Chronic Egg Layer

[skeleo]

My cockatiel, Banana, is a chronic egg layer. She started laying in February. Her last egg was laid in May. She had a nest box and dummy eggs for her first two clutches, then I removed it when she lost interest. She laid two more clutches. I replaced them with dummy eggs, but didn’t add a nest box. 17 eggs total.

I gave her a mineral supplement (ABBA 2000) in her water twice a week, plus Calciboost once a week and once for every egg she laid. She also has a cuttlebone and mineral block.

I took her to the vet last month. He said Lupron was $1500 and may not work. He told me that hormone implants are the same price, but I heard on forums that they are cheaper. I’m wondering if he was mistaken / if you guys think they are a good option.


He suggested environmental changes: 8-10 hours of daylight, reducing protein (no seeds, foraging for 70% of food, feeding more vegetables), and not interacting with her at all. I did the first two, but I have been interacting with her normally because she lives alone and I’m the one who takes care of her. I never pet her back and I haven’t been preening her at all since the appointment.

The vet also suggested that I stop giving her supplements. He also said that I shouldn’t replace her eggs with dummy eggs anymore, just take them away as they’re laid.


She hasn’t laid any eggs since I started these changes, but she has been acting hormonal on and off (looking for places to nest, pushing her tail down, trying to preen me). I’m worried that she will start laying again.


Care info:
- She was on a natural solar schedule, but now I’m covering her cage at 4PM.
- Diet: Gloop with grains (kamut, pearl barley, farro, white/brown/wild/red rice mix, buckwheat, amaranth grain, small white beans, lentils) and vegetables (2-3 orange vegetables, dark leafy greens, 3 green vegetables, 1 herb, 1 fruit). Served in the morning with fresh vegetables and leafy greens. -- Before bed, she gets ABBA 1600 seeds and TOPs pellets.
- I've stopped giving her nuts, seeds in foraging toys, and sharing my food with her.
- Stopped giving her supplements. If she lays again, I'm going to give her a dose of calcium supplement for each egg because I'm terrified of her getting egg bound.
- She's outside of the cage all day, usually with me in the room with her cage and playstand. She spends a lot of the day foraging. I wrap her gloop in cupcake liners and place them around the room. When I can, she comes outside in a small cage to get sunlight for a few hours.
- She is flighted

[Pajarita]

OK. Please do not take this the wrong way but she was not being kept at a strict solar schedule because, if she had been and had been fed what you listed, she would not have been in breeding condition in the winter. Please bear with me with the explanation about solar schedule. The trick for a solar schedule to work is full exposure to dawn and dusk - and THIS is where most people fail. It is not enough to uncover their cage when there is already natural light in the room and cover it when it gets dark. Without the twilight, the endocrine system gets all confused and either stops producing or overproduces sexual hormones (there is study where they managed to get birds to breed with only 4 hours of light at a time) so it's not only the different number of hours of sunlight for each season, it's also the exposure to the twilight spectrum. They need two whole hours of twilight because this is what turns on or off their internal clock. Right now, I am getting up at 5 am and opening the blinds for them but I do not turn on their overhead light until 7:30 am - same thing in the evening, I turn off their overhead lights at 6 pm and close the blinds at 8:30 pm (actually, these past few days, it has been earlier than that because it's been very cloudy and raining so it's darker than it should be this time of the year) but, in July, I will be getting up at 4:30 am or earlier so I can expose the birds to dawn and feed them one hour after light appears in the sky. And yes, it is hard and yes, it is a bummer but it is the ONLY way. And, with tiels (and other opportunistic breeders) you need to be super strict because they are harder to control than other species (macaws are easy - they are late risers and low hormone).

Please do not take her eggs and don't replace them. Again, let me explain. Cockatiels are indeterminate layers - this means that they do not have a certain number of eggs to produce for each clutch (there are species that are determinate -like budgies, for example, which will always produce the same number of eggs in each clutch so, if the bird is 'pre-programmed' to produce 4 eggs and you take 2 away, the bird will not produce two more to end up with a 4 egg clutch) and, if you take them away, they will continue to lay. You also do not need to replace them with plastic ones because without a male, the eggs are not fertile. Now, one could say that, in that case, it would not matter whether you use real eggs or plastic ones and that plastic is better because they do not break and make a mess BUT, for some hens, it makes a difference. And, when they have been setting on plastic eggs for a number of days and they do not feel the babies inside the eggs (the babies move and even chirp inside the eggs), they abandon them. So, when you have a single hen and know for a fact that the eggs are clear, it's better not to use fake ones.

You were giving her way too much calcium and D3 - and that is dangerous for her liver. Please eliminate the calciboost immediately (the ABBA 2000 already has enough calcium and D3 for non-laying birds) and only use it for a single dose when she lays a new egg but only after she has laid two more at the beginning so as to use up the extra she must have now.

No seed or nut treats during the day and no Tops pellets, either (you are giving her even more D3 and calcium by feeding her this) and use ABBA 1900 instead of the 1600. It's meant for finches and has the lowest protein of all the mixes. And no nest box! First thing you need to do to discourage nesting is to eliminate all potential nest locations, putting a nest box in the cage is exactly the opposite of this.

As to Lupron... well, I have to tell you that I am completely and vehemently opposed to using it on birds. For one thing, Lupron was created for dogs which have a completely different reproduction cycle than birds and what it does is to make the body produce so many hormones that, the body, realizing something is very wrong, shuts down production completely. BUT the problem with this is that this is not only terribly unnatural and unhealthy (it messes up the endocrine system big time), it's also a short term solution because Lupron was not meant to be used continuously and long term (dogs don't need it as they go into condition for a couple of weeks). And, for another (and even if this was the ONLY reason, I would still not use Lupron), it is not necessary! Nature took care of this problem by making the birds photoperiodic so there is a perfectly good, healthy and natural way to control off-season breeding and chronic laying.

I had a flock of over 30 tiels when I had the rescue and I never had a single chronic or offseason layer (never had night frights either) so it's not as if it cannot be done in captivity because, if I was able to do it, anybody is... all they have to do is follow a super strict solar schedule, a strict diet and not give them nests.

[skeleo]

Thank you for your response!

So, I should switch her from the short days to a solar schedule? Before the vet, I had her on a more natural light schedule, but you’re right, I don’t think it was as ideal as it needs to be.

This is how her schedule was before the vet: I sleep and spend most of my time in the same room as her, so once it starts to get dark, I put a blanket over the front of the cage so she can’t see the light from my lamp when she goes to sleep. I keep it as dim and quiet as possible. I don’t think much light reaches that side of the room, especially with the cover. The uncovered part of the cage is facing the window where the sun rises. I don’t have curtains. I usually don’t wake up and feed her until later, sometimes 9AM. She ends up eating leftover seeds from the night before in the morning because she wakes up before me. Then, she gets her gloop. That’s probably not good. I turn off the light maybe an hour before dark, I will switch to turning it off two hours before. Same for in the morning. I will also wake up at sunrise to feed her.

So I should be getting up and feeding her an hour after there is light in the sky. What time should I be feeding her seeds before bed? And should I remove them when she’s done?

I haven’t given her any supplements since her vet appointment a month ago. How often should I be giving her the Abba 2000 supplement? I also thought that TOPs pellets didn’t have any added D3 or calcium?

[Pajarita]

The longer you 'make' the twilight, the easier it will be for her endocrine system to get in tune with the seasons so, yes, go for AT LEAST two whole hours. Also, use a blackout curtain to cover her cage and make sure it's either ALL covered because the light from the street lamps, other houses or even cars passing by affect their endocrine system - they have done studies with wild birds that live in the outskirts of cities and found that even the slight and far away glare of the city lights change their breeding seasons. I'll tell you a story. I lived in Pa in the middle of an old forest so there were absolutely no artificial lights for the birds in the birdroom at night. When I moved back to NJ, my tiels started getting night frights and I couldn't figure out why until I spent a night in the birdroom and noticed that the tiels flight cage was next to a window that got a sliver of light from a street lamp accross the street in the corner. The window was on the driveway and the house was the third from the corner so the light they were getting from the corner street lamp was almost unnoticeable unless you were looking for it - but the birds reacted to it. Once I put blackout curtains on that window and started closing them after dark, the problem disappeared. That's why now, I always close the blinds and make sure no light comes in through the windows. I bet you a nickel against a dollar that unbeknownst to you, there is light coming through her window during the night.

You can continue using the ABBA 2000 but wait about a couple of weeks to start again because she must have too much D3 and calcium in her system right now - the calcium will be used up by the body eventually but the D3 will need a lot of flying around for her liver to start cleaning out the fatty nodules where she must have been storing the extra.

I don't know what to tell you about your feeding her after 9 am... She won't die from it, that's for sure! But, as I explained before, I am a MANIAC when it comes to my birds care (ask my husband and he will give an earful about this ) so, as much as I hate getting up THAT early (I am an early riser, naturally, but 4:15 - 4:30 am is inhuman ), I do it because I know this is what's best for them. Maybe what you can do is leave the food ready from the night before, get up at dawn, uncover her, take out her leftover seed, feed her and go back to sleep for a few more hours.