Egg Laying Jenday

[Dena]

I hope someone here can offer some advice.


I have a 11 year old Jenday who has just started to lay eggs.

What should I do? Can I discourage this behaviour?
She is an only bird.
I have removed her box - she loved to sit in there and shred paper but has done that for at least 2 years.
She loves to sit on our shoulder and follow us around throughout the day if we are home.

We have never trimmed her wings so she flies around the house.

She is always happy to return to her cage if we are going out.
She has definitely chosen my husband as the person she likes to be with if we are both home.
I have removed the eggs at this stage - she is not looking for them - in fact she seems to be unaware that she laid them.

 

[LaManuka]

Hello Dena, and welcome to the Forums!

I am the mother of a mad keen little chronic egg-laying lorikeet who will seek out any and every nesting opportunity that presents itself! Therefore she has absolutely zero access to anything that may even remotely represent a nesting site, otherwise her hormones will turn on in the blink of an eye. Sometimes hens will lay one egg and show no further interest in it and never lay again. You definitely should not provide any type of nest box or nesting material as that may only serve to increase the behavioural/hormonal responses in your hen and even more eggs may result. It is also very important to not pet or stroke your hen anywhere on her body other than the head and neck, as anywhere else may be perceived sexually by your Jenday.

It might be worth your while investing in some plastic or ceramic dummy eggs to have on stand-by, just in case your hen does start to lay again. These are great because they allow her to sit on them for as long as she likes and work off all her maternal yearnings safely, until she realises nothing is hatching and loses interest all by herself. I also recommend dummy eggs because the hen can't accidentally break the shell over several weeks of determined sitting, which leaves you with a nasty smelly mess to have to clean up if the shell on a natural egg does rupture.

For now, observe her closely as there may very well be more eggs on the way. If she does lay more and you don't have any dummy eggs on hand, you can go down the track of boiling the eggs which makes them a lot more durable in the event of a few weeks worth of stubborn sitting by your hen. Hopefully you might get lucky and she may not lay any more but it's good to have an action plan in mind just in case she does!

I wish you and your hen the very best and hope you will keep us updated