Expert: Riley - 3/28/2007

Question
Hi. Ok well this is a pretty complicated story and question. Well I used to have
four parakeets, 2 males and 2 females, but one male budgie passed away after
plucking a blood feather. I had this budgie, along with his partner, for about
two years, and the day he passed away was the first time his partner laid an
egg. This didn't go well, since one of the rest had broken it. She continued to
lay eggs on the bottom of the cage, but they all kept on breaking somehow. I
suspect her to be sexually active with the other male parakeet, even though I
know he is active with the other female.So, now comes the questioning part: My
female parakeet just laid around 5 eggs starting from over a week ago and she is
sitting on them, even though they are all on the floor, which is covered with grit and seeds. I don't have a nesting
box. Can there be any complications due to her eggs hatching on the floor? Also,
my other female parakeet just laid an egg yesterday and another today, and my first parakeet with
5 eggs is sitting on the other parakeet's eggs too. So, I basically want any
information you can tell me. This is my first time being exposed to parakeet
breeding, and I really just want my parakeets to be happy. I would really,
really appreciate it if you could tell me anything. Thanks!


Answer
Hi, Arooba.  Thanks for posting!

There are so many things wrong with your situation!  You REALLY need to become better educated in caring for parrots before you do anything more.

1.  Your birds do not need to have grit.  Grit is for birds who eat their seed/grain whole (such as pigeons and doves), which parrots do not (your keets are parrots).  Grit can become impacted in a parrot's crop requiring surgery to fix.

2.  Colony/aviary breeding usually does not work.  You need to separate your individual pairs of pair-bonded birds into their separate cages if you want to breed them.  If/when you want them to breed, you should then install a nesting box on the cage.

3.  If you do not want these birds to breed, you need to keep them separated (at least until you become more knowledgeable).

4.  What you have happening with all these birds in the same cage is other birds destroying the eggs of other birds in the same cage!  This is why you need to separate the pairs into their individual cages.  If you don't, this will continue to happen.  

5.  Birds usually mate for life with the same bird (unless a bird's mate dies).  Your male is not breeding with other females at the same time he is paired with his normal mate.  Birds aren't like dogs/cats or other animals when it comes to their mates.

Now to answer your specific questions:

The complications are that the eggs on the cage bottom might not hatch first of all because of other birds being in the same cage destroying these eggs, second is that the eggs can become contaminated with germs, etc., from feces on the cage bottom, and if/when the eggs do hatch (if they are even fertile to begin with), the babies might be killed by other birds (just like the eggs are being destroyed) and/or the babies might fall through the cage bottom, the parents may not be able to keep them warm enough on the cage bottom, etc.

Arooba, there is so much information you need to have, you are going to have to do most research on your own because there isn't enough space on this website to tell you everything you need to learn.  Visit my website and another website I think is good for starting your educational process:

www.angelfire.com/falcon/birdinfo/index.html
www.birdchannel.com

Riley