baby parakeets about to be hatched

Question
my parakeet, who has a male friend for a buddy, has been sitting on egss she layed about a week or so. do i need to be feeding her special food for when the babies hatch??

Answer
Hi, Flo.  Thanks for posting!

Is your bird used to eating a variety of foods other than seed?  If not, you can try offering her other foods, but she most likely won't accept them.  Birds won't eat foods they don't recognize as food.  You have to keep offering new foods every day until the bird(s) decide the stuff is OK and take a taste.  Also, you don't want to be changing her diet at this point if she's not used to eating other types of foods because this could cause added stress and possible digestive upsets.  This is why it's so very important to have birds on a good, healthy diet at all times to begin with.  It's really too late to start feeding well AFTER eggs arrive...adult birds, especially breeder birds, need to be on a good diet from the beginning.

With parakeets, the male feeds the female beak-to-beak while she is incubating eggs and/or caring for babies.  The female might grab a bite to eat when she comes out to drink or defecate, but otherwise, she stays in the nesting box most of the time.  

If your bird is used to eating a variety of other foods, by all means, continue to feed her a good variety of healthy, nutritional foods.  

Chrys