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Cockatiel sitting on infertile eggs .... what to do ...

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Cockatiel sitting on infertile eggs .... what to do ...

Postby wdflannery » Mon Jan 30, 2017 12:39 pm

My cockatiel, which I've had for about 10 months, has taken up residence under my desk and has been sitting on two eggs for about 5 days. There is no mate, so the eggs are not fertile.

What should I do? She seems to be eating ok, and just sits all day and night, coming out occasionally to sit on my shoulder.

?
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Re: Cockatiel sitting on infertile eggs .... what to do ...

Postby Wolf » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:01 pm

Relax and let her sit on the eggs for now. what you really need to do is to get a set of dummy cockatiel eggs for this type of behavior. If you remove the real eggs without replacing them with dummy eggs and she is not finished with them she will just lay more eggs. This could cause her to use the calcium from her bones to make the shell for the eggs, this is not a good thing for her to do and just to help prevent this from happening I would give her a cuttlebone to chew on.

I am not a breeder and do not breed any of my birds but I do hope that this will help you.
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Re: Cockatiel sitting on infertile eggs .... what to do ...

Postby Pajarita » Tue Jan 31, 2017 11:22 am

Wolf is correct. Let her sit on the eggs for as long as she wants but don't take them away the first day she spends a number of hours away from them because, sometimes, they go back after a 'vacation' :D

But I suggest you start keeping her at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk and not free-feed protein food because it seems to me that she is on her way to becoming a chronic layer (and that will kill her of a terribly painful and protracted death).
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Re: Cockatiel sitting on infertile eggs .... what to do ...

Postby liz » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:03 pm

Before I got the fake eggs I just left them. They dried out and became to light weight and were abandoned.

I have a flock of singles and someone, probably Flutter, got one of the girls. This is her 3 nest and I did buy fake eggs. This time Tweet's mother Jackie is helping her with the nest. If they are furtile I will let them hatch since Tweet did not care for the others that hatched. Jackie will.
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Re: Cockatiel sitting on infertile eggs .... what to do ...

Postby Pajarita » Wed Feb 01, 2017 10:27 am

Liz, PLEASE remove the eggs and replace them with the fake ones. Your birds did not care for the others that died, why are you risking another death? I have to tell you, Liz, I really do not understand this decision of yours. I would be heartbroken for weeks if I found a dead baby and would never forgive myself if I had allowed a second and third one to die of hunger and cold. You don't have real bonded pairs and whenever this happens, the babies don't make it because the mothers abandon them without a mate to help them out. In my limited personal experience and for what I have read, that's the way tiels are...
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Re: Cockatiel sitting on infertile eggs .... what to do ...

Postby alienlady » Wed Feb 08, 2017 12:41 pm

Liz I had cockatiels for years and not wishing to sound harsh but some birds just don't want to raise their young. Jackie won't help I'm sorry to say, Tweet needs to be with her mate to have a chance at raising the chicks. Bonded pairs are successful in raising their young but two females aren't.
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