Ask Lafeber

Matting but not laying eggs

My cockatiel is matting everyday but not laying eggs what should I do? It’s been a 1month

Hi Kenneth,

It takes a lot of patience to breed birds. You can have everything set up perfectly and still not get any results. A month is not very long if these birds have never had a clutch of eggs before. It is important that your birds are old enough. The male should be at least 18 months old and the female should be at least 2 years old. If your birds are younger than this, you should remove the nest box and wait to set them back up until both birds are older. You need to be feeding them a nutritionally balanced diet such as pellets or our foraging diets. A loose seed mix will not provide the nutrition they need. In addition, you should offer dark leafy greens and chopped veggies. When you have them set up to breed, you should also feed them multi grain bread and cooked eggs with the shell washed, crushed and cooked with the eggs. It’s also a good idea to have a cuttle bone because the female needs a lot of extra calcium to form eggs. The birds also need plenty of privacy – you should only check on them occasionally, mainly when you give them food and water. If they do end up laying eggs and this is the first time, keep in mind that the first clutch almost always fails for some reason – infertile eggs, parents do not incubate them correctly or parents fail to care for the chicks. It is very important to rest your pair after each clutch, whether the eggs hatch or not. In the wild they would only have one clutch per year. You can allow 2 clutches per year, with a 6 month rest between clutches. You have to remove the nest box each time and then return it to them when it is time to let them breed again. Never allow them to have a nest box all year or keep having clutch after clutch or the female will eventually die from laying too many eggs. If you have everything set up as I have described, then all you can do now is wait and hope she starts to lay eggs.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda