Hi I have a decent size aviary with 6 budgies in it 3 males 3 females and 3 nesting boxes most have paired up and are mating but I am finding eggs on the floor why are they doing this or is there one of them going in and throwing the eggs out please help
Hi Gaynor,
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out well to breed birds this way in captivity, even with budgies. And if these are English Budgies, you should never try to breed them in a colony. But whether English or American budgies, no matter the size of the aviary, it’s never big enough. There are too many down sides and you will not end up with quality offspring. There are “for profit” breeders who do breed this way. But they are only breeding for volume. There is a lot of loss of chicks & adults as well as inbreeding which results in poor quality birds. But due to the sheer volume of birds they tend to have, the losses do not matter to them. If you want to breed responsibly and successfully, you need to only have one pair of birds per cage. What is probably going on right now is nest raiding – and this will not stop. It is bad for the hens, because it is causing them to lay too many eggs to make up for what is lost. Your hens will end up dying from laying too many eggs if this keeps up. Even if any chicks were hatched, those are likely to get killed by another hen. Female budgies are very territorial and do not tolerate other hens nearby. They will attack and kill other hens, or even males. Sometimes they will get so worked up at having other birds in the vicinity that they will kill any other bird, including their own mate or their own chicks. Another issue is you have no control over which males mate with which females, and you can end up with one male doing all the mating, which makes all of the chicks related.
You have two options. Remove the nest boxes and just enjoy the birds. A colony of non-breeding budgies is a lot of fun to observe. Give them a lot of toys & swings and enjoy them interacting and getting along, because without breeding in the picture, they do not exhibit the territorial behavior. But you can’t let them ever have anything they could use as a nest. If they try to nest in a food bowl, you have to replace it with smaller cups. If you still want to breed, then you need to separate the birds into three cages. And you might need visual barriers between each pair. You must remove the nest boxes and rest each pair after every clutch, whether the eggs hatch or not. The pairs should be rested for 6 months, and then the boxes can be returned. You need to limit them to two clutches per year, which is one more than they would naturally have in the wild. In captivity, they will breed year round because of the environment we provide. But this is too hard on the hen as she was not intended to lay eggs more than once a year. If you do end up with chicks, you need to remove them as soon as they are weaned and find homes for them. You can’t leave them with the parents and you can’t keep related males and females together or they will breed, and of course you should never allow related birds to breed.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
