UPDATE: Parakeet eggs didn't make it. =(

[77horses]

what now? should we wait a day just in case, and if nothing happens, crack them to see if any developed?
thanks everyone for the support.

 

[lilly]

your little parakeet knew time was up for her eggs so she soped sitting. You are really luck because usually a lone pair of keets will not breed, they usually ned at least another pair to stimulate breeding. They are colony birds and in the wild a bunch of bird will nest in the same trees different hollows of course. Your little girl may have layed infertile eggs. I wish you lived closer to me I would give you another pair and bigger cages, I asohaave a nest box my pair sleep in. Good luck next time.

 

[redhen]

Quote:
can you candle them? if they are still alive i would incubate them..and then try to put the babies with mom...

 

[77horses]

Thanks.

redhen- we do have a homemade incubator, but it still needs some final touch-ups, such as the right watt light bulb. We haven't even tested it to see how will it steadies the temp. or humidity. And by the time we finally got it working right, it would be too late. If they were still alive then they may not be right now because of how long Carla has been off of them.

And if we did hatch them in the bator, Carla may not even accept them.

Right now we have just about given up....there's a VERY VERY slim chance that JUST maybe Carla might go back to them and they might hatch, but i am highly doubting it now....sigh. I've been telling my science teacher about the progress of the eggs and now I have to tell her that they didn't make it...

Oh well....maybe next time. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. I may be disappointed, but I still know that God has his ways of doing things and they are usually always the right things, even though it may not seem like it.

 

[77horses]

Also, yes we can candle them. We have been candling them last weekend. One or two didn't look too good, but the others looked like they had something in them.

 

[77horses]

Well, the eggs are definitely dead. We found that Carla had destroyed all but one,then attempted to eat that one, too. The ones she ate had been rotten. We cracked the left one and found a green, stinky sack that had rotten yolk and a half-formed chick.

smelled awful!

But oh well.

We are going to give Carla a month or so to rest and enjoy life with her parakeet friends.

 

[danielnv]

How do you propose to give her a rest?

Typically breeders remove the nestbox and that stops them laying, but since your girl layed on the floor... Are you going to separate the male and female?

I think you would be best off to move the cage to a different part of the house, move the toys around, etc. and leave them together. You can always toss any eggs if she starts laying again soon. Please get her some sun and/or cod liver oil--she needs to catch up on her vitamin D!

 

[77horses]

Quote:
We have a flock of 5 Parakeets in one cage; so Carla and her mate were separated in a smaller cage when she laid her eggs. Now she's back with the rest of the flock. When she's with them, she won't lay because the others will destroy the eggs and she's just not interested anymore in the big cage. Only when she's separated I guess.

Now she can fly around and have fun with her friends.

Also, if she started laying, we wouldn't be able to throw them away; this would cause her to try and replace them, meaning that she would lose more protein and that can cause damage and wear her out. If she did start laying again, then we would have to separate her and her mate and we would have to replace real eggs with fake eggs to fool her. If she continued, we would just let her set on them because they wouldn't be fertile without her mate with her. She would find out soon enough that they were infertile or not going to hatch and she would destroy them herself like she did with these ones. That way she wouldn't keep trying to replace them.
And now that she's able to be free of sitting on the bottom of the cage all day, we can bring her out of the cage and let her stretch her wings. Today we trimmed her toenails because they had grown long while she was sitting. She also had her flight wings trimmed. I am guessing that she liked having her big break, too.

Now, Stormy and her can fly around and have fun again with the rest of the flock.

 

[chubbydog811]

Taking the eggs out wont make her try to lay more - birds will only lay every 2 weeks or so (not like chickens who will lay most every day). When I had my doves and finches, I would take the eggs out, they would go back to normal, then 2 weeks later would start all over again.
For the doves - I had to females, both would lay 4 each, then set. I took all eggs away (they usually squished them since they both wanted to set on them) and again, 2 or so weeks later, they would lay again. They were very healthy and happy.

Anyway, point of all that....You will be fine taking the eggs away. It wont hurt her, and she wont kill herself trying to lay more...

 

[redhen]

aww! sorry about the eggs!