Expert: Riley - 3/30/2007

Question
Our female budgie (approx. 14months)laid 1 egg yesterday and 1 egg this morning. Male budgie would not enter the breeding box. Today we left lid open to encourage male to sit on eggs so female could have a food/water break. Tonight the female died??? Our daughter put a ladder from a perch into the box using some stickytape!, to encourage father to enter. We are unsure of what happened today, but female died tonight. 1st egg was found cold and not in box, found loose on bottom of cage. 2nd egg in box, but she was often not sitting on it! We want to learn so we don't make any mistakes again  

Answer
Hi, Nerida.  Thanks for posting!

I'm sorry to hear about your loss.

Male budgies are not supposed to help incubate eggs.  The male prepares the nesting box for the female, the female lays the eggs in the box once they are satisfied with the breeding box, and the male guards the outside of the breeding box while the female lays and incubates the eggs.  The male will feed the female while she cares for the eggs, and he might go in the box now and again, but the female is the one who mainly stays in the box with the eggs/babies.  The female goes out to defecate and drink water once or twice per day only.  A female budgie won't usually start incubating her eggs until the second egg is laid.  I would suspect the male likely threw the egg out of the nesting box (unless you have other birds besides these 2 birds in the same cage).  You do not need to help them with this process...they know what to do.  

I don't know why your female died...I don't have enough information from you on this part.  Perhaps she was eggbound or sick.  You need to learn much more about caring for and breeding budgies before you allow your birds to produce offspring.  Visit my website for a start:

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

There's also much information on the internet.

Riley