Hello. I have 2 Sun conures and, yesterday, one of them laid an egg .Ever since before the first egg was laid, she was acting a little different than usual. Now she is biting on the little house we have for when they sleep, and is wailing her wings and making noises. What should I do?
Hi Jesse,
This is a common age for egg laying to start, but you can do some things to discourage it. The first thing to do is throw the house away. Adult birds should not have these. Conures, especially, have been known to ingest the fibers and those do not digest. Once they eat too many, their system becomes impacted and they die. The other issue with the bird houses, beds, huts, etc. is that they encourage hormonal behavior in both sexes and egg laying in females. Adult birds do not need a nest or anything else to sleep inside of. In the wild, they sleep high up in the trees. They do not use a nest for sleeping – a nest is only for laying eggs and raising chicks, which only happens once a year in the wild.
If your birds are male & female and no related to each other, and you wanted to breed them, they need a proper wooden nest box. This is quite large and attaches to the outside of the cage, only during breeding season. It has to be removed after each clutch.
The behavior you describe is all hormonal behavior which led to her laying the egg. She may lay several more with a day between each. You can let her sit on the eggs or throw them away. If you go ahead and throw them away, she will get out of this hormonal period faster, if you also make some changes to discourage this. We had two webinars this month on the dangers of hormonal behavior and egg laying for non-breeding pet birds. We also have a playlist of 8 webinars on the topic. Hormones are probably the top cause of behavior issues and a common cause of many health issues. So unless your birds are breeders, it’s best to try to minimize hormone triggers.
You need to do all of these things to discourage egg laying. Keep in mind that to lay eggs, she needs longer daylight, warmer weather, abundant food, and a quiet, private environment. Your goal is to reverse these conditions. Much of this also applies to the other bird, even if it is a male. They have the same hormonal triggers.
Limit her light to 8-10 hours by covering the cage early each evening
Do not give her anything to use as a nest – no bird huts or tents, no box, bowl, etc. If she decides to sit in a food bowl, remove it and replace with smaller cups.
Do not give her anything to shred such as paper or cardboard.
Rearrange the toys in the cage frequently.
Move the cage to a different place in the room. Move the cage about once a week, or whenever she shows signs of nesting – settling on the cage floor for example. This disrupts her idea of having a stable place to lay eggs and raise chicks.
If you feed a lot of fresh foods, stop offering any for a couple of weeks, and then only offer them in small amounts about 2 or 3 times a week. You can resume normal feeding later when the birds aren’t being hormonal.
When she is let out of the cage, do not let her get in any dark cozy places and don’t give her free roam.
When you handle her, limit any petting to only her head and neck – do not pet her on the body. Only a bonded mate is allowed to groom the body. We can’t be a mate, so touching the body is off limits.
If there is no metal floor grate, then do not use any bedding or paper in the cage tray – leave it bare and clean it daily.
Here is the link to the playlist of hormone webinars.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
