issues with Meyers parrot and nesting

Question
My 5 year old meyers parrot recently laid two eggs in her food dish. She sits
on them constantly so I figured I should buy her a nesting box. I am unsure if
the eggs are fertile though. She recently lived in the same cage with a male
meyers and we did see them mate. Anyways I did try to candle the eggs and
didn't see anything but they are only 2 and 4 days old.
The problem is once I moved the eggs to the nesting box she refused to sit
on them. I put her in the box several times but she just gets right out. I
believe I got the right size box (I looked it up on the internet) and filled the
bottom with shredded newspaper. Am I doing something wrong? How do I
make her sit on her eggs? How long will the eggs survive (assuming they are
fertile) without her sitting on them?

Answer
Hi, Melanie.  Thanks for posting!

What happened to the male Meyers?  He needs to be in with the female if there are eggs.

The eggs have to be 7-10 days into incubation before you will be able to see anything inside them, if there is anything viable inside them.

Usually what happens is the male will inspect and prepare the nesting box before the female goes in to lay her eggs.  The fact that she laid them outside the box before a nesting box was installed is likely the reason she's not incubating her eggs any longer.  In addition, you need to remove the newspaper from the nesting box.  Meyer's parrots don't like substrate in their nesting box.  

You can't force her to incubate her eggs!  Either she's going to incubate or she isn't.  Also, it's important that her mate be with her as he shares in this process.  

If your bird began incubating her eggs, then stopped, and the eggs cooled down, they probably aren't viable any longer (if they were to begin with).  Once incubation has started, egg cool down will render the eggs unviable...cool down can occur in as little as 10 minutes, depending on the temperature in the area at the time.

Chrys