My parakeet laid 6 eggs the first one was laid nov 7or 8th and still has not hatched. The other ones were laid a few days apart. She is sitting on them a lot and only leaves them enough to drink or eat so she spends most of her time on them. Why aren’t they hatching? Tomorrow will be a month since she laid the first one. She is very protective of them. Are any of them going to hatch?please help and thank you.
Hi Barbara,
You didn’t mention a mate, so unless she has a mate and they have mated, the eggs will not be fertile. First clutches are often not fertile. Parakeet eggs take between 17-20 days to hatch, from the time each egg is laid as well as when she starts to sit on them. So with 6 eggs, the last egg could hatch 12 days or later than the first egg. It’s best to leave the eggs alone for at least a week after the last egg is due to hatch, just in case one is late or she didn’t sit on them right away. Usually the pair will abandon the eggs or toss them out of the nest box when they do not hatch. Once she has abandoned the eggs, you need to remove the nest box and rest the pair for several months. Laying eggs is hard on the hen, and in the wild she would only do this once a year. In captivity, you can allow her to have 2 clutches per year, with a 6 month rest between clutches. It is important that they are on a nutritionally balanced diet like pellets or our foraging diets. If she is only eating a seed mix, this is not going to provide the nutrition she needs to produce healthy chicks. She also needs leafy greens & chopped veggies. When she is set up with the box for breeding, you should also offer multi grain bread and cooked eggs, with the shell washed, crushed and cooked with the eggs. A cuttlebone is also recommended to make sure she is replacing the calcium she loses when she lays eggs.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
