Hi,
Yes, Zeus is too immature for breeding. You are correct – he is likely to ignore his incubating duties, or do something to the eggs to encourage the female to mate again. If you never plan to breed them, then this isn’t a problem. Eating the eggs is fine, especially if the female eats eggs. It replenishes nutrients she loses when forming the eggs. But they rarely stop, so they would never make good breeders in the future. Do these birds share a cage? Even if they do not, the problem with cockatiels is that females will have their hormones triggered and lay eggs just by hearing their mate or a male. Now this isn’t a big problem since Disco is old enough, and you can just throw the eggs away, but female cockatiels are notorious for becoming chronic egg layers. You can distract or separating them when you see them mating or getting ready to mate. But they do not have to mate for Disco to lay eggs. The best thing to do is make some changes to try to discourage egg laying. Again, one clutch isn’t a problem. But if she turns around and starts laying again a couple weeks or a month later, then this is very hard on her. And if she continues, then her health is declining with each egg she lays. Hormone treatments can be very effective with cockatiel, especially the implant. These treatments are safe, but very expensive. But as long as you have the male, she is likely to lay eggs. This brings us back to the changes, which hopefully will discourage or at least minimize egg laying. You should follow all of these suggestions – if you just pick and choose, it only takes one strong trigger to make a hen lay eggs.
Keep in mind that to lay eggs, she needs longer daylight, warmer weather, abundant food, and a quiet, private environment. The goal is to reverse these conditions.
Limit her light to 8-10 hours by covering the cage early each evening
Do not give her anything to use as a nest – no bird huts or tents, no box, bowl, etc. If she decides to sit in a food bowl, remove it and replace with smaller cups.
Do not give her anything to shred such as paper or cardboard.
Rearrange the toys in the cage frequently.
Move the cage to a different place in the room. Move the cage about once a week, or whenever she shows signs of nesting – settling on the cage floor for example. This disrupts her idea of having a stable place to lay eggs and raise chicks.
If you feed a lot of fresh foods, stop offering any for a couple of weeks, and then only offer them in small amounts about 2 or 3 times a week. You can resume normal feeding later when the birds aren’t being hormonal.
If she is let out of the cage, do not let her get in any dark cozy places and don’t give her free roam. When you let them roam around, this mimics searching for a nesting site.
When you handle her, limit any petting to only the head and neck – do not pet a bird on the body. Only a bonded mate is allowed to groom the body. We can’t be a mate, so touching the body is off limits.
If there is no metal floor grate, then do not use any bedding or paper in the cage tray – leave it bare and clean it daily.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
