What do you do when your parakeets don't hatch their own eggs?

Question

I've had my parakeets since May 2008, and their not hatching their eggs. I don't know why but they eat their own eggs. I give them plenty to eat though. What do I do? Why do they eat their own eggs? (Answering the first question will be fine. Think of the 2nd as extra credit. ;D)

Thanks!

Alice

Answer 1

They need a parakeet size nest box with some pine shavings(not cedar)

A: they could be young and inexperienced

B: this might be a bad habit that they will continue to do, as some birds just never get it right, only more time will tell.

Some birds just have very bad habits from egg eating to chick mutilation! Some birds do excellent the first time around and others do really bad things and normally once they are known for a very bad parenting habit they USUALLY continue to do these sort of things.

I have a male who mutilates his own chicks, he starts off with toes but then I caught him with a baby, he was killing it like a dog would with it's prey he had it in his beak and was shaking it violently. I have had egg eaters also and they have never stopped so they will never be parents, and thankfully I have my pairs that are great parents from the start!

Answer 2

Unfortunately you have ran into one of the pitfalls of raising parakeets. Not every bird will make a good breeder. About 45% of the birds that I hold back as breeders eat their eggs, kill the babies, ignore the babies, ignore the eggs, kill the babies just when they should be leaving the nest. It takes a while to establish a flock of breeding parakeets because of this.

In the wild parakeets nest mostly in Eucalyptus trees. They nest in colonies. There will be hundreds of pairs in a small grove of trees. The noise is deafening. They need this parakeet chatter to come into good breeding condition.

The pair you have might not be old enough to breed. just because they lay eggs doesn't mean that they are old enough to successfully raise babies.  Just because they have eggs doesn't mean anything. The thing about a bird that does stuff like what I listed is, if you farm their eggs out to other pairs.  their babies have the same traits. So the best thing to do with a bird or pair of birds like yours is to just take the nest off of the cage and enjoy them as a nice pair of keets. They don't need a box on their cage to sleep in. I have raised hundreds and hundreds of baby parakeets and they all sleep on perches. Good luck.