Help! Cockatiels chronic egg laying syndrome

[lovebird_friends]

Dear experts,

My friend's beloved cockatiel Piku has been living with her for 8 months. She has many toys to play in her cage and does not have a mate. Approximately 28 days ago she laid an egg and kept laying 5 eggs each day. She carefully sat over them as my friend arranged a box for her. We were thinking after she loses interest in her 5 eggs we will remove them after like a month.

Around 24 days after laying her first egg, she seemed to have lost interest and she was coming out of the cage and playing with us and no longer seemed interested in the eggs. Just then a couple of days ago she laid another egg. After that, she laid 2 more eggs. I think she has started a new clutch. To prevent her from laying eggs like this we thought of bringing in a male cockatiel for her. However, she is very territorial and does not allow us to put hands in the cage where her eggs her. My question is, will immediately bringing in a male cockatiel stop her from laying continuous eggs. We want her to bond with the male and slowly maybe in the future lay a clutch of eggs and have babies.

I noticed she is doing mating behavior with one of her toys. Once we removed it, she is seen to be doing the same behavior with the perch, food bowl, etc. We are thinking of bringing a new friend to her is the only option.

Thanks in advance

 

[noodles123]

1. Never remove infertile eggs until interest is lost (fertile eggs can be quickly removed and returned, post-boiling and w/ a small mark on them if you don't want them to hatch).

2. Remove ALL shadowy spaces (now and forever) from her access-- these include huts, tents, piles of paper, clothing, pillows, blankets, boxes etc.

3. Never pet anywhere other than the head and neck.

4. Avoid warm/mushy food and shredding toys made of paper.

**getting a mate is literally only going to make this 10x worse and result in babies for which 99.9999% of people are ill-equipped to handle*** Plus, they will all need their own cages if they hatch, or you will have an inbred mess....or aggression...Unless you have the time to devote to both birds separately it is a terrible idea to get another.
On top of that, any new bird must be quarantined in a separate room and cage for a month minimum-- assuming you can get him tested etc at the end of that month...
Egg laying is dangerous for birds too...

 

[lovebird_friends]

Thank you for your advice, this is very useful.

Shall we change her cage? I heard changing cage or at least the location of the cage may help in this case.

The reason for getting the male was to keep her busy. Even if she has a clutch, we can manage. And she will be busy with her babies for at least 2 months which will give her ample time to get away from the habit of laying eggs.

 

[noodles123]

but babies are VERY tricky...some birds kill their young...sometimes people have to hand-feed.I hope you are prepared and have brooders (non teflon/no=ptre/non-pfoa/non-pfc lamps), formula etc, in the event that you step in...It's really risky and not something I would recommend for even an experienced bird-owner. This is the very tip of a very complicated ice-burg http://www.parrotforums.com/breeding-raising-parrots/74363-so-you-bought-unweaned-baby.html
You will also need separate cages for all of the babies as soon as they are weaned or they will mate at sexual maturity and continue the cycle---and some of them will fight....It's very tricky to breed birds unless you have experience and the setup (and even then, there is often a lot of heartache).
I'm not sure about changing the environment-- it's possible that that could work...
I would definitely make sure she has access to cuttlebone, as she could become egg-bound without proper calcium if she is laying.

She also kept laying because you arranged a box for her-- so get rid of that unless you want babies or eggs.

It is likely that she was being stimulated hormonally by some element within her environment (petting, dark spaces, or the wrong amount of sleep). 10-12 hours on a schedule is important for immune and hormone function.

 

[lovebird_friends]

Thank you very much

 

[noodles123]

I hope it helped!! I don't mean to say that it is IMPOSSIBLE to raise babies- but it's dang difficult if things go wrong. Good luck with everything!