Budgie Pregnancy?

Question

My family rescued a budgie two weeks ago it was found abandoned in an outdoor environment, yesterday we found an egg in it's cage. How do we know if it is a fertilized egg or not and if it is what do we do?

Answer 1

It is most likely not fertile, but fold up some paper towels place inside shallow box..place the egg on this in her cage and see if she will sit on it....females will lay eggs even if not fertilized and if they want to sit on blank eggs for a couple of weeks this should not be discouraged.... if she does have a fertilized egg she will feed the baby...keep plenty of fresh food and water available and hand tame the babies by handling them.

Answer 2

If you found the bird 2 weeks ago and just yesterday found the egg it's more than likely not going to be fertile. Slight chance, but I wouldn't count on it.

After roughly a week you can briefly candle the egg to see if it's any good. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, you can just wait roughly 18-20 days after she starts incubating them (usually don't start incubation until 2-3 eggs have been laid, that's perfectly normal) and see if they hatch.

Either way you're going to want to leave the bird alone, make sure she has plenty of fresh water, a cuttlebone, and a healthy diet (not an all seed diet). Just let her sit on the eggs until they either hatch or she stops paying attention to them. Taking them out early can cause the bird to lay more eggs to replace the ones that were "lost". Continually laying eggs can end up making the bird very ill, or even result in death (usually from egg binding).