A loney conure and the adopted egg

The backstory is that we have a adult male moustached parakeet and we bought a young sun conure to keep him company. Eventually we found a female moustached but by this time the male was bonded to the sun he had helped to raise. We decided maybe if we got another conure it would break the bond.

We found one on rescueme.org that was supposed to be a older male. Well...It was a female too. It was ok though, everyone seemed happy and rather than cage anyone we made them a HUGE gym.


I have incubators under the right side of the gym and hatch out quail and chickens there. Poppy, the rescueme conure would come down to see the new chicks and watch me. I reached up a couple weeks ago and gave her a nice preen. A week later I hear her grumbling and growling. She's flapping around in the newspaper under the little cage thing. When I pull back the paper I find she's laid a egg!

She never has adjusted well to the other 3 birds, she chose to always be on her own. I think she did not recognize she was a bird! Because of her loneliness I had the "bright" idea of giving her a cockatiel egg to incubate rather than her own clear ones (she ultimately laid 2 eggs). I have an over abundance of cockatiel eggs at the moment so it was fortunate timing.

I candled the egg before replacing her own egg with it. It was more than half way though it's incubation. Again, this was fortunate since if we had to listen to her talking to her eggs much longer chances are they would suddenly end up missing...

This morning I go to check the incubators and hatchers and I hear peeping. I could not find a chick anywhere! I thought maybe it was the button quail chicks in the brooder nearby and went to walk away. But the peeping sounds like it's in the incubators! Then it was a doh! moment when I thought to check Poppy's tiel egg. It had hatched and she was busy trying to move it under her so I could not see it.

We tried to get her to use a nest box, mostly for our own sanity as her noise was just nearly too much to deal with. She insisted that her eggs be under the newspaper at the bottom of the gym. Now that the chick has hatched I took a old easter egg bucket and bent it enough to wedge it under the mesh. I added some wood chips to help the little chick stay warm and left them to it. Shes with "her" chick now and doing whatever a new mom does.

Hopefully this works out well and Poppy will then have a buddy for the rest of her life and no longer be the lonely bird.
I'll keep you updated.

yellowherb said:

The backstory is that we have a adult male moustached parakeet and we bought a young sun conure to keep him company. Eventually we found a female moustached but by this time the male was bonded to the sun he had helped to raise. We decided maybe if we got another conure it would break the bond. We found one on rescueme.org that was supposed to be a older male. Well...It was a female too. It was ok though, everyone seemed happy and rather than cage anyone we made them a HUGE gym. I have incubators under the right side of the gym and hatch out quail and chickens there. Poppy, the rescueme conure would come down to see the new chicks and watch me. I reached up a couple weeks ago and gave her a nice preen. A week later I hear her grumbling and growling. She's flapping around in the newspaper under the little cage thing. When I pull back the paper I find she's laid a egg! She never has adjusted well to the other 3 birds, she chose to always be on her own. I think she did not recognize she was a bird! Because of her loneliness I had the "bright" idea of giving her a cockatiel egg to incubate rather than her own clear ones (she ultimately laid 2 eggs). I have an over abundance of cockatiel eggs at the moment so it was fortunate timing. I candled the egg before replacing her own egg with it. It was more than half way though it's incubation. Again, this was fortunate since if we had to listen to her talking to her eggs much longer chances are they would suddenly end up missing... This morning I go to check the incubators and hatchers and I hear peeping. I could not find a chick anywhere! I thought maybe it was the button quail chicks in the brooder nearby and went to walk away. But the peeping sounds like it's in the incubators! Then it was a doh! moment when I thought to check Poppy's tiel egg. It had hatched and she was busy trying to move it under her so I could not see it. We tried to get her to use a nest box, mostly for our own sanity as her noise was just nearly too much to deal with. She insisted that her eggs be under the newspaper at the bottom of the gym. Now that the chick has hatched I took a old easter egg bucket and bent it enough to wedge it under the mesh. I added some wood chips to help the little chick stay warm and left them to it. Shes with "her" chick now and doing whatever a new mom does. Hopefully this works out well and Poppy will then have a buddy for the rest of her life and no longer be the lonely bird. I'll keep you updated.

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I have had cockatiels hatch and raise sun conure chicks until they were ready for hand feeding. Most like;y Poppy will feed and raise the tiel.

She's really accepted it's hers, it did hatch under her so I guess that makes it hers. I'm not sure about the size difference though. She might struggle with it's teeny size since her beak is as big as the entire chick, hoping she can feed it alright.

yellowherb said:

She's really accepted it's hers, it did hatch under her so I guess that makes it hers.  I'm not sure about the size difference though.  She might struggle with it's teeny size since her beak is as big as the entire chick, hoping she can feed it alright.

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Check the chick's crop. The chicks are fed soon after hatching; as soon as they beg to be fed. When it first hatches it is easy to see the food in the crop. You're right-tiels are smaller, but not that much smaller. It's the shape of the bill that might make a difference.

I watched through the day and she tried to feed the baby but it just wasn't happening. So I took the baby outside and traded it for a larger one. Poppy hasn't noticed the difference. The baby is fine, it's with surrogate parents who have small ones already from the chicks own clutch. That pair raises all my chicks born to a pair of plucking parents with no problems.

What did happen though was the second Sun, Chili tried to take the baby. I caught her with it while Poppy was at the food dish. So Poppy and new, older, bigger baby, are now in the back room in a big cage. I'm going to keep a eye out to make sure She's adjusting to the cage and baby in a cardboard box. It's been a while since Poppy was locked in a cage and she's really not too happy about it. Chili isn't happy either, although her and Poppy are not friendly, Poppy is part of her flock and she's yelled for Poppy after the move.