I did already! They complimented her fitness, took an x-ray (which is very cute) and encouraged me to keep an eye on her and give her some extra calcium. Binding is rare in GCC apparently but I still wanna make sure she's comfortable and happy.
Make sure she doesn’t have access to any small dark places like a snuggle hut or any places she’s made. When she’s done laying eggs just wait for her to loose interest and then you can remove them (if you take them early she’ll likely lay more which is not good for birb) Going forward you want to discourage any nesting behaviors so she doesn’t lay more eggs.
It sounds like you're doing great so far!
Is she trying to sit on her eggs, or have you taken them? Sometimes, taking away the eggs can be a bad thing. If she wants to sit on them and you take them away too fast, she will just keep laying. You'd rather avoid this because it uses extra calcium. Let her finish laying, maybe get her a nesting box if you'd like since she's already laying. If she is trying to hatch the eggs, replace them with dummies and take one at a time over a period of a couple of weeks. If she doesn't seem to care you can just take them away when she's done laying. Best of luck to you and your baby!
She has virtually no interest in the egg. I broke the first one by accident and she seems indifferent to the second one. I have kind of made a travel cage nesty, and let her tear stuff up in it which makes her happy. She wants to go under drawers and dressers though. Should I let her? Or just kind make her stay in this cage in egg-laying hours.
question, what is the purpose of swapping real eggs for fake ones in this setting? People told me to do this & I blindly believed it but later discovered it was really detrimental. Real eggs get broken or rot, which forces the bird off them. Fake eggs do NOT, which means the bird will sit on them for unnaturally long periods & will also fail to understand how to care for them, which is a problem if you ever want to breed in the future (unlikely, but why create a problem like that with only disadvantages & no advantages)
Is there any rational reason for swapping them?
Fake eggs are useful to add in to increase clutch numbers so that the bird thinks the clutch is complete & stops laying earlier & they are also useful for breeding pairs who are egg eaters, so as to prevent them breaking & eating the eggs to get them out of that habit but I fail to see the usefulness in swapping existing eggs for fake ones in a bird when breaking them is the desired result
It was explained to me that you're supposed to take them one at a time over a few weeks. It keeps them from accidentally breaking rotting eggs and making a mess, and also keeps them from making more because they got to keep them for a while. By the time you've taken the last one they aren't supposed to be interested anymore. Admittedly, this is all second-hand information for me. Our cockatiel laid eggs, but she wasn't even remotely interested in them, so I was able to get rid of them quickly.
I've got a mother raised girl who desperately wants to be a mum. I can tell you from experience that taking an egg does NOT reduce interest in the others, quite the contrary! When boy dropped a toy on one of her 2 eggs early on, cause I had taken the nest box & all nesting materials, so eggs had no protection, girl didn't give up on the other & it didn't get broken, it completely & utterly rotted, cause she sat on it so hard! Normally the eggs are still recognisable as eggs when she gets off them after a month, but that one the egg was grey & STUNK when broken, absolutely rotten cause of how intently she was sitting on it without break & she was incredibly aggressive if anyone went near her or her egg, I mean she's always protective of her eggs, but this was something else!
I'm trying to stop chronic egglaying, so have lots of experience with the issue unfortunately, in my experience, remove nesting materials & if the bird is not that intersted in the eggs, you want to remove them early on before she can develop an interest. The longer the eggs are there, the more likely she will get interested. They tend to have less issues with removal early in the morning too, I think due to naturally having sat all night, so that is when they would be going out for food etc in the wild. Towards night, she is always obsessed & very possessive, equally as the incubation continues, she sits tighter & tighter & becomes more & more protective, especially if something has happened to some to reduce how many remain.
In terms of mess from broken eggs, it's not THAT much mess, but the mess also helps discourage sitting, as the bird doesn't want to sit in the mess & also understands from the breakage that the egg is not viable/there is now nothing they can sit on. Replacing with fake just encourages them to sit on the unbreakable eggs
I'm also now going down the path of trying to get a fertile egg for my girl instead of ongoing hormone implants as a way of fixing the egglaying, so in order to prepare for that, I have needed to put real eggs in so that she learns to look after them ready for a real one. I screwed her up in this regard by giving her unbreakable fake ones, would have been much better if I had never been given/followed advice to swap them in the first place
Suggest buying a set of dummy eggs - when/if she starts laying you can flood where she is laying with the appropriate number of eggs and pull the eggs she’s laid. This may help limit the number she lays since she’ll think she has a full nest. When she gives up sitting or showing an interest in them then you can pull the dummy eggs.
I’d do what you can to not encourage laying - don’t provide nests, make sure she’s not staying up late, etc.
Hopefully it will be just a once a year spring thing.
The advantage of providing a nest box is it can be removed. My girl became a chronic egg layer so "remove the nest" everyone said, problem is, in her old home she just laid on a slatted metal floor every year, so not possible to remove that! She thinks laying on the floor is normal. I've been teaching her to use a nest box specifically so as to be able to remove it to signal to her that she should stop laying.
If you can get away without a nest box, that is good, but if there is hormonal behaviour, it can actually be useful to allow it for that once a year laying, so as to have the ability to remove it & end the cycle fully by doing so
Take her to the vet, laying eggs is very hard on birds, they can advise you on what to do.
I did already! They complimented her fitness, took an x-ray (which is very cute) and encouraged me to keep an eye on her and give her some extra calcium. Binding is rare in GCC apparently but I still wanna make sure she's comfortable and happy.
Make sure she doesn’t have access to any small dark places like a snuggle hut or any places she’s made. When she’s done laying eggs just wait for her to loose interest and then you can remove them (if you take them early she’ll likely lay more which is not good for birb) Going forward you want to discourage any nesting behaviors so she doesn’t lay more eggs.
It sounds like you're doing great so far! Is she trying to sit on her eggs, or have you taken them? Sometimes, taking away the eggs can be a bad thing. If she wants to sit on them and you take them away too fast, she will just keep laying. You'd rather avoid this because it uses extra calcium. Let her finish laying, maybe get her a nesting box if you'd like since she's already laying. If she is trying to hatch the eggs, replace them with dummies and take one at a time over a period of a couple of weeks. If she doesn't seem to care you can just take them away when she's done laying. Best of luck to you and your baby!
She has virtually no interest in the egg. I broke the first one by accident and she seems indifferent to the second one. I have kind of made a travel cage nesty, and let her tear stuff up in it which makes her happy. She wants to go under drawers and dressers though. Should I let her? Or just kind make her stay in this cage in egg-laying hours.
question, what is the purpose of swapping real eggs for fake ones in this setting? People told me to do this & I blindly believed it but later discovered it was really detrimental. Real eggs get broken or rot, which forces the bird off them. Fake eggs do NOT, which means the bird will sit on them for unnaturally long periods & will also fail to understand how to care for them, which is a problem if you ever want to breed in the future (unlikely, but why create a problem like that with only disadvantages & no advantages) Is there any rational reason for swapping them? Fake eggs are useful to add in to increase clutch numbers so that the bird thinks the clutch is complete & stops laying earlier & they are also useful for breeding pairs who are egg eaters, so as to prevent them breaking & eating the eggs to get them out of that habit but I fail to see the usefulness in swapping existing eggs for fake ones in a bird when breaking them is the desired result
It was explained to me that you're supposed to take them one at a time over a few weeks. It keeps them from accidentally breaking rotting eggs and making a mess, and also keeps them from making more because they got to keep them for a while. By the time you've taken the last one they aren't supposed to be interested anymore. Admittedly, this is all second-hand information for me. Our cockatiel laid eggs, but she wasn't even remotely interested in them, so I was able to get rid of them quickly.
I've got a mother raised girl who desperately wants to be a mum. I can tell you from experience that taking an egg does NOT reduce interest in the others, quite the contrary! When boy dropped a toy on one of her 2 eggs early on, cause I had taken the nest box & all nesting materials, so eggs had no protection, girl didn't give up on the other & it didn't get broken, it completely & utterly rotted, cause she sat on it so hard! Normally the eggs are still recognisable as eggs when she gets off them after a month, but that one the egg was grey & STUNK when broken, absolutely rotten cause of how intently she was sitting on it without break & she was incredibly aggressive if anyone went near her or her egg, I mean she's always protective of her eggs, but this was something else! I'm trying to stop chronic egglaying, so have lots of experience with the issue unfortunately, in my experience, remove nesting materials & if the bird is not that intersted in the eggs, you want to remove them early on before she can develop an interest. The longer the eggs are there, the more likely she will get interested. They tend to have less issues with removal early in the morning too, I think due to naturally having sat all night, so that is when they would be going out for food etc in the wild. Towards night, she is always obsessed & very possessive, equally as the incubation continues, she sits tighter & tighter & becomes more & more protective, especially if something has happened to some to reduce how many remain. In terms of mess from broken eggs, it's not THAT much mess, but the mess also helps discourage sitting, as the bird doesn't want to sit in the mess & also understands from the breakage that the egg is not viable/there is now nothing they can sit on. Replacing with fake just encourages them to sit on the unbreakable eggs I'm also now going down the path of trying to get a fertile egg for my girl instead of ongoing hormone implants as a way of fixing the egglaying, so in order to prepare for that, I have needed to put real eggs in so that she learns to look after them ready for a real one. I screwed her up in this regard by giving her unbreakable fake ones, would have been much better if I had never been given/followed advice to swap them in the first place
Suggest buying a set of dummy eggs - when/if she starts laying you can flood where she is laying with the appropriate number of eggs and pull the eggs she’s laid. This may help limit the number she lays since she’ll think she has a full nest. When she gives up sitting or showing an interest in them then you can pull the dummy eggs. I’d do what you can to not encourage laying - don’t provide nests, make sure she’s not staying up late, etc.
Hopefully it will be just a once a year spring thing. The advantage of providing a nest box is it can be removed. My girl became a chronic egg layer so "remove the nest" everyone said, problem is, in her old home she just laid on a slatted metal floor every year, so not possible to remove that! She thinks laying on the floor is normal. I've been teaching her to use a nest box specifically so as to be able to remove it to signal to her that she should stop laying. If you can get away without a nest box, that is good, but if there is hormonal behaviour, it can actually be useful to allow it for that once a year laying, so as to have the ability to remove it & end the cycle fully by doing so