Damaged Budgie Egg Repair

[Kaj 0]

Yesterday morning when checking a clutch of 2 babies and two eggs, much to my horror, I accidently damaged one of the eggs with a fingernail. Initially I left the egg with mum after the pure horror of what had just happened. I was left in a quandary - what to do. The egg was expected to hatch at some point over the net three days and in my experience whenever an egg had previously been damaged or dented the baby failed to hatch.

 

I considered

 

1. leaving the egg with mum (so she could discard it if she considered it would not hatch).

2. Hatching the egg prematurely in case the baby was in distress by the damage.

3. Repairing the egg.

 

I decided on the later so began searching the web for a solution. I only seemed to be able to find repairs for chicken eggs but figured it was worth a try. One suggestion was to use nail polish over the damage but was a bit concerned about the chemicals in it. Another option was to spray on a human band-aid solution that I had, but after a test spray on paper decided the smell would probably knock out the mother and other chicks, so I went for the candle wax option. I was concerned that it maybe too hot for the egg (baby) so did some test runs on my fingers first. Eventually with finger covered in wax, I managed to get few drops on the egg to seal off the damage. This was about an hour after the original damage. I then made a half hearted attempt at candling the egg (looking through the egg in a dark place with a bright light -nothing to do with wax), but saw no movement and so sadly returned the egg to the box. This morning I tried candling the egg again, and in the process discovered it chirping-much to my delight. I returned it to the box and a few hours later it hatched. I'm not sure how much the wax helped or how important the repair within the hour was but I sure plan to use it for any future damaged eggs.

 

Wish I had taken a before photo of the egg but was not expecting it to work. Here is the after hatching photo of the waxed egg

Edited April 10, 2015 by Kaj

[Drogo 0]

Well done Kaj that is really interesting. I repaired a chicken egg with sticky tape once. The shell got stuck to the chick after hatching so wax or nail polish are probably better.