2 parakeets mothering

Question
thanks for the quick reply, now what if im not really sure which female is the true mother? i want to wait another 2 days to see if any more eggs come since the is 6 now, but i read 6-8 per clutch. if i remove the blue female because i think its the yellows eggs, will the yellow female and the male raise them ok? even if its the blues eggs and she is already mothering them?


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Followup To

Question -
I have 4 keets in a large cage together, and they all get along wonderfully. I discovered about a year ago that 1 is male, and he has quite a liking for 2 of the females. So i bought a nesting box and set it up on the cage, bought the nesting material and put it in the cage. Finally, after a year of waiting, monday came the first egg, now there are 6eggs so i think they have their full clutch. I think its the yellow girls eggs, but the blue girl is also sitting on the eggs as well.noone seems to have a problem sharing the responcibilities and the eggs seem very well taken care of. Is it normal and okay for them to share? they will both sit in the box at the same time, and there isnt and fighting or fussing. thanks for your help.

Answer -
Hi, Christy.  Thanks for posting.

You do not need to put any type of nesting material in the cage or the nestbox.  There are only a couple species of parrots who build nests inside their nestboxes and keets aren't one of them!  Nesting material may not allow the incubating eggs to get the warmth they need from the mother in order to develop properly.

In keets, males have blue ceres (area above the nostrils) and females have brown/tan/beige ceres (any other color but blue).  Does this help with sexing your keets?

Normally, when you have more than 1 bonded pair of keets per cage and eggs and/or babies are present, it's asking for serious trouble.  I seriously recommend you remove all keets in the cage except the 2 (the male and female) who've laid the eggs.  Otherwise, you will most likely run into problems soon.  In my 17 years of experience raising keets, if you don't separate these birds, a jealous female may (most likely) will destroy the eggs of another and/or kill the babies once they hatch.  The hateful female may also kill the mother keet, since she will try to defend her eggs/babies against the other, and female keets defend to the death.  They can be very ruthless!  This is evident to me by the fact they are sharing the responsibilities...one or the other will become aggressive soon, which will result in disaster.  It is not normal for them to "share" in this manner.  What you may have is a  male and female doing what they should be doing because 2 females will eventually fight (usually to the death of one) in a situation like this.  

Chrys  

Answer
Hi, Christy.

Another reason why you shouldn't colony-breed keets (so you know for sure who the real parents are)!  6 eggs is usually the maximum for a clutch (although some lay 1-2 more, some lay less), unless both females are laying eggs in the same nest.  I can't answer your question because I don't know the personalities/behavior characteristics of the individual keets involved (I can't predict how they might act/behave in this particular situation because I'm not familiar with the birds).  Which female does the male feed (the male feeds his female mate while she incubates the eggs)?  This would be the female the male is pair-bonded with and the one you should leave in the cage with that male.  Does the other female have a mate?  If so, I recommend you separate the pairs into individual cages.  Then you'll need to decide, based on your knowledge of these birds, whether you should split the eggs up between the 2 females or put the eggs with one or the other female.  In other words, if both birds are incubating these eggs equally, you could split them up between the 2 birds.  If one is incubating much more than the other, place the eggs with that female.  However, it's best if the female with the eggs has her mate in the same cage with her to help during the process (it's too hard on the female to do everything alone).  Another option you have would be to separate the pairs, pull the eggs, and destroy them so you/the keets can start over with a better setup.  Whatever you do, do not touch the eggs with your bare skin (use a glove or something in order to keep the oils/dirt from your skin from penetrating the eggs) and try not to turn the eggs while moving them.

Chrys