Cockatiel Egg and Chick Thread

Love your rabbit
shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
Rabbits Online Forum

Help Support Rabbits Online Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
SnowyShiloh

SnowyShiloh

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 3, 2007
Messages
6,033
Reaction score
51
Location
Alaska, USA
I thought maybe you guys would like to follow along as my cockatiels have babies, so I'm starting this thread! I plan to update it with photos and information about the eggs, and with luck, photos and info about the chicks :)

A bit of info about cockatiel reproduction: Eggs are usually laid once every 48 hours. The average clutch (what a "litter" of eggs is called) has 5 eggs. Both parents take turns incubating the eggs, which have to be sat on pretty much 24 hours a day for 21 days. The chicks usually don't hatch at the same time since they were laid on different days. When the chicks hatch, the parents both take care of them.

The parents are Arthur, my 12 year old normal gray cock, and Poppet, my approximately 2 1/2 year old Lutino hen. Here they are:

Birdsresized119.jpg


They have been together for a year and a half now and are very much in love. They're first time parents and they had a rough start at parenting, but seem to be catching the hang of things now!

Here is Poppet with the eggs:

IMG_2989croppedresized.jpg


8! Wow, huh? Theoretically, cockatiels will only lay eggs if they have a nest box, but Arthur and Poppet felt the need to be parents and went on ahead and laid them on the cage floor. She started laying the day after Skyler died, May 14th. She laid an egg every other day, resulting in 4 eggs. They were all laid on the cage floor, but we bought them a nest box and moved the eggs in there. The eggs have a 7-10 day "grace period" before they have to be incubated 24 hours a day, but unfortunately Arthur and Poppet didn't really know what to do so those eggs never began to develop :( Then the parents took a break for a week or so, Poppet started laying again (this time in the nest box), and now there are 4 new eggs ! Thankfully, Arthur and Poppet seem to have figured out what to do now and are incubating the eggs like pros :) I've candled the eggs (held them up to a small flashlight) and two of the eggs definitely have embryos in them. One of the others looks like it has one just beginning to develop (it was just laid 3 days ago and it takes a while for things to become visible), and I don't know if the 4th one does since it was just laid yesterday. Interestingly enough, the last egg of the previous batch looks like it has an embryo too, but I think it died after not being incubated properly. If it continues to develop, we'll know! Also, after I took this picture, I removed 2 of the dud eggs that were laid 3 weeks ago on the advice of some cockatiel breeders because it's difficult for the parents to incubate more than 6 eggs properly. I left one dud egg and the one with the possibly dead embryo because the extra eggs can help keep the fertilized eggs warm.

So, as of right now, we have: 2 definite growing embryos, 1 most likely just beginning to develop embryo, 1 is too early to tell, and 1 likely dead embryo. It takes approximately 21 days for an egg to develop, so if all goes well, we should have the first chick here in about 2 weeks! I also wouldn't be surprised if Poppet lays another egg or two. A lot can go wrong, but hopefully we'll get at least 1 birdy out of this, which we will of course keep :)
 
This is so fascinating. Now for a few questions.

How often will they lay a clutch? As in...what has to happen for them to decide to lay the eggs? (What made them breed? springtime?)

how long do the babies stay with the parents after they hatch?

I'm sure I"ll have more questions - but this is cool...
 
Aww how cute!
I have only hatched chickens a few times, I really want to hatch more this Summer so hopefully one of my chickens will want to start sitting on eggs :)

Hope they hatch!
 
I'm glad there's some interest :) I didn't really expect Arthur and Poppet to breed- the things I've read said that they won't do it unless they have a nest box. So much for that! They've been together for a year and a half and haven't tried to have babies until now. We're probably going to split Arthur and Poppet up once the babies grow up. We'll pair Arthur with a male baby and Poppet with a female baby. I don't want them to just keep breeding forever because that's not healthy and there's no way to spay or neuter a bird! Cockatiels form monogamous relationships, but it's usually not too hard for them to bond with another bird. Arthur and Poppet were best buds within minutes of meeting- she actually moved into his cage the day she met him because they got along so well! That's another neat thing about tiels- they're very gentle. It's pretty rare for cockatiels to be aggressive or violent. If they don't like another bird, they'll ignore it :D

Peg, cockatiels usually have babies in the spring or summer- when the light increases (we live in the land of the midnight sun, for goodness sake!) and it gets warmer. They decide to have babies if they feel safe and have good food and water. And like I said before, they're SUPPOSED to only do it if they have an enclosed place to make their nests! They're very interesting- they can kind of pick when to have babies. Arthur and Poppet mate a lot (and have ever since we got Poppet), but haven't laid eggs until now. That's not unusual either. Arthur and his first mate were like that too.

The babies wean after about 10 weeks. The interesting thing is that they practically look like their parents by the time they're a month old! Also, the parents usually double clutch, which means they lay their eggs, incubate them, raise their babies, then do it all over again. So they usually have 2 batches of babies every year.

As you can imagine, I've been doing tons of research about breeding cockatiels. And, to be honest... I'm terrified. Oh my gosh, there are so many things that can go wrong! And I'm going to be gone for several days in the middle of July (Paul will be home to take care of the birds though), then the wedding is on August 1st and we already have our honeymoon planned and paid for. The babies will be around 1 month old when the wedding rolls around. Thankfully, they'll be slightly more independent by then, but we'll be gone for 6 days and have to rely on someone to come by and take care of them... Maybe the right thing to do would be to cancel the honeymoon. That would be really sad, we'd lose the money, and you know the saying "don't count your chickens before they hatch?" Well, I don't want to go canceling our plans when we may not even end up with baby birds.

Long, sorry! Does anyone have any other questions? :)
 
Nela, yeah- those are their flight suits. It's essentially a bird diaper. You fold up a little square of toilet paper and put it in the butt of the suit. They get into their suits when they're going to be out of their cage for long periods because I don't like when they poop on me and everywhere else. They were kind of weirded out by wearing the suits at first, but have gotten used to it :) I bought a pretty flowered one for Poppet and a manly (well, manliER) blue and green dot one for Arthur. Little Bird, a tiel I had several years ago (I miss him!) had a little rainbow one he'd wear whenever he came out too. If you can get your bird used to them, they're great because of the poop thing and because you can attach a little leash to the suit and take them outside without danger of the bird flying away! Little Bird used to go to the beach with me. If I were a guy, he would have been a GREAT way to meet girls :kiss:
 
Just looked in the nest box again! I'm doing it once a day so Arthur and Poppet get used to me messing around in there. Plus, it's good to know what's going on! There are still 6 (took 2 of the duds away yesterday), which is good. Don't want Poppet laying too many and getting weak. I candled them all really quickly (it only takes a few seconds per egg), and Egg C (the one that I said last night probably had an embryo but I couldn't tell) DEFINITELY is fertile. There are little veins inside, and I saw what has to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen: the little baby's heart beating! Isn't that awesome? So we have 3 fertile eggs. Eggs A, C and D. I was being silly when I marked them and didn't actually candle them first so I didn't know which was most developed, but D is the farthest along, then A, then C. Egg B looks empty so far, but we'll know for sure in a few days. The egg that I thought probably had a dead embryo doesn't seem to have developed in the past few days, so it probably did die.

Poppet is being a great mom and only leaves the nest box to eat, drink and poop, while Arthur is guarding her and the eggs. He goes in to nest on them when Poppet is out, I think he'd sit on them even more if she'd give him the chance. Yay for good parents!

That's it for now :)
 
Cool Shiloh! I remember the poop being a bit of a downer when I had my tiels. I really enjoyed leaving them out but not having their poop everywhere!I think those are neat. :biggrin:
 
Aw the flight suits are cute, and a good idea :) I remember being at this woman's house, she had a bird that used to be out most of the time and there was always poop everywhere :p I think she should have bought one of these :p
 
Tonight's update: Poppet laid another egg! And Egg B definitely has a tiny little bitty embryo in it :D I saw its little beating heart. SO cool. So we have Eggs A, B, C and D with confirmed growing embryos! WOW! I'll be able to tell if Egg E, the one laid today, has an embryo here in a few days. Considering that the other 4 have babies, I'm willing to bet it does, too. I removed one of the dud eggs so there's still a total of 6 in the nest. There's only one dud egg left, that's the one that has the tiny little dead embryo. If she lays another egg (which I hope she doesn't), I plan to remove the last dud egg and crack it open to see what's inside.

Now, I just need Miss Poppet to knock it off with the egg laying. Girl is depleting her calcium and nutrient stores. I'm hoping that now she's laid 5 new eggs, she'll feel her clutch is complete. Also, if by some miracle they all hatch (since they're first time parents and I'm a first time... grandparent?), Arthur and Poppet may have a tough time feeding all of those little ones. The eggs will probably hatch every other day since they were laid every other day, so at least they won't just have 5 new babies all at the same time. The thing with birds is that the parents feed the biggest, strongest, and loudest babies first. With how these eggs are being laid, one of the babies will be over a week old when this newest egg hatches. There's a biiiig difference between the size of babies that age and the tiny one may get neglected.

I'll try not to get too ahead of myself and learn as much as I can about handfeeding, just in case... I already bought a bag of handfeeding formula in case we need it!
 
Got a peek at the eggs again. I noticed last night that one of the more developed eggs looked darker inside. Don't know if it's because the chick is growing or if it may have died, but tonight I noticed a tiny chip on the egg shell. That's bad because moisture evaporates through the break. I wouldn't have noticed it if not for shining the flashlight through the egg. The baby may have died already or it may still be alive. In any case, you can patch eggs with clear nail polish and a tiny piece of toilet paper and it should be fine, so we're off to go get some nail polish! Wish me luck with the patching! Also this is a great example of why I should look at the eggs every day- I wouldn't have known the egg was chipped otherwise...

Oh and I could see the baby moving in one of the eggs! Not just the heartbeat this time :) So cool :)
 
Patch job was successful! Paul and I ended up walking to WalMart (open 24 hours) to get the nail polish, it's about a mile and a half away.

Unfortunately, when I went to return the egg, Arthur was in the nest box. He is a VERY protective daddy, which I'm glad for, but the silly bird was jumping up and down on the eggs as he tried to leap out to bite me (he's not normally like this, just when he has eggs to protect)! I really hope he didn't break any of them. I didn't want to look too closely because the longer I had the lid open, the longer he was freaking out and trampling them. He wouldn't leave the nest box and I couldn't just wait to put the egg back later because the embryo will die if it's not kept warm properly. I hope they're okay! I'm going to be worrying about the eggs until I can check them again... On the one hand, I don't want to disturb the parents, and on the other, if he DID crack any and they're small cracks, I could do the nail polish trick on them too.

Also I'm pretty sure Poppet is going to lay another egg. When a bird lays an egg, they hold their poop in which results in enormous droppings. She did that tonight.
 
:) we have swallows nesting in our utility room - the poor male is behaving the same as arthur:p now we cant go near the fridge without him flapping in front of our faces. it isnt as if they arent used to us - they've been in residence for a month:biggrin:
 
It's funny and rather endearing that he's so protective of his eggs. He's always had an attitude (he is a diva bird if there ever was one), but would never bite me normally. He'll go back to normal once he doesn't have little ones to defend! I call it the beak of death. For some reason being bitten by cockatiels isn't as upsetting as being bitten by other animals. Luca (Arthur's old mate) used to bite me hard enough to draw blood, so they can certainly chomp when it comes down to it, but it never really bothered me. Maybe because they don't actually have teeth? Maybe because I can always see exactly what's happening? Being bitten by a cockatiel is more like being pinched really hard...
 
Phew! I checked the eggs again and Arthur didn't crack any of them. What a relief! Now I'm going to leave them in peace for a while... I gave them some millet to make up for me meddling so much these past few hours. They don't know that the meddling was for their babies' sake!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top