My cockteil gave 4 eggs, because her box was placed up high, one of the baby fell and eventually died. Because I didn’t wanted other babies to die as well, I removed her box and kept down, my cockteil moved and with eggs I kept box down but now she isn’t sitting back on those eggs. What to do????
Hi Sana,
It sounds like you do not have the correct type of nest box if a chick was able to fall out. A cockatiel nest box is completely enclosed, with only a hole for the parents to go in and out, and there is absolutely no way a chick could fall out of the box. The hole is too high, so a chick can’t even reach it until it is mostly feathered and ready to leave the nest box. I think you have a couple of issues here – the wrong type of nest and the fact that you moved it. A pair will almost always abandon their eggs and even their chicks if a nest is disturbed. And they do not like it on the ground – it has to be hung high for the pair to feel safe from predators. If you do have a fully enclosed nest box, then either the parents threw the chick out deliberately, or sometimes a chick can get stuck to one of the parent’s feathers and tragically fall when the parent leaves the box. Parents will sometimes throw a chick from the box if there is something wrong with it or it died in the box. And if this is the first clutch, parents often make mistakes like this, especially if the pair is too young. The female should be at least 2 years old, and the male 18 – 24 months old. If your pair is younger than this, then I would take the nest away and wait until they are older. If they are old enough, you need to remove the nest anyway for now, because the eggs will not be good if she has been off of them for several hours, and the pair needs to rest for several months before you give them a nest box again. You can’t let a pair nest again right after they have had eggs or chicks. After they rest, return the nest box or get them the right type of nest box, hang it high in the cage, and hope they do better the next time.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
