Parakeet eggs died...........

Question
Hello......
I had recently asked you a question about my parakeet and how it removed its eggs from its nesting box. I had thought it had been because I moved them to a different house with a dog and a cat, and she just got disrupted by them and removed her eggs. However, she laid a clutch of 5 eggs after this, about a week after. One of the eggs I had found on the bottom of the cage right away. As for the others, she sat on them for over three weeks. I had been on vacation and my mom was taking care of them, and the eggs were scheduled to hatch on July 5th, and that would have been exactly 3 weeks since the first egg was laid. My mom called me on the 7th and told me the eggs were doing great, they hadn't hatched but she was still always in her nesting box sitting on them. Then on the 8th, my mom came over in the morning and noticed she was out of her nesting box, for the first time that she's seen in the past 3 weeks. She thought that was weird, and noticed that they eggs still hadn't hatched. 3 days later, the morning of the day I was coming home from vacation she had taken all the eggs out of her nesting box and left them on the bottom of the cage. I opened them up and they were all fertile...... 2 of them looked pretty rotten on the inside, like they had been dead for a while. One was practically completely developed- it had a hard beak and a cere and everything.....it looked like it was almost ready to hatch. The other was not quite as developed as that one but not far behind.

Do you know any reason why she had done this? Could it be because the eggs had maybe died earlier and she noticed they weren't hatching, and threw them out? This was her first clutch of eggs, besides the 2 she laid about 1 month ago which she immediately threw out. They had been all alone in a quite place for the past 3 weeks, with only my mom coming every morning to feed them and such. They had nothing to disturb them, and the house was kept a normal temperature (not hot, not cold) the whole time. I'm thinking maybe she threw them out because she noticed they weren't hatching, except for one of them which might have been one of the later ones to be laid which would have hatched in maybe a few more days had she not stopped sitting on them. But all day long she was in that box incubating them, and all I want to know is why she stopped and threw them out. Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer
Hi, Kelly.  I'm sorry to hear about eggs.

Parent birds know by about the 7th - 10th day of the incubation process, whether their eggs are viable or not.  They can feel movement inside the egg(s) (the babies move around inside the eggs during development) and just instinctively, they know what's going on inside their eggs.  However, even when a parent bird knows their egg(s) won't hatch, they may still sit on them.  This could be because of inexperience as in a first clutch or wishful thinking or the overwhelming desire to produce offspring.  I suspect your keet threw the eggs out of the nestbox when she realized they wouldn't hatch.  Perhaps the one viable egg just got mixed in with the bunch she was throwing out and she overlooked it.  It could be that something was going to be wrong with that baby and she knew it so she abandoned it.  The ones you opened that looked rotten on the inside obviously developed some type of bacterial or viral problem...this is what makes them look like this.

I can't tell you exactly what has happened here because I'm not familiar enough with your keet, your situation, and setup.  I'm sure there are things I need to know to help here that you may not realize could be important.  However, normally when a parent bird throws their egg(s) out of a nesting box or abandons their eggs, there's a very good reason for it.  They just don't destroy their offspring for no good reason...this isn't how Mother Nature works.  Perhaps your keet was upset by the fact that you were gone and the house was empty.  But this still doesn't explain to me why she would do what she did.  The best explanation based on the information available is that the egg(s) weren't viable and the 2 developed/partially developed embryos either got lost in the shuffle (which I seriously doubt) or there was something wrong with them.

I recommend you give your keets a break for a month or so (take the nestbox down) and then let them try again.  Keets can breed all year round if your goal is to have baby keets available to sell, give away, or keep for yourself.  Perhaps you need to thoroughly disinfect the cage, nestbox, etc., just as a precaution against any bacteria, etc., that might be present and could contaminate the eggs.

Chrys