Sunstorm
Meeting neighbors
Hello there!
For a bit of background, our whiteface and pied cockatiel pair breed regularly but generally don't produce live eggs. We don't encourage the behavior, and don't provide them a box to do this in. Generally they lose interest in the dead eggs and we throw them out.
Well, this time they succeeded, and we wound up with three healthy, well-formed eggs, all fertile. Unfortunately they did it right on the floor of their enclosure. We decided to go ahead and let them hatch their clutch (with the intention of keeping the offspring), set up a comfy makeshift nestbox to hold their eggs... but they chose to wreck the nest, roll the eggs out onto the bars of the cage instead, and incubate them there. We moved a small carrying cage into the bottom of the enclosure and set it up as a nestbox, moved the eggs back in, put a barrier in the way to encourage them to incubate in the safety of the makeshift nest, but they'd have none of it. This time they shredded the bedding until the bars were showing in the carrying cage, move eggs onto the bars and protect them, nesting in rotation. We eventually stopped trying to fix it, as it was stressing out the parents. Aside from stubbornly nesting on the bars, the pair are very good parents to their brood, but we thought that with all this back and forth business, the eggs wouldn't make it anyway... and much to our surprise, here they are, hatching. The problem is that they are still on the bars, and I am very, very worried that the babies are going to fall through, get stuck or get injured. The other problem is that mother and father are extremely protective of their hatching babies, and there's no stress-free way to reach in and move them now.
I feel horribly guilty that the babies-to-be are in a possibly precarious situation, and would love some advice on what to do to help ensure they don't get hurt. For the record, we intend to freeze any other eggs they lay in the future, as we do not want them to continue laying.
For a bit of background, our whiteface and pied cockatiel pair breed regularly but generally don't produce live eggs. We don't encourage the behavior, and don't provide them a box to do this in. Generally they lose interest in the dead eggs and we throw them out.
Well, this time they succeeded, and we wound up with three healthy, well-formed eggs, all fertile. Unfortunately they did it right on the floor of their enclosure. We decided to go ahead and let them hatch their clutch (with the intention of keeping the offspring), set up a comfy makeshift nestbox to hold their eggs... but they chose to wreck the nest, roll the eggs out onto the bars of the cage instead, and incubate them there. We moved a small carrying cage into the bottom of the enclosure and set it up as a nestbox, moved the eggs back in, put a barrier in the way to encourage them to incubate in the safety of the makeshift nest, but they'd have none of it. This time they shredded the bedding until the bars were showing in the carrying cage, move eggs onto the bars and protect them, nesting in rotation. We eventually stopped trying to fix it, as it was stressing out the parents. Aside from stubbornly nesting on the bars, the pair are very good parents to their brood, but we thought that with all this back and forth business, the eggs wouldn't make it anyway... and much to our surprise, here they are, hatching. The problem is that they are still on the bars, and I am very, very worried that the babies are going to fall through, get stuck or get injured. The other problem is that mother and father are extremely protective of their hatching babies, and there's no stress-free way to reach in and move them now.
I feel horribly guilty that the babies-to-be are in a possibly precarious situation, and would love some advice on what to do to help ensure they don't get hurt. For the record, we intend to freeze any other eggs they lay in the future, as we do not want them to continue laying.