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Question:

December 13, 2021

My friends budgie keeps hitting her children after laying a second batch of eggs


So like, my friend got two budgies Male and female. After like a year the female laid eggs which have hatched. But quite recently the female has given three more eggs and her behaviour seems aggressive and she blended out her elder son in the head and he needed immediate treatment at a vet. I was wondering why she did that. I’ve searched online and it seems that the mothers are quite protecting of their eggs and would feel uncomfortable about even their family being near the eggs but I still felt the urge to ask the question here so I get a proper answer to this question the way I intend to because I get answers about other birds or different situations and by any chance it might be different to said condition. They’re going to get more bird cages for the mother, the father and the two children. Does it help by any chance?


Answer:

Hi,

When breeding birds, you can only have one pair of birds in the cage. With this pair, the offspring should have been removed as soon as they were weaned. You can’t leave weaned chicks with the parents. Their instinct is to drive them away, because in the wild, this prevents related birds from breeding. In captivity, most parents will begin to bully their offspring if they are not removed when they are weaned. Eventually they will do one of two things – either breed with their offspring, or begin a new clutch of eggs and attack the offspring to make them leave. If the offspring are not removed from the cage, the parents will eventually kill them. When removed, the chicks should be kept separated by sex, otherwise brother and sister will breed. You should never allow related birds to breed with each other. As for the parents, once the chicks leave the nest box, the nest box should be removed and the parents should be rested for at least six months. Otherwise they will breed and lay eggs again too soon. This is very hard on the female – she needs a rest period. In the wild they only breed once a year, and then the weather changes and breeding season ends. But indoor birds do not get the signal to stop breeding, so unless you remove the nest and force them to rest, they will keep breeding and laying eggs until it kills the female. So as soon as these new eggs hatch and once the chicks leave the nest, the nest box should be removed. The parents may still be weaning the chicks but this is fine. The most important thing is to not let them lay eggs again for at least 6 months while she rests.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda

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