So I got my cockatiel when he was 2 months old his now 1.5 years old and I got him a female but she died in the first week because she was sold to me in a bad condition(if that helps) so I get him another female she is the same age as him but I havent really seen them mate or do anything special since i leave the house alot but when I opened the nest box I found 6 eggs I really hope they’re fertile but I dont know if they mated or not..help?
Hi,
The best thing to do is give the pair privacy and wait to see if the eggs hatch. You can try to candle the eggs, which is using a light to see if they are fertile, but this can upset the pair and they might abandon the eggs. First clutches almost always fail because the parents are inexperienced and need to learn. Your birds are actually too young to be breeding and have a nest box. It’s best to wait until they are two years old. But since they already have eggs, you need to wait and see what they do. One parent will sit on the eggs during the day and the other at night. Whether these eggs hatch or not, you need to remove the nest box as soon as the eggs are past due or as soon as chicks leave the nest box. You must rest your pair for 6 months in between each clutch.
Ideally, the parents should be at least 2 years old. Younger birds really are not ready to settle down and care for eggs and chicks, and they will make mistakes or develop bad habits that can ruin them as breeders when they get older. The parents should be eating a nutritionally balanced diet such as pellets or our foraging diets – a loose seed mix will not provide the nutrition they need. You should also offer dark leafy greens, chopped veggies and a small amount of fruit. When they are set up with the nest box for breeding, you should start offering an egg food daily. There are commercial egg foods made with dried eggs, or you can cook an egg with the shell washed, crushed and cooked with the egg. You will give them egg food before egg laying and until all chicks are weaned. The nest box should be attached to the outside of the cage as high as possible. The cage should be in a quiet, private area where there are no people around them other than to feed them. It is very important not to over breed your birds. They need to be rested after each clutch whether they hatch chicks or not. You need to remove the nest box as soon as the eggs are past due, or after the chicks have left the box. Otherwise the parents will try to breed again right away. If they are still weaning chicks, they may stop feeding the chicks to start a new clutch, and let the chicks die. They should be rested for 6 months, and only be allowed to have two clutches per year, which is one more than they have in the wild. In the wild, breeding season is once a year, and then the season changes signaling the pair to stop nesting. In captivity, we provide the perfect breeding conditions year round, so it is the owner’s responsibility to limit how often a pair breeds.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
