Cockatiel laying egg on the floor

[heisenberg]

Hello , I have two cockatiels one male and one female , I didn't plan to make them breed so i didn't have any nest box setup ... But yesterday I noticed the female layed an egg on the floor in one corner and i didn't want to interrupt and pick that egg at that time , when i returned later I found she rolled it under the desk and seems the egg got broken there ...

So now I'm not sure what to do , should I prepare a nest box ? They are very scared birds they get scared about every new thing , I'm not sure how they will handle something attached to their cage ... Will that stress her out and make egg laying more difficult ? Should I let her lay them on the floor since that seems to be her comfort zone? I'm not sure what to do about this , as I'm afraid introducing the nest box will make things worse instead of better , they get scared easily ...

Also I read that she should eat more calcium, and that's from eggs shell after you boil it , but wouldn't that could hurt the throat if those eggs shell gets torn into pieces? Any other alternatives? I read cuttlebone is good too i'm trying to get one but probably can't be very soon .

Now she is back to that corner , should i block that corner or anything that prevents her to go there ? Should i keep her in the cage or what go do ? Would she be laying There is papers close to corner should i remove them ? I would appreciate the help as im getting all lost and confused

 

[Aestatis]

If you don't want to breed them I wouldn't add a nest box or any nest-like objects. Blocking the corner would be a good idea too, as well as removing papers that might be on the floor near it. As for the calcium others might have personal experience but I believe people crush up the egg shell.

 

[Finchbreed]

Boiled egg shell should be crushed into smallish pieces that are easy for the birds to pickup. It works for all birds even my finches.

 

[birdbathy]

You can block the corner, but she will find another place. She is set on laying and nothing going to stop her.
As you have a pair in the same cage You cant stop them breeding.
Even if you seperate them at this point, she will more than likely lay more eggs.
If you take the eggs from her she will just lay more. So let her have them.
If it was me I would just let them try to raise the chicks, and not add a box inless you want them to raise chicks.
You will need to learn how to step in and raise chicks if need be. Its a LOT of work raiseing chicks LOT of work..
How old are you birds.

 

[rocky'smom]

You can try dummy eggs DummyEggs.com Stop Egg Laying! Plastic Fake Bird Eggs
Dummy eggs replace their eggs and you can hard boil their eggs allow them to cool and put back. Do not remove their clutch after you either use dummy eggs or hard boil them. Sometimes they will get tired of sitting on eggs and move on. Call your avian vet and ask what you can use for calcium for mama? It seems like every vet has different ideas. I have sanitize egg shells and ground them up in blender to fine powder, i have use liquid calcium too. Cuttlebone are pretty useless for any thing except for enrichment, they are low calcium at best.
I would suggest separating the two ,rearranging their cages from top to bottom. Nothing that can used as nesting material. Reduce their amount of light something like this: if they get 12 hours of lights reduce it to 8 hours. That means they have total darkness for 16 hours. No night lights no tv in the room no lights whatsoever. Also reduce any high fat type foods like sunflower seeds, safflower seeds & extra treats.