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Budgies need to be in physically fit, not necessarily in the best of feather condition, but they must not carry any excess fat. To determine whether they are in breeding condition there are several signs to watch out for. Firstly, in a colony situation, the birds will seen courting (making up to one bird and chasing others away). Secondly, the birds may start tapping on the perches and thirdly they will start feeding each other. They need not be very active, but they do need to be alert. Remember to establish a routine during this time. The birds will not breed if they are constantly being disturbed. If you are wishing to merely breed the birds and not to worry about pairing them specifically, now is when you add the nest boxes. If you wish to pair up specific birds (for colour or to remove faults), you would take them out and place them in the breeding cage. You will need to watch that there is no fighting between the cock and the hen. Several days later, if you are satisfied, you can add the nesting box. The time it takes before the hen starts laying is dependant on a few things. If the pair is already bonded and previously bred the hen should start laying about ten days after pairing. If the hen is inexperienced or the pair is not bonded it can take up to a month. If the hen appears not to be interested in the nesting box, don't despair. There could be many reasons. The hen could be immature, many breeders believe that the hen knows when she is mature enough to start breeding. Perhaps some of the conditions aren't right, budgies do originate in Australia, so perhaps it is not warm enough. There are a few tricks that can be used here. One is shock therapy. No, don't go and electrocute your birds, what I mean is, remove the nesting box for a few days and then return it to the cage. Another is to tape the sounds of budgies breeding at another breeder. The hardest kind of breeding is with one pair, because budgies are gregarious, so they like to live together, they also tend to breed at the same time. When one pair starts breeding the sounds they make courting each other creates a cascade reactions throughout the rest of the colony. So if you tape the sounds of breeding budgies and play it back to your own birds, a similar cascade reaction should happen. The hen will lay an egg every second day. Normally three to five eggs are laid but up to nine eggs have been clutched before. In this situation, if all the eggs are fertile then once the fourth or fifth chick has hatched the eldest chick should be fostered or handreared, or the parents will end up feeding the chicks so much that it could result in their own deaths. A hen's very first clutch is generally infertile. To check fertility an egg can be "candled". If the egg is infertile do not remove it from the clutch until the entire clutch has been laid. Removing it too early will cause the hen to continue laying to make up for the eggs you remove. A non-toxic felt-tip pen can be used to mark the eggs so that you know which egg was laid when and then you will know which egg will hatch first or if something has happened to the chick inside the egg (if it was fertile). Always wash your hands in warm water before handling the eggs! You could do irreparable damage by having cold hands. The hen should start brooding around about once the third egg has been laid. Brooding should last for approximately 18 days. The eggs won't hatch all at once, because they were laid at different times, so it could take up to a week before all the eggs hatch (depending on the number of eggs). But the first two or three should hatch at about the same time, because the chicks only start developing once the brooding has begun. Within four to five days of their hatching you should be able to hear the chicks crying to be fed. Generally the cock feeds the hen and she feeds the chicks but if she gets tired then the cock will help with feeding the youngsters. Sometimes the parents get so overzealous in feeding the chicks that they keep none of the nourishment for themselves. In this case eggfood is very good because then the parents are not regurgitating their own food but merely the eggfood (eggfood is rather like crushed seed, it just needs to be mixed with some water or egg white.) If one should die then the other will continue to feed the chicks. See Deaths. At about 6 weeks the chicks should start weaning themselves and once it is seen that they can eat seed on their own they can be removed and placed in a separate cage with other youngsters. While the chicks are in the nest box, it can be useful to handle them, with warm hands, so that they can become used to human touch. Contrary to belief the parents will not kill the chicks if they have a human scent on them. Around the same time that the chicks are weaned the parents will start to begin a new clutch. For the health of the birds they should not clutch more than three times in a year. If they have more than three clutches they can get over tired. To prevent them from continuing to breed more than the required times, remove the nesting box from the breeding cage, or in the case of colony breeding return them to the main flight. |
