Advice needed! (Egg issue)

[Kiryon]

Hello! I've had my cockatiels for almost 10 years now, a boy and a girl. My girl has very rarely laid an occasionnal, lone, egg over the years, but in the past 2 weeks, she's laid 3 (2 of them 3 days apart).

I know not to take them out of the cage or it could stimulate her to lay more (didnt have a choice with the last 2 as they broke. She lays from up on high perches usually 🫢), but I was wondering how I should go about handling this since she seems determined to go for a whole clutch? Should I give her a nest box to avoid broken egg incidents? Ceramic eggs?

I'm also wondering if the eggs could be fertilized, but I would be very surprised as my two have been more like platonic roommates than a bonded pair for years... my boy seems very interested in this egg though, walking around it and pushing it with his beak. My girl leaves it alone for stretched of time before going to walk around it too...

 

[LaManuka]

Hello! I've had my cockatiels for almost 10 years now, a boy and a girl. My girl has very rarely laid an occasionnal, lone, egg over the years, but in the past 2 weeks, she's laid 3 (2 of them 3 days apart).

I know not to take them out of the cage or it could stimulate her to lay more (didnt have a choice with the last 2 as they broke. She lays from up on high perches usually 🫢), but I was wondering how I should go about handling this since she seems determined to go for a whole clutch? Should I give her a nest box to avoid broken egg incidents? Ceramic eggs?

I'm also wondering if the eggs could be fertilized, but I would be very surprised as my two have been more like platonic roommates than a bonded pair for years... my boy seems very interested in this egg though, walking around it and pushing it with his beak. My girl leaves it alone for stretched of time before going to walk around it too...

Unless it's your intention to allow the potentially fertile eggs to hatch (and that will present a bunch of issues all in and of itself!) I would replace the broken eggs with fake ones. They're fairly readily available for cockatiel size as this is a pretty common issue with them, or can be ordered online through an online pet supplies retailer or a site like https://www.dummyeggs.com/.

The eggs may not be fertile though - in my experience with cockatiels some females can get broody and lay eggs just by virtue of a male being in close proximity, or with no male around at all. And their response can vary from season to season too, so hens that have never laid before can sometimes get very broody indeed. I also had an *extremely* broody lorikeet hen who would lay eggs at a moment's notice, and I used dummy eggs with her with great success - she couldn't break them and would sit on them for a few weeks until she realised nothing was hatching and would lose interest of her own accord. I also used fake eggs with a hen cockatiel some years back with similar good results, so personally I think they are the way to go if your hen is particularly insistent on sitting on them. Some hens show no interest until closer to a full clutch is laid, some simply don't recognise eggs for what they are, so the result for your hen may be yet to be determined.

I wish you the best of luck and hope this helps!

 

[Kiryon]

Unless it's your intention to allow the potentially fertile eggs to hatch (and that will present a bunch of issues all in and of itself!) I would replace the broken eggs with fake ones. They're fairly readily available for cockatiel size as this is a pretty common issue with them, or can be ordered online through an online pet supplies retailer or a site like https://www.dummyeggs.com/.

The eggs may not be fertile though - in my experience with cockatiels some females can get broody and lay eggs just by virtue of a male being in close proximity, or with no male around at all. And their response can vary from season to season too, so hens that have never laid before can sometimes get very broody indeed. I also had an *extremely* broody lorikeet hen who would lay eggs at a moment's notice, and I used dummy eggs with her with great success - she couldn't break them and would sit on them for a few weeks until she realised nothing was hatching and would lose interest of her own accord. I also used fake eggs with a hen cockatiel some years back with similar good results, so personally I think they are the way to go if your hen is particularly insistent on sitting on them. Some hens show no interest until closer to a full clutch is laid, some simply don't recognise eggs for what they are, so the result for your hen may be yet to be determined.

I wish you the best of luck and hope this helps!

Thank you! She doesn't seem uninterested in it, but she doesn't seem to be sitting on it either (she'll sometimes just awkwardly move around and over it)

I'll give the faoe eggs a shot, should I replace the real egg with one too and should I get a nest to put the fake eggs in, or will that only encourage more laying? I honestly doubt the eggs are fertile since over 10 years, they haven't really shown any particulare interest in each other besides my boy sometimes singing for her and her hissing at him for it (poor guy 😂)

 

[JimsBrother]

Unless it's your intention to allow the potentially fertile eggs to hatch (and that will present a bunch of issues all in and of itself!) I would replace the broken eggs with fake ones. They're fairly readily available for cockatiel size as this is a pretty common issue with them, or can be ordered online through an online pet supplies retailer or a site like https://www.dummyeggs.com/.

Awesome advice. I learned something new today. They're available from Amazon as well.

 

[LaManuka]

Thank you! She doesn't seem uninterested in it, but she doesn't seem to be sitting on it either (she'll sometimes just awkwardly move around and over it)

I'll give the faoe eggs a shot, should I replace the real egg with one too and should I get a nest to put the fake eggs in, or will that only encourage more laying? I honestly doubt the eggs are fertile since over 10 years, they haven't really shown any particulare interest in each other besides my boy sometimes singing for her and her hissing at him for it (poor guy 😂)

Personally I wouldn't provide a nest box, I think that would most likely just encourage more broody behaviour from both your birds. Really, egg laying is SUCH a hard-wired, instinctive thing that it can be very hard to break a cycle once it starts, and we often do things to encourage it without even realising we're doing them. My cockatiel and lorikeet hens would also lay eggs from a perch, so they'd break upon landing, or they'd just lay them on the couch or the bare floor of the cage - I know for a fact that both of them would've gone crazy for a nest box!

I would replace both of my hens' eggs with fake ones the minute they started laying. I seemed to be very lucky with both of them, in that they might still lay another one or two eggs even with the fake one there, but after that they both seemed very happy just to sit on one fake egg and didn't lay any more, not for that clutch anyway. In your case though, it's probably best to get 4 or 5 fakes, the average cockatiel clutch size, just in case your hen keeps laying. Lilly the lorikeet in particular was *extremely* broody, and I had to go to all sorts of lengths to stop her laying more once we got past her first breeding season. You will hopefully be lucky and this might be a one and only clutch for your hen, I hope that it is. If it starts to get chronic you may need to seek assistance from an avian vet to stop it, as it can be very hard on the hen's body to produce all those eggs and can sometimes be life-threatening as well. Not trying to scare you, but it's something we see here often enough, so it would be remiss of me not to mention it.

 

[texsize]

With Cockatiels for sure and many other birds as well they routinely wait till several more eggs are laid before starting incubation of them. This helps the eggs hatch more closely together than if they started sitting on them from day one.

Moving them around shows they have the instinct to nest.
It's an amazing experience to raise baby birds but a huge responsibility.