutch is complete.

Hi Everyone,

Since my first post Charlie laid another egg the day after the first. We put the first egg back in and she stayed around them both for about 2 days. Either accidentally or deliberately she broke one of them and ate it. By the end of the day she had done the same to the other one. She didn't pay either of them much attention even when they were whole and didn't spend much time with them. Since then she has laid another and seems to have been incubating this one for a couple of days. Today she has started to leave it a bit, but she is being very protective of it. It looks like she has another one ready to come out too!

Is there anything we should or shouldn't be doing? She actually laid the second egg in a cabinet next to the cage where she had ripped up paper. We've moved this now and we're keeping her in her cage, she has a nest in the corner at the bottom. We took out the newspaper from the bottom of the cage, as someone suggested, as she was ripping this up for nesting material.

We had been letting her rip up old books before she laid as she seemed to enjoy this. Could this have triggered a breeding instinct in her or do you think she was doing this because she already felt that she needed to make a nest?

I'm getting a bit worried now because I can't see it stopping even though we've left her to it and allowed her to go through the whole laying, incubating and now apparently getting bored process - we haven't taken the most recent egg away. I think she might just keep on laying!

Any advice much appreciated!

Thank you

Yeah , let her lay a clutch, 3-4 eggs, maybe one every other day, let her sit them . In about 30 days she should give up on them. When she quits sitting pull the eggs, but be careful, they will "explode". You can also buy fake eggs to replace them with and for many birds this works well. I'd give her a high pro pellets for a couple of weeks and then go back to heavy fruits/veggies and a 4-5% fat pellet.