Momma budgie laid an egg today!

[MikeyTN]

Possibly! Just keep an eye on her to make sure there's no complications!

 

[IcyWolf]

Egg report 11/21 (lol)
We ended up with three eggs total. They are due to hatch in about a week now and since my excitement is growing, I wanted to candle them just to make sure I wasn't getting my hopes up just to have a big disappointment. I'm still slightly uncomfortable about the idea of removing them from the nest box, it would just be my luck that I would drop one or something :11: So, I just took my little mag light, opened up the box and held the light really close to the eggs(any closer and the glass would have been touching the eggs), 2 of them were pinkish/red and the other one was kind of a yellow color, so I'm thinking that only two of them are fertile. Kind of bummed about it, but I'm trying to be optimistic, at least 2 of them look good and healthy. Now, my only problem is decided who I am going to have to disappoint. I have a friend that possibly wanted one, she had a parrotlet years ago but her kids weren't very nice to it, so it now lives with her mom. Her kids are a bit older now and she thinks they would be mature enough to handle themselves around a bird, so she was thinking about taking one of these guys. I was also speaking with a woman that wanted two of them, and I was really wanting to keep one myself, since all the other budgies aren't socialized with people at all, I thought it would be nice to have a tame budgie. Mainly because whenever people come to visit they all flock to the bigger parrots and ignore the little guys. I even had one person ask me, "but they're pretty stupid, right?", referring to my little guys It would be nice to have a friendly little budgie to be able to show people that they have just as big a personality as any other bird. And, this will be my first bird clutch, inside my own home. I've bred plenty of birds in the various stores I worked at, and raised them like they were my own, but inevitably, they were not. If only two hatch, I think I may just keep one and give one to the person I am actually friends with. I feel bad but I have only traded 2 emails with the other woman and I definitely didn't make any promises. As soon as I pull the babies for handfeeding I am going to take the nest box from this pair and give it to the other guys. To my knowledge, they have never bred before so we shall see what happens.

 

[IcyWolf]

Oh, also, at what age do american budgies stop breeding? I finally got some background on these guys and they seem older than I thought. Apparently, all of them but the one(which is a baby from the pair on eggs now) came from a retirement home. The home allowed their residence to have small birds and, I guess, a lot of them had budgies. Unfortunately, as the owners passed away, these birds became homeless.
Lucky for them, there was a caring nurse that worked there that began to take in these budgies when their owners passed. But, at some point, she also decided that she could no longer keep them and gave them to a friend of mine.
He had them for, I think 1.5-2.5 years, and honestly, raised them the same way he did his other birds(chickens, ducks, guineas, etc). They constantly had access to their nest box and ate wild bird seed. With this information in hand, I can only assume that these birds are at least 5 years old, if not more. The one I've been calling quentin, is only about a year and a half, he is the son to the pair. I was just wondering if this could be why she only laid 3 eggs, 2 of which are fertile? Or is it more likely that it's just because she has been laying so much in the past 2 years? The way he talked, she laid eggs all of the time but there were rodents that were getting in the cage and killing the eggs

Oh, one more thing, is it spelled laid or layed? laid doesn't look right to me when referring to a bird laying an egg, but when I type "layed" it tells me it's incorrect. Sorry, I have a thing for grammar and this has been driving me batty!

 

[cockatielfan17]

i normally get about 4 or 5 most of them time and btw some dont start incubating the eg until about three are laid so if they dont incubate them now dont get worried some dont incubate until all the eggs are laid so dont let that worry u that was one of the things that woried me when i was breeding my budgies

 

[cockatielfan17]

o btw there is still a huge chance that they will lay another clutch and ur friends will get the budgies they want all of my birds do this they incubate the eggs they hatch and a week before they are able to wean the baby the start mating again for a second clutch so dont worry they can still get budgies make sure to feed them lots of healthy food if u want the second clutch to be healthy it doesnt matter how old they are if they are fertile they can lay any amount of eggs my newest pair layed only 2 eggs and my other new pair layed 7 so anything could happen
also u can say it either way layed or laid but people perfer layed

 

[IcyWolf]

In between the second and third egg being layed, I saw them mating again, is this normal? I'm kind of confused now. I plan on pulling the babies at 2 weeks for handfeeding, probably every 4 hours. I had planned on taking their nest box away for about 6 months to give them a break, should I take it away right when I take the babies or do you think there is a chance she will already be producing more eggs in that time. I would hate to take the box away and then have her lay on the bottom of the cage or something.

 

[cockatielfan17]

as i said above there mating because there trying to make a second clutch and it is normal all my budgies do this after they are done with there second clutch remove the nestbox and also u should only breed ur budgies 2 times a year if there very healthy they can make a third clutch but i wouldnt take the chance because there will be a huge chance the female will become egg bound

 

[cockatielfan17]

they wont mate until there cockatiels are about a week away from weaning so if u want u can breed them for a second clutch and if u dont want to u could remove the nest box and no when u saw mating thats not for there second clutch if it was she would have layed eggs by now

 

[MikeyTN]

Sometimes they will mate again to lay more eggs which that is harsh on the mother plus more risk of them abandoning the eggs before hatching. If that does happen that she lays more eggs, you should remove the babies at least a week old to handfeed if your around all the time. That would insure the survival of the new eggs. But I wouldn't allow them to do it again, sometimes you just can't prevent it...Best thing for you to do is remove the nest box and let her rest at least 6 months like I've said before so she can be well rested. Keep the breeding times below 3 times a year so that way the parents can re-cooperatate. Not just egg binding you have to worry about, exhaustion, calcium depletion, etc. Sometimes they will wait to incubate all the eggs together to insure their hatch time are close to one another, but some will incubate them right away where you find hatching dates every other day.