budgie pairs

Question
I'm interested in giving my birds a nesting box in the future, when I know enough about how to handle possible babies.  I also want to know if you would recommend testing them all for polyoma, PBFD, psittacosis, before I decide to give them a nesting box, and if you recommend handfeeding baby budgies, provided I'm confident I've learned how to do it properly?
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Followup To

Question -
I have four budgies living together in a flight cage, and two of them are a pair.  I don't want to encourage them to mate, but I want the female to be healthy, and not get egg-bound if she starts to lay eggs.  Is it better to provide a nest box? I'm not trying to have baby budgies, but if my females lay eggs, is it healthier if they nest on them for the full incubation time so they don't lay more too soon?  I hear a lot of conflicting advice.

Answer -
Hi, Laura.  Thanks for posting!

If you don't want your keets to lay eggs, don't put up a nesting box.  A nesting box is a sure way that they will lay eggs.

I wouldn't worry about the female becoming egg bound at this point in time.  Egg binding does occur, but it isn't the norm.  And a bird will be egg bound usually with only the first egg.  Egg boundness is a very serious health situation and if you don't get the female to the birdie vet in time, she will die.  Your concern should be the female(s) laying eggs if you don't want them laying eggs.  If you surely don't want eggs/babies, separate the males and females altogehter.  Also, if eggs are laid, you do not want all 4 birds in the same cage.  You'll need to separate the pairs into individual cages.  This is because the females and maybe the males will fight over nesting boxes, eggs, and babies (sometimes to the death).

If eggs do arrive, you should leave them right where they have been laid and let the parent birds abandon them on their own.  Otherwise, if you remove any eggs as they are laid, the female will continue to lay and lay until she has a full clutch of eggs under her.  This would not be good for her health.  Also, if they do lay eggs, they will have to incubate them the full incubation period or babies won't hatch.  It would not be good for fertile eggs to be laid on the cage bottom and babies hatch in this location.  Babies need the safety and warmth, etc., of a nesting box.  In other words, planned pregnancies are preferred (with you doing the planning)!

I recommend you decide exactly what you want to happen with your birds, and then take action to either make that happen or not allow that to happen!  In other words, if you don't want your keets to lay eggs/have babies, then you need to take the necessary precautions so this doesn't happen.  If you want them to have babies, then you have a lot to learn first!  Visit my website for more on this:

http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/birdinfo/index.html

Come back with any additional questions.

Chrys

Chrys

Answer
Hi, Laura.  Thanks for posting!

Certainly you can have your budgies tested for any avian disease you want to have them tested for.  However, I would recommend starting with just a fecal and mouth swab(cloacal and cloanal evaluation) prior to when you want your budgies to mate and lay eggs.  Then if the avian vet recommends further testing, s/he can discuss with you.  Budgies don't need to be tested for some avian diseases (some diseases don't affect budgies) and if they are adult birds, don't need to be vaccinated (young birds need the vaccinations, since they haven't yet built up immunities).  

Yes, I recommend handfeeding baby budgies if you want them to be tame.  Baby budgies are very easy to handfeed even though they are small, as they are very eager to accept the handfeeding formula (they are little piggys to be honest!).  They also wean at about 6 weeks, compared to 8 weeks in most other small- to medium-sized parrots.

Come back with any additional questions.

Chrys