I have had 1 Budgie as house pet for about 18 months, but have only recently built an outside/inside aviary and I now have 27 birds. One pair of birds were getting very amorous, so I put them in a separate cage with a nestbox and started to give egg food and supplements, both birds look very healthy and happy.

 

There are 3 eggs in the nestbox, the hen spends most of the time sitting on the eggs and the **** is in and out of the box feeding the hen.

 

Whenever the hen leaves the nestbox the **** tells her "off" :fear and kicks her until she gets back in.

 

The first egg was laid 7 or 8 days after putting them in the breeding cage. I don't know if the eggs will be fertile or not.

 

What is candling? Is it okay to pick the eggs up? Should I remove any infertile eggs?, if so, when?

 

Spartan

From reading stuff here (mostly from hath) and a few books candling is shining a light on the egg and looking for a red dot inside, meaning they are fertile.

 

umm I think it's best to keep handing of egg to a minium. Because germs on your hand can kill the growing baby inside.

dont handle the eggs at all if you can nerwen right about the germs

candling is putting a small penlight against the egg when the eggs are about 6 to 8 days old you should see the veins starting to form if they are fertile

i leave any infertile eggs in the nest untill the chicks are about 4 or 5 days old

say all the eggs are infertile,when would you take the eggs out.

rgds.

james.

as soon as i am certain that the round is clear

Thanks for the info, I will leave it for a few more days as the hen is still laying. We now have 4 eggs (very exciting).

Congratulations on all the new eggs!! It's very exciting, isn't it?

 

I left all the eggs in for about a week after the last chick hatched, but I did not candle mine. If you keep track of the hatch dates and count backwards to when the first egg was laid, you can pretty much tell when they should be hatching. If any of them begin to turn dark grey, remove them first.

I candled eggs 1 & 2, both seem to be clear.

 

there are five eggs now

 

3 other pairs have started to use the nest boxes and one hen looks like she is about to start laying.

 

I don't remember being this nervous when my son was born ( although I haven't re-decorated the nursery this time)