Factors that affect Budgie Breeding

Proper care must be provided to the Chicks and the breeding Budgie to be healthy.The following are the 8 factors that affect female budgies as well as the chicks.

Egg Binding

1. Egg binding occurs when a budgie who is forming an egg in her uterus does not have enough calcium to finish forming the egg shell. The shell does not become hard enough to push out, which causes the budgie extreme stress and extreme risk.
2. To prevent egg binding it is very important to have a cuttle bone and mineral block available in the breeding cage. It is important to regularly check if the cuttle bone and mineral block have been used up. If so, they need to be replaced immediately. If a breeding pair does not touch the cuttle bone or mineral block, another calcium supplement may be necessary, such as oyster shell.

Failure to Lay Eggs

1. A failure to lay may be the result of the cock or the budgie being out of breeding condition. Not only do they need to be at least one year old, but their condition, including hormones, must also be right to breed.
2. If the pair does not lay after three weeks, consider taking them out of the breeding cage and trying another pair, or repairing them with different mates.

Infertile Eggs

1. One possible cause for infertile eggs is that the budgie laid the first clutch too soon, before the cock mated with her. Try blocking off the nest box for a few weeks, tbudgie allow her to lay a second clutch and see if they have better luck.
2. If the male is an English budgie, make sure the feathers around the vent are not so long that they cover the vent, preventing insemination. If the feathers are too long, trim them carefully with scissors, leaving the down showing around the vent.
3. Make sure all the perches are stable and do not wobble or roll.
4. If the pair produces two clutches of infertile eggs, remove them from the breeding cage and consider trying them with different mates or waiting until a later date to try again.

Eggs Thrown Out of Nest

1. Make sure there is a concave area in the nest so that the budgie can sit on all the eggs without any of them getting away.
2.  If the budgie is young (one or two years old) refrain from breeding her for another year. Hopefully she will lose the habit with maturity.
3. If the budgie continues to discard her eggs from the nest, replace her eggs with dummy eggs or white marbles. After she incubates these for a week or two, remove them and allow her to lay another clutch hopefully she will have lost her egg-throwing habit.
4. If egg tossing continues to be a problem, you can use her to foster other chicks, but you won't be able to breed her.

Fractured or Pierced Eggs

1. An egg with a fracture or pierce will probably kill the baby.
2. Cracked/punctured eggs are often a result of the budgie's nails being too long.You can attempt to repair a cracked egg before it dries out by covering (only the cracked area) with non-toxic clear nail polish. This will often save the chick.

Unfed Chicks

1.  You can tell a newly hatch chick is being fed by looking at the crop (below the neck) to see if it is full of a milky liquid.
2. If the budgie does not feed the chicks, try putting an older baby from another pair into the nest. The older chick's cries for food will stimulate the budgie to feed her clutch.
3. If the young chicks have gone without food, purchase some hand-feeding formula from a pet store and hand-feed them. If the babies are newly hatched, you will not be able to use a syringe due to their small size. After cooking up the formula, dab a toothpick into the mix and tbudgie put it into the baby's beak. It should eat the formula from the toothpick. Do this until its crop is full.

Physically Hurt Chicks

1.  Sometimes for unknown reasons one of the parents beats up on one or more of the chicks. If this happens, foster out the chicks into other nests and don't breed the offending parent again. If the attack occurs in the nest, it was usually the budgie. If the attack occurs outside the nest, it was usually the cock.
2. Sometimes the budgie will pluck the feathers of her chicks. This may be to a nutritional deficiency. If this happens, provide her with an iodine salt spool. If this does not help, foster out the chicks to other nests and stop her from breeding for at least a year. Make sure her diet is better supplemented and an iodine salt lick is provided if you want to try to breed her again.

Dead Chicks

1.  Sometimes an apparently health chick will end up dead for unknown reasons. Make sure the chicks are being kept in a concave area of the nest to prevent them from wandering or rolling away when they are young and still need the warmth of their mother. Other unknown reasons may have contributed to its death, but unless there are outward signs of injury it is hard to say what happened. The occurrence is somewhat comparable to SIDS.