chicks and parents in Nesting box- whats next??

[Niteldy]

well I am not familiar with cockatiels so I will ask , heck BEG- for advice from everyone !
Eggs were hatched and the dead egg removed after a week. I have 2 swet yellow fuzzy balls in the nest. What now I ask?? My husband wants her second batch to be with another bird!! Can this be acomplished?? And I have read that you are supposed to remove the chicks from the nestbox at 3 weeks old or the parents will peck away all the fuzz??? And that at that time Momma bird will be trying to lay another clutch! Can someone who has experience please tell me what to tell my hubby- as they are his birds and he asks me all these things and I cant answer him, cuz I dont know!! Thank you in advance - He wants his girl to lay another clutch and then make her stop for a year.
Thank you all so very much!! At 67 you can still learn something new every day!!

 

[DonnaBudgie]

well I am not familiar with cockatiels so I will ask , heck BEG- for advice from everyone !
Eggs were hatched and the dead egg removed after a week. I have 2 swet yellow fuzzy balls in the nest. What now I ask?? My husband wants her second batch to be with another bird!! Can this be acomplished?? And I have read that you are supposed to remove the chicks from the nestbox at 3 weeks old or the parents will peck away all the fuzz??? And that at that time Momma bird will be trying to lay another clutch! Can someone who has experience please tell me what to tell my hubby- as they are his birds and he asks me all these things and I cant answer him, cuz I dont know!! Thank you in advance - He wants his girl to lay another clutch and then make her stop for a year.
Thank you all so very much!! At 67 you can still learn something new every day!!

Why doesn't he think the parents will raise their chicks to weaning or at least four weeks old? If all cockatiel parents just plucked their chicks they wouldn't be a very successful species, would they? Of course the parents are USUALLY best equipped to raise their own chicks until they've shown they can't or won't.
After this clutch is weaned you should wait at least six months before setting her up to breed again. Any faster is too hard on her energy and her calcium stores. After that, if he wants to breed her with a different male that probably won't be a problem. Even though parrots are generally considered to be monogamous, when it comes to prolific species like budgies and cockatiels breeders frequently re-pair their breeders to achieve different mutation results in the offspring.

 

[Niteldy]

Why doesn't he think the parents will raise their chicks to weaning or at least four weeks old? If all cockatiel parents just plucked their chicks they wouldn't be a very successful species, would they? Of course the parents are USUALLY best equipped to raise their own chicks until they've shown they can't or won't.
After this clutch is weaned you should wait at least six months before setting her up to breed again. Any faster is too hard on her energy and her calcium stores. After that, if he wants to breed her with a different male that probably won't be a problem. Even though parrots are generally considered to be monogamous, when it comes to prolific species like budgies and cockatiels breeders frequently re-pair their breeders to achieve different mutation results in the offspring.

He was told by Who knows who that the parents will pluck their babies at 3 weeks and the hen will lay another clutch. That he needs to remove the chicks and clean the nest box for her next ones!
I have no idea where he got the info from but I thought it sounded crazy thats why I brought it to the forum! Thanks so much - I told him he needs to join this group and get educated! Thanks!!

 

[DonnaBudgie]

He was told by Who knows who that the parents will pluck their babies at 3 weeks and the hen will lay another clutch. That he needs to remove the chicks and clean the nest box for her next ones!
I have no idea where he got the info from but I thought it sounded crazy thats why I brought it to the forum! Thanks so much - I told him he needs to join this group and get educated! Thanks!!

The worst thing he can do with his obviously loved female cockatiel is breed her again too quickly after she has one clutch of babies- even if she only raises two chicks. At best she will be exhausted, at worse he could lose her to egg binding which I promise you is a horrible way for a female bird to die and it always seems to occur when an avian vet isn't immediately available, like at midnight on a Sunday in the woods of Maine where I live. I lost a lovely young female budgie to egg binding because she proceeded to lay a second clutch too soon (one month) after she lost her first clutch and yup, it was midnight on a Sunday and she died within hours. It's excruciatingly painful and very often fatal, especially in a small parrot like a budgie or cockatiel. It CAN be treated but even with good vet care success is far from certain. Your husband's favorite girl (the bird, not you of course) has many reproductive years in which to have beautiful healthy clutches of chicks with whatever pretty male cockatiels he may wish to breed her with. You may already know a lot of the things I'm going to say so forgive me if I'm preaching to the choir but I feel strongly that people who breed their birds need to be well prepared for what they are getting into. It's so horrible to watch baby birds die unnecessarily.
Three weeks old is the age many chicks are taken from the parents for hand feeding so maybe that's where the "three week" age came up and got confused with parents rejecting their chicks at that age. As you will soon see, at three weeks old baby cockatiels' eyes are open and they have begun to get real feathers and are able to regulate their own body temperature without needing an incubator if taken from the parents. They are absolutely adorable! At this age they CAN be hand fed, either exclusively, or as supplemental to the parental feedings, but it's not without serious dangers. If you feed with a syringe it's easy to accidentally push too much formula into their mouths at once causing them to inhale (aspirate) the formula with fatal results. I hand fed my budgie Rocky from an egg and NEVER used a syringe because I so feared causing aspiration- I fed my baby with a little baby sized spoon and it worked great. The formula must be mixed for each feeding and the leftover discarded. The formula must be between 100 and 107 degrees- too cold and the baby could get sour crop and die. Too hot and you can actually burn a hole in the baby's crop- also potentially fatal. The feedings should never be rushed and never overfeed or they could vomit and aspirate the formula. Give the baby time to swallow his food! When his crop is full and rounded yet still soft to touch, stop feeding even if he begs for more. If you and your husband want to hand feed, three weeks is the minimum age recommended as long as the parents have been feeding them well up until then. Any earlier and you will need a thermostatically controlled incubator, not a box with light bulb or a heating pad, to keep the chicks warm without baking or burning them. I bought an excellent one on Amazon for about $65 so it's not a huge investment and just knowing you have it will relieve a lot of anxiety. If you breed birds at all I highly recommend you buy one even if you don't plan to use it because parents can and do sometimes reject or begin to harm their chicks and you will need to intervene quickly to save them. I had my incubator for over a year before I had the unplanned need to use it. I wish you much success in breeding your cockatiels. Raising my budgie Rocky was truly the most amazing, rewarding (non-human) experience of my life. I don't have any plans to breed any of my budgies again any time soon. I don't think I would be able to give any of the babies up and I don't need more birds! Fortunately, Rocky was an "only child"! Here's my favorite of her baby pictures at two weeks old. I'd love to see photos of your baby cockatiels so please post some.

 

[texsize]

My cockatiel parents did indeed start to pluck the babies.
I can't recall at what age they started doing this but it was with their second clutch of babies not the first.

the babies definitely had feathers growing in not fuzz and they would pluck the neck and head area. the offspring were old enough to not need an incubator.
What I had to do was separate the babies from the parents and give them "supervised visitation" for feeding time.

I was told or read that this is something that can happen because the parents want to rush the babies out of the nest to start breeding again ASAP. Don't know if that's true or not.
I did not let my breeding pair have any more offspring.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

My cockatiel parents did indeed start to pluck the babies.
I can't recall at what age they started doing this but it was with their second clutch of babies not the first.

the babies definitely had feathers growing in not fuzz and they would pluck the neck and head area. the offspring were old enough to not need an incubator.
What I had to do was separate the babies from the parents and give them "supervised visitation" for feeding time.

I was told or read that this is something that can happen because the parents want to rush the babies out of the nest to start breeding again ASAP. Don't know if that's true or not.
I did not let my breeding pair have any more offspring.

What a bummer for both the chicks and you! Is this common? Doesn't seem like it would be but I don't have any experience breeding cockatiels like you do. I have heard that budgies can pluck their chicks and that you would need to pull the chicks for hand raising but I didn't know it had anything to do with being in a rush to lay another clutch. I read that it was "overzealous grooming".

 

[texsize]

What a bummer for both the chicks and you! Is this common? Doesn't seem like it would be but I don't have any experience breeding cockatiels like you do. I have heard that budgies can pluck their chicks and that you would need to pull the chicks for hand raising but I didn't know it had anything to do with being in a rush to lay another clutch. I read that it was "overzealous grooming".

I don’t know if it’s common or not, I only had the two clutches.
I didn’t intend to have a second clutch. I imagine it was too soon after the first clutch but they started mating before I could turn around.
It’s my understanding that Cockatiels and Budgies are opportunistic breeders. When conditions are right (safe location, plenty of food & water) they will breed .

 

[DonnaBudgie]

I don’t know if it’s common or not, I only had the two clutches.
I didn’t intend to have a second clutch. I imagine it was too soon after the first clutch but they started mating before I could turn around.
It’s my understanding that Cockatiels and Budgies are opportunistic breeders. When conditions are right (safe location, plenty of food & water) they will breed .

I think so. From what I've read about their habits in the wild, they fly around Australia nomadically searching for areas of recent heavy rains where grasses are fresh and green and loaded with ripe seeds so they can settle in to breed until the resources literally dry up. Then off they go again to find a new "oasis" in their mostly desert landscape habitat. Of course that can be a bit of a problem in captivity where we (at least should) pamper our budgies and cockatiels with fresh nutritious foods every day yet try to stop them from breeding until they're exhausted. To our members from Australia, is this your understanding, too?

 

[Niteldy]

Thank you for all the information and advice! I am not the Cockatiel person in my house I am the parrot momma. I raise parrots from the egg. I can help you with the larger parrots tho! I do have some pics and will post later as its feeding time in the nursery - where I actually have a Dwarf Ringneck baby.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

Thank you for all the information and advice! I am not the Cockatiel person in my house I am the parrot momma. I raise parrots from the egg. I can help you with the larger parrots tho! I do have some pics and will post later as its feeding time in the nursery - where I actually have a Dwarf Ringneck baby.

I'd love to see pics of any babies you have. I am crazy about baby parrots from budgies on up. They are just so adorable!