Incubation

Question
Hi there - I was given a pair of lovebirds about a year ago.  They quarreled a lot, but for the most part, they got a long.  Anyway, I went to the cage this morning and one of them had died - there were 3 eggs in the bottom of the cage and it looked like the surviving bird (I'm thinking it is the female) had actually pecked the other one to death.  Even when I was trying to retrieve the dead one from the cage, the survivor was attacking it.  I took the 3 eggs from the cage and placed them in an incubator I use to hatch out turkeys and gineas (sic).  I put the quail rack in there for turning them.  My question is - how long is the incubation period for love birds?  How many days before hatching should I remove the turning rack?  What type of handfeeding schedule am I looking at?  I don't even know if they'll hatch or not, but I at least wanted to try.  I am new at this with love birds (also I've only hatched out 1 batch of gineas and 1 batch of turkeys) - any info you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Sharon Green

Answer
Hello Sharon

Was the dead bird egg bound?  This might indicate lack of calcium in the diet.

Lovebirds eggs nromally start to hatch +/- 24 days after the 2nd egg was laid.  I cannot help with artificial incubation as have no experience of doing it and know of no-one who has.

Regarding pecking at the dead bird. This is quite normal, the remaining partner is trying to "wake up" the other one.

Hand rearing is not difficult. Start when the yellow "yolk" spot in the belly has disappeared (usually 24/36 hours after hatching.  Feed every two hours for the first week, and then increasing the interval until at 5 weeks they should be feeding themselves. You can safely omit one feed during the night.

I am a great believer in adding probiotics or live yoghurt to the feed, as well as finely grated cuttlebone. My feed consists of ground seed kernels (sunflower, millet,) ground cereal baby food and fruit based baby food.

I hope that helps. Good luck!