Hi, my cockatiels have been trying to breed but my male doesn’t seem so know how. My female has already laid several clutches of infertile eggs on her cage floor, and I am worried for her health . I read somewhere that if a pair cockatiel keeps on laying infertile eggs, you could try giving them a fertile one, but, I don’t have one. Is there a way I can teach my male how to breed properly?
Hi Seline,
You are right to be concerned about the female’s health. For now your focus needs to be getting her to stop laying eggs for a while, and making her rest for at least six months. In the wild, a pair would only raise one clutch of chicks per year. So you can imagine that when a female has laid several clutches in a row, her health is already at risk. Birds will breed when the conditions are right – longer days, abundant food, and a safe place to nest. This only occurs once a year in the wild, but in captivity, we provide ideal conditions year round. However, your female was not intended to lay eggs all year, so it puts her health at risk. You need to reverse the ideal conditions to discourage her from laying eggs for a while. If they have a nest box, remove the box or block the entry. If she is using something else as a nest, remove it. If she is spending her time on the cage floor in one spot, hang some toys there to keep her from nesting there. Do not give her anything she can shred or use as nesting materials. Limit her light to 8-10 hours a day by covering the cage early in the evening. Rearrange the toys and perches in the cage, and even add some toys. Move the cage to a different place in the room, ideally a very busy place. Try moving the cage to different spots every other week. Basically you need to shake up their environment so they don’t feel that it is a good time to breed or a private and safe location. You can even try splitting the pair up for now, but a female cockatiel can become hormonal just by hearing her mate call to her. If she doesn’t stop laying eggs, you may need to take her to an avian vet for a hormone injection or an implant. It is vital to stop her or her health will decline and she will end up dying from complications caused by the excessive egg laying.
After a minimum of six months with no egg laying, you can think about setting them back up to breed. But everything has to be ideal, including their diet. They should be eating a nutritionally balanced diet such as pellets or our Nutri-Berries, Avi-Cakes or Pellet-Berries. A seed mix will not provide the nutrition they need. You should also offer dark leafy greens, chopped veggies, multi grain bread and cooked eggs with the shell cleaned & crushed and cooked with them. The eggs and bread are only for when they are breeding. As to your male, he may be too young right now? He needs to be at least 18 months old before being paired with a female. If he is younger than this, then that is possibly the problem. All you can do is provide the best conditions for them, a nutritionally balanced diet, a cockatiel nest box and plenty of privacy and hope they get the mating figured out. Not all birds will make good breeders, so if they fail again, you probably need to stop trying to breed these birds. As to what you read about giving them a fertile egg, I’ve never heard this and can’t think of how it would possibly make a difference. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet so you need to be careful of the source when researching. If they do lay eggs again once you set them back up, whether the eggs hatch or not, you need to remove the nest box when the eggs are past due or when the chicks are weaned, and make the pair rest for several months. This must be done each time, and your pair should only be allowed to have two clutches per year.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
