Ask Lafeber

Parakeets

Two of my parakeets mated now there is an egg they are not paying attention to how do I hatch it thank you

Hi,

If they won’t sit on it, there isn’t anything you should try to do. Incubators are very expensive, there is no guarantee the egg is even fertile, and even if you managed to hatch it in an incubator, the chick will most likely die because they are nearly impossible to keep alive from day 1 by hand feeding.

You said “two of your parakeets” – do you have more than the pair in the same cage? You can’t breed parakeets if you have more than 2 in a cage. If you want to breed them, you have to separate the pair to their own cage. They need a nest box and a nutritionally balanced diet. They generally require privacy to settle down and care for eggs and chicks, so you can’t have them by your other birds. You can do everything right, and still not get any live chicks. And you must have homes for the chicks if they do raise any, because the chicks can’t stay with the parents once they are weaned. You need to research breeding before you decide to do this. As for the egg, you can throw it away – without being incubated by the parents, it will not have even started to develop.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda